Re:Why Did a U.S. Destroyer Fail to Dodge a Cargo Ship?
by astrodust on Saturday June 24, 2017 @04:21PM
(#14627305)
Even if it was in the middle of a hurricane with twenty foot swells on a moonless night you'd still expect a destroyer to be able to spot 29,000 tons of metal coming at it.
Re:Why Did a U.S. Destroyer Fail to Dodge a Cargo Ship?
by dogma1138 on Saturday June 24, 2017 @05:09PM
(#14627491)
Dark colored ship with dark colored containers on a pitch black night.
Nope can't really spot it.
Get out of the city to realize just how dark it can be.
Re:Why Did a U.S. Destroyer Fail to Dodge a Cargo Ship?
by astrodust on Saturday June 24, 2017 @05:13PM
(#14627505)
I know how dark it can be outside of the city. I also don't carry around a radar system worth tens of millions of dollars that's operated by a crew that's supposed to be paying attention to where their $1.7B vessel is going.
Surely a ship of that sort has a pretty robust night vision system, if not multiple methods of detecting things including thermal or lidar.
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.