Frank,

So many ways this discussion could go. I spent 12 years in the Navy, 7 years as a Surface Warfare Officer (ship driver). I also attended a small college on the Severn River in Maryland. You would be surprised how much safe navigation relies on human control. Seamanship is seamanship and has been for hundreds of years. Technology has largely allowed for more information to be acquired and displayed, but only to support decision-making. In the US Navy, decisions are made by people and actions are taken by people. The correctness of those decisions relies on an individual’s education/training, experience, confidence, courage and discipline – critical thinking attributes. Training for SWOs in the last 20-30 years replaced hands-on ship handling with simulators. Confidence and courage cannot be taught but is gained with experience. Experience requires an investment in time. Discipline is instilled in an individual or comes from within. Obviously one of those attributes, and likely all, has suffered.

There is something systemically wrong on that ship, maybe in the Navy. On that ship, there is a bridge watch team and a Combat Information Center (CIC) watch team. The Officer of the Deck (OOD) is ultimately in charge of every evolution that occurs and is the Captain’s representative on the bridge. Standing Orders exist which define certain actions that must occur for certain situations and are always in place. Night Orders augment the Standing Orders and specifically written to convey the CO’s intent while he/she is away from the bridge at night, likely asleep. The OOD is responsible for the safe navigation of the ship. The Junior Officer of the Deck (JOOD) is a 2nd officer on the bridge team and directs the helm and lee helm actions (steering/throttle) – a 2nd, though less experienced, set of eyes. The CIC watch team manages the ship’s sensors and weapons systems. But, they have a critical duty to support the safe navigation of the ship. They monitor the same radar systems and make recommendations to the OOD to ensure safe navigation. There is overlap in responsibilities, support and oversight that should prevent something like this from happening.

Notwithstanding an apparent overall breakdown of professionalism on that ship, one additional clue is that the OOD was a LTjg (Lieutenant, junior grade). Because that is a such a junior rank that it suggests to me that some critical-thinking factors might have been lacking: experience and confidence. Couple that with training that might be insufficient and discipline that appears to have been compromised on that ship and you get an incident like this. It sounds as though the OOD did not comply with the Captain’s Standing Orders and other errors probably cascaded from there, putting one or both ships in extremis, ultimately leading to collision.

I know too little detail of the event to place individual blame. I do believe that the information was there to avoid the collision, which is almost always the case, but the ability to act correctly on that information is what failed. You don’t need advanced technology nor new protocols to avoid a collision at sea. You need critical thinkers.