Wouldn't the burden of steering off collision courses be on these shadowy hard-to-spot ships then?

Yes, the tanker belongs to "Restricted in Ability to Maneuver", which means they have priority over pretty much anything. You can't ask them or expect them to detour to avoid you, you must avoid them.

That's not correct - according to the Collision Regulations, simply being a large ship does not make you "restricted in ability to maneuver." That definition is reserved for vessels carrying out an activity which restricts them from altering their course, such as dredging or mine clearing. A large oil tanker may be "constrained by draught" in a narrow channel in which case it does indeed have right of way over smaller vessels, but larger vessels will be constrained too so "priority over everything" becomes a pretty meaningless concept as everyone will have it.

In open water, large vessels like that give way to smaller vessels when appropriate all the time.

https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=def3g_RAM https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=def3h_CBD

Nonetheless, I'd expect a far more agile battleship to be able to move itself out of harm's way.

It's ridiculous that they're out there unlit and not broadcasting their position, and somehow not 100% liable for the damage caused by such behaviour.

Especially considering that their sensor suites must be orders of magnitude more powerful than commercially available civilian equipment.

Primary navigation radar gives away your position, as does active sonar, in the same way that AIS does. If they have the latter off, it's not unreasonable to assume they also have the others off.

Passive sonar would pick up a tanker if the engines are running fast enough or the ship isn't particularly streamlined (which tankers invariably aren't) so this is probably a failure of communication.

The tanker was broadcasting its position. That's how we have this nice visualization. I don't understand why you are talking about active systems. They should just have listened to AIS messages.

Likewise also don't understand why the article goes on and on about more clever ways the collision avoidance system could be programed. No collision avoidance system can help you if the operators of the stealthy war-machine drop the ball.

Oh, I wasn't aware you can receive other ship's AIS position updates while your own system wasn't active.

Even in that case, it's the same as the passive sonar example I illustrated: the ship is there and you can see it, but they didn't avoid it anyway. Failure of communication.

Crew on the bridge with NODs would seem to be a no-brainer in those conditions, at least.

Seems like the naval vessels should be using passive radar detection as well, if they're not already. That wouldn't protect them from everything, but it should catch all of the big commercial vessels, right?

And you know, turn on the lights if necessary...

The navigation lights should be on. They are not immune to the ColRegs (but they can add more lights and dayshapes if they want as long as they don't add anything confusing).

I don't understand how, after three accidents, they don't have a policy of careful watch in an area like that. Something still doesn't smell right with the info we're getting.

My theory is this is a covert operation by the Chinese to disable the U.S. 7th Fleet, one merchant ship collision at a time. :)

In a hundreds-of-million USD war vessel, LIDAR-or-some-other-clever-tech-based collision sensors sounds like a well spent couple-of-hundred-k. Probably not-too-hard to upgrade the fleet for a few billion USD.

Just spec it to GD like "y'know that beep that I get on my car when I'm about to backup into a tree? Let's get that on these boats."

They already have multiple systems that do proximity warning plus manned crews.

Lots of things beeping and going off just results in them been ignored, this had happened on flight decks and hospitals.

Semi-autonmous collision avoidance that's on by default however could be an interesting idea.

To err is human, to really fuck up requires a computer - as one of my professors used to say.

LiDAR only really works in good meteorological conditions, which is frankly when you need it the least.

As cars have repeatedly demonstrated, LiDAR doesn't work well when there's water droplets in the air such as rain, snow, fog, or sea spray.

Momentum on a 8000 ton ship is a hell of a thing. By the time collision alarms are in play, you're already screwed.

I would argue that the range of the collision alarm should take the ship's mass into account. Certainly my minivan's does. Have softer threshold alarms that sound earlier. Yes, even if it causes some false indications it might be a net improvement (though they should be cautious in making this kind of design change because it might not be a net improvement).

Active detection measures like radar and sonar are out, because they give the ship's position and capabilities.

Your minivan doesn't have these concerns.

I honestly thing they should be “giving away their position”. Pretending they shouldn’t is simply ego, and demonstrably dangerous.

It’s perfectly normal to see this in our own waters. AIS will identify the vessel as being named simply “Warship” or “Surfaced Submarine” (where “Warship” means “none of your business”, and “Surfaced Submarine” should be treated as a hazard to be actively avoided, as they're damned difficult to spot). They usually won’t give any useful to/from port (part of the AIS messages), and I’m not convinced their MMSI (identifying number) is actually fixed, but more likely disposable (or in practice, simply ‘0’).

And that’s okay. We can work with that. I don’t actually need to know who they are, I just need a location, course and speed so my radio can calculate whether our closest point (CPA) is uncomfortable, and the designation of “Warship” is perfectly sufficient to ensure my eyeballs and the computer are talking about the same vessel. MMSI should be useful, but rarely is - Warships are surprisingly difficult to raise on civilian radio. It's not unusual for them to have no idea how the civil band is channelized. In & around ports if you need to communicate with them, it's best to look for their police escort & raise them, and anywhere else .. "If it's grey, stay away".

There’s entire oceans for them to go play hide’n’seek in. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that when they’re in a shipping lane, they obey the rules of the road - in peacetime at least. If they want to be invisible, perhaps the worlds busiest shipping lanes aren't the best hiding places.

Or, look at it this way. If a small sailboat was arsing around in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, at night, with no navigation lights, no AIS, no radar reflector, and what appears to be insufficient watch-keeping/lookout - and got mown down by a frieghter - you’d have very little sympathy. “That’s a terrible shame, but realistically inevitable”.

This is exactly what the USN look like to everyone else on the shipping lane. Playing hide’n’seek on a busy road, and wondering how these accidents keep happening. And yes, they should be blamed for any incident where the bare minimum of good behaviour would have averted entirely. (I should say seamanship, but this concept is long since lost on the USN)

They can just be for peace time situations like the past two collisions with container ships

I'd think that they'd already have radar systems that can track every ship in a 50-mile radius.

Using radar gives away your position and radar capabilities. For this reason, most active navigation measures are (almost) never used on naval ships.

My understanding[0] is that use of radar to provide continuous situational awareness is routine, not avoided in the way you describe.

[0] confirmed by this piece by a recent US destroyer commander: https://warontherocks.com/2017/06/how-could-this-happen-the-...

And colliding with a tanker and being in the media for several days doesn't reveal your position?

I really get your point about stealth and would agree that it would make sense not to use radar. On the other hand, if you can't avoid collisions (for whatever reasons) your position will be known very quickly anyway.

Good point. Does this apply even in peacetime while in friendly waters? I suppose you never know when you might become a target.

Peace can turn into war very quickly indeed, so my understanding is that the Navy prefers to err on the side of caution.

Please tell me how a radar switched to off would give away the position of the ship in a war time situation.

You're sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the busiest shipping channels in the world. There isn't a shooting war underway, but you are within range of Iranian cruise missiles and naval craft.

It's not exactly war, but it isn't exactly peace. Do you see what I'm driving at?

Huh? They're explaining why they wouldn't switch the radar on.

This article contains yet another beautiful visualization by the NYT team. Really adds to the article and gives insight into how this incident developed and how to assess it in the greater picture.

Convinced me to think about it as an accident instead of some conspiracy to hurt us navy through various merchant vessel crashes.

The visualization is pretty but missing an essential bit of info: scale.

makes me wonder how much they're really paying attention if they can be hit by a 30,000 ton tanker without anyone so much as sounding an alarm.

If that tanker were loaded with explosives and had malicious intent, we'd be missing a lot more than 10 sailors.

edit: changed 12,000 ton to 30,000 ton. It was carrying 12,000 tons of fuel oil but is a 30,000 GT vessel.

I expect the navy to adopt slightly modified SOPs to prevent this from happening in the future.

In a less friendly neighborhood of the ocean no vessel would be allowed anywhere near that close to a navel vessel without permission. It's not like they don't already know how to protect themselves.

I expected that after the first incident.

Big organizations have slow turnaround times. Policy changes need to be investigated thoroughly for unexpected consequences before implementation. Lives are at stake here. You can't just do another round of VC funding to get more of them.

Bah, safety issues can cause pretty rapid change because, as you agree, lives are at stake here. We're talking about navigating a congested waterway, something where the technology and policies already exist for doing safely.

Why do they not transmit location during relatively peaceful times? There is more of a threat from collision then hostile action in these waters.

Because if a surprise war was launched the first salvo would take out more of your ships.

Broadcasting your position in peacetime sounds good until it's not peacetime.

Of course the question is then - is any nation-state suicidal enough to launch a large scale pre-emptive strike on the US Navy.. Terrorists of course are another matter.

What's the point of patrolling if you transmit your location? Imagine how useless local police cars would be if they were equipped with a public GPS.

Relevant Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_...

A screw-up seems a lot more likely.

The Navy just punished another crew for running a destroyer into a cargo ship. I'd imagine we'll see a similar response here.