Facing increased aggression and power from China as well as new operational challenges from Russia and other countries, the U.S. Navy has been at the forefront of protecting U.S. interests around the world. As the Navy strives to meet these challenges, its ships shouldn’t be one of them. Unfortunately, they are, and information from an initially secret report shows that the problems are even worse than previously known.
On June 27, 2017, the USS Fitzgerald collided with a container vessel, ACX Crystal, while navigating off the coast of Japan. The crash crippled the Fitzgerald, ripping a hole in its hull that filled sleeping quarters with sea water, drowning seven sailors.
In the aftermath of the collision, the Navy carefully controlled what information was publicly available and conducted a separate, initially secret investigation that candidly assessed what had gone wrong.
For example, Navy Times explains how the Navy had previously stated that the crew was simply not using the Automatic Identification System, known as AIS, to navigate the busy water. The report makes clear that the system was not only not being used, but was unusable. “Sailors avoided the AIS laptop because it constantly crashed,” the publication said. “It couldn’t be moved because jostling a cable would short out the array.” Additionally, the AIS system in use had been loaned from another ship, meaning that the crew could not update its operations.
Lt. Cmdr. Ritarsha Furqan, who had previously served on the Fitzgerald, made clear that this was not a new problem. He explained in the report, “It would periodically lock up, and we would be unable to unlock it even with the correct password, so we’d have to reboot the entire laptop and try again.”
Other equipment, including radar, control consoles, and the Voyage Management System, were also inoperable and had been for months.
Equipment problems were not the only issue. Commanding officers were not on the bridge during the difficult passage, although they likely should have been. The sailors were overworked and fatigued. There were consistent morale problems, exacerbated by distrust, that meant there was no communication between the bridge and the command information center. Standing orders were routinely disregarded. Maintenance issues were left unaddressed, such that repairs had been made with masking tape on controls and left in place for months at a time. To top it all off, the sailors were mostly inexperienced and, due to their demanding schedule, had little time to complete certifications, address issues, or learn the skills that might have prevented the catastrophe.
Or, as the report put it, the equipment problems combined with lack of training created “a culture of complacency, of accepting problems, and a dismissal of the use of some of the most important, modern equipment used for safe navigation.”
Worse, the officers overseeing the operations of the Fitzgerald seemed to have overlooked earlier instances of near-collisions and failed to address the issues that led to those unsafe conditions.
Although the Fitzgerald certainly had issues unique to the ship, the problem seems to be more widespread. Indeed, in 2017, there were three other collisions of U.S. Navy vessels with other ships. In August 2017, a collision between the USS McCain and an oil tanker caused the deaths of another 10 sailors.
Since then, the Navy has removed those it found responsible from duty and has been working toward implementing reforms in the aftermath of the collisions.
That’s a good start to fixing clearly unacceptable conditions aboard ships like the Fitzgerald, which are supposed to be safely guarding American interests abroad and meeting the challenges of hostile foreign actors. But that so many problems went unchecked for so long and with deadly consequences does not inspire confidence in this new era of competition between the great powers.
