Negative, skipper. It's easier to spot a cargo ship in cloudless pitch dark. There are red, green and white nav lights. That's minimum and there's usually a Christmas tree of other lights. As a vessel greater than 50m, more lights. Constrained by draft, more lights. Cargo ships are not hard to spot, especially with radar and an AIS receiver.
Whether the Fitzgerald itself was visible at all is a good question. It had its AIS transponder off and Arleigh Burke-class destroyer has a semi-stealth design. But marine radar still should have spotted it.
Get out of the city to realize just how dark it can be.
Surely a ship of that sort has a pretty robust night vision system, if not multiple methods of detecting things including thermal or lidar.
how do you come to this conclusion? The destroyer's damage is on the starboard side- it's not on or near the stern.
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2017/06/18/fitzgerald-...
The right of way rule is: "A boat approaching from your starboard (right) side has right of way."
Damage on the right side of the destroyer means the cargo ship had right of way. It suggests the crew manning the ~$1bn destroyer failed to yield.
Very often. Shipping lanes are often the most direct route from A to B and 10kts is about the most economical speed for many different ships.
This is true even if the course the ship is using to overtake the other transiently puts them on the starboard side of the other ship.
To determine "crossing situation" vs "overtaking situation" you have to know the courses of both ships, and that's data we don't have yet as far as I've seen.
Besides we've already heard the testimony of the cargo ship's captain, which testimony is 100% corroborated by the AIS track. As the stand-on, they did everything they could to hail and signal to the navy boat. The navy boat kept coming across their bow. At the last moment, they turned hard to starboard. The navy will never release any of their own records, because such would only make the obvious, more obvious. It's not as though there haven't been other navy boats doing similar stupid shit over the last few years: Porter, Port Royal, etc., not even to mention the problems that their subs keep having. Ask a merchant mariner about navy safety. Their motto is, "if it's gray, stay away!"
In most of those cases they've been able to claim extenuating circumstances. That won't happen here: the cargo ship was operating exactly as one would expect, in a busy shipping land, in clear weather. The captain and OOD have the deaths of sailors on their hands. Those who imagine that they lead this navy, should ponder what sort of response would best prevent a repeat of this tragedy.
Never mind that at least my hypothesis is consistent with the location of the damage on both ACX Crystal and Fitzgerald, since it's possible that the location of the damage was a result of last-minute maneuvering and not the course of each ship in the minutes before the crisis.
But let's look at your hypothesis:
> As the stand-on, they did everything they could to hail and signal to the navy boat. The navy boat kept coming across their bow. At the last moment, they turned hard to starboard.
You say this is "100% corroborated by AIS", but working to try to hail a Navy warship and then choosing to make a last-second attempt to turn is completely inconsistent with their AIS track that shows them not turning back to investigate until 30 minutes after the collision, and only once they spotted the ship they hit, did they turn back to resume course and report the collision to the Japanese Coast Guard.
If they were that busy trying to hail turn to avoid the Navy warship, then there was no need to double-back to figure out why their bow sustained damage, nor a reason to delay an hour to make the report to shore. Their AIS track is consistent with a cargo ship on auto-pilot (which to be fair, is the normal and expected mode of operation), with the computer auto-pilot encountering an unplanned navigational issue that it then piloted through to get back on track, with a human crew following up minutes after and then turning around to see just WTF had happened.
On top of that, the captain of the ACX Crystal claimed to use "flashing lights" to signal the Fitzgerald that she was standing into danger. But the COLREGS demand the use of an audible danger signal (5 or more short blasts), and no other signal. The captain also claimed to start a hard turn to starboard, but then says that it took 10 minutes to hit Fitzgerald from then.
But even for a container ship, if you were in the middle of a hard turn for 10 minutes you'd have turned all the way around. In fact if you look at the AIS track https://twitter.com/imgregorous/status/875905972924948480/ph... they make a sharper turn after the collision (presumably when the human crew turned off the auto-pilot and made a hard turn to quickly get back down the original track and figure out what happened).
Fact is, if the ACX Crystal crew were really so in tune with the traffic situation as to be able to watch the Fitzgerald make a turn, spend minutes on bridge-to-bridge VHF trying to warn the Fitzgerald, and spend "minutes turning" to avoid a ship traveling on a single course and speed, they're going to be found liable as well. If they really had so much awareness of the ongoing situation to watch it unfold in the way their captain is said to have relayed it to investigators, they also had enough time to unilaterally avoid the collision as they were required to do by COLREGS.
> The navy will never release any of their own records, because such would only make the obvious, more obvious. It's not as though there haven't been other navy boats doing similar stupid shit over the last few years: Porter, Port Royal, etc., not even to mention the problems that their subs keep having. Ask a merchant mariner about navy safety. Their motto is, "if it's gray, stay away!"
Definitely not an axe to grind here, is there? I guess it's a good thing we already know what happened then, I guess we can tell Japan to call off the investigations?
P.S. the Navy has released many of the records for "similar stupid shit" you mention (e.g. audio from the bridge of USS Porter in the most recent destroyer-involved collision), so I do not understand why you say the Navy would not here.
> In most of those cases they've been able to claim extenuating circumstances. That won't happen here: the cargo ship was operating exactly as one would expect, in a busy shipping land, in clear weather.
The Navy itself doesn't absolve its ship captains due to "extenuating circumstances" so there's no need to try to apply that as a mitigating circumstance. Either way there weren't extenuating circumstances with USS Porter, or USS Port Royal, or USS Hampton or many of the other ones before that, so that's no different here. Fitzgerald should have avoided the collision. The question will be how much ACX Crystal should have, or could have done to avoid the collision on her own.
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But look at the angle the Crystal hit at. If the Crystal had hit at a 90 degree angle the destroyer would have been split in two. The damage shows it was clearly hit at less than a 45 degree angle. If the Crystal was approaching with a smaller angle (I think it's 25 degrees) it loses it's right of way. Essentially it's running down the destroyer.
Now we know the Crystal should have been cruising at a more leisurely pace than the destroyer, so in reality that might mean the Crystal was ahead of the destroyer before the collision. But I strongly suspect something happened where the Crystal was the faster vessel and overtook the Fitsgerald, the crash itself is evidence of it.
It sounds like there may be some design flaws in their navigation protocols or automated systems.
When in busy international shipping lanes you are going to be spotted visually and on radar by other ships, including ones from countries that cooperate with those unfriendly powers you want to avoid. Your general position is going to get back to those unfriendly powers.
So is there any point in turning off your transponder when in such waters? It seems from my inexpert viewpoint that if you are running with your transponder off, you should also be keeping out of visual and radar range of other ships.
Sure, if the transponder is off so that the unfriendly power is only able to track via reports from friendly (to them) ships, there will be some delay in their tracking. The unfriendly power won't be able to launch a long range cruise missile attack on you based on such tracking, but that's only relevant when you are in an active conflict with someone who has that capability. The US currently is not. The unfriendly powers currently interested in US navy ship positions only need to know the general area of the ship to figure out the things they are trying to figure out.
That's how news works when something is still being investigated. And your comment proceeds to do the exact same thing: offer details about when happened, and then raise the same unanswered question that everyone has arrived at (including the article). So... what's your point, exactly?
And I at least provided detailed possible issues that contributed to why the collision occurred, and why mysterious behavior occurred (the Crystal taking 30 minutes to turn around).
My point is that the NY Times should offer me a high paid job to make their articles better.
This "change" would have been in keeping with the local TSS [0]. It's like when you're driving and there is a bend in the road, you steer so as to keep the car in its proper lane.
[0] https://cdn-business.discourse.org/uploads/gcaptain_maritime...
They have separate surface search / navigation radars installed. According to Wikipedia, this particular ship had two.
I hope this behavior is changed during peace to prevent unnecessary human fatalities.
Plenty of ships go to sea without transponders on, such as large fishing vessels that don't want to give away where the good spots are.
The Royal Navy advertise their 8500ton Destroyer as having the radar cross section of a small fishing vessel: https://navynews.co.uk/archive/news/item/3951
I'm not sure what the weather conditions were like, but even in marginal conditions, they'll have been picked up on radar.
Hitting a ship with a missile is hard because they're usually out of land based radar range but if they all had their transponders on, it would be so much easier, especially since medium and long range missiles are getting increasingly more advanced. I wouldn't be surprised if state of the art recon satellites could pick up a cluster of transponders in a carrier battle group and use that data for targeting. If all an enemy did was take out our aircraft carriers, it would cripple our force projection outside of stationary military bases (which would all be hit in a first strike) and turn the navy into glorified mobile silos. The element of surprise is often the only deciding factor in skirmishes and battles between equal forces so it is paramount that giant, slow, and vulnerable fortresses don't broadcast their position.
There's a new generation of ballistic missile which might work, but they're extremely expensive, have limited range, and are rare. This idea of sinking the entire US fleet in one strike is utterly absurd.
https://blog.usni.org/posts/2017/06/21/three-changes-the-nav...
Also, there are 274 ships in USN.
Also, this cargo ship did not intend to collide with the navy ship. In wartime, we can't make that assumption.
But even then they certainly don't want to make it simple to trace their complete deployments.
We already have a good idea what happened.
1) It was a very dark night, the moon had not yet risen. Even a large cargo ship can be hard to see against a black horizon at night.
2) The destroyer was running without transponder on, as per typical Navy behavior so it couldn't be tracked by unfriendly powers. This meant the automated navigation system on the cargo ship didn't see it.
3) The cargo ship made a significant course change a few miles before the collision, which meant if the destroyer crew had plotted its course prior that change, they might have not realized they were suddenly on a collision course.
4) The cargo ship hit the destroyer from an acute angle, almost from behind. On that heading rules of navigation say it was on the cargo ship to give way to the destroyer, it's possible the crew thought they would.
5) if any of the cargo ship crew were on watch, they could not have seen the destroyer once they were close, given how tall their ships deck was.
6) The track after the collision indicates the cargo ship crew was asleep and the automated navigation system turned at the collision then resumed course, and it took 30 minutes for the crew to take control, figure out what had happened and returned.
7) Allegedly AEGIS radar systems are often tuned to filter out surface traffic so they can be more accurate at picking up air traffic.
8) The fact the captain was asleep in cabin is evidence no alarm was given nor threat detected before impact. Every time the captain goes to bed they leave standing orders to wake them if any ship gets within a certain safety margin.
What is still a mystery is why the crew didn't detect the cargo ship before the collision. Certainly a combination of radar and deck watch should have been able to see the ship. It should have been well lit enough to see once it was close. It should have been signaling it's location with a transponder. Even if the crew incorrectly thought it would pass a minimum safe distance the captain should have been woke and brought to the bridge.