Well it was heading almost exactly downwind so it is unlikely it was conducting flight ops. It was also headed right towards the canal pilot pickup/drop off location surrounded by anchored boats. That would be absolutely irresponsible to conduct flight operations in such a confined area. The impact also appears the carrier didn't have right of way. Looks like a typical right of way error in a confined location at night without the aid of AIS.

 

I will say this, wrt the next big one, we are not ready militarily. Submarines smacking underwater terrain, destroyers getting hit by cargo ships, carriers getting hit by cargo ships, destroyers shooting down aicraft in the pattern over a CVN, blackhawks face planting into airliners...

The country needs an overhaul, its just dumb effery everywhere.

I am not sure what did this to Millenials and increasingly, Gen Z, but it is eye watering.

 

Yeah, that's a terrible analysis. Humans have been making mistakes for all of history. War is hard and people make mistakes all the time. The only difference is now we get to see every mistake happen in real-time. In 1950, an Iowa class battleship was beached in its home harbor due to an extremely basic navigation error. It was an engineering miracle that they were able to recover the ship.

In 1980s sailors died because the president thought reactivating WWII battleships was a good idea. The ships were so old that no one really knew how to operate the guns anymore. On-board experimentation with outdated technology and almost no training led to a mishap.

And in 1988 the Navy shot down a civilian plane because they were too distracted by a few powerboats and no one could fathom that an airline could have a flight that left later than its scheduled flight time.

This is not a millennial or gen-z thing. If anything most of the incidents you listed were command mistakes made by gen X.

 

Yes these types of ops are hard, they push the limits so as to gain a tactical or strategic advantage against an opponent who might not be willing or able to push quite as hard.

It's not normal civilian ops where safety is always job #1.


As someone who lived that era from cold war JO through the end of OEF/GWOT as a senior O, I would say it's complicated...

During the cold war, it was hard work and not at all touchy-feely. Not a lot of BS distractions from the mission and also not a lot of tolerance for weak links.

In the 90's funding and priorities changed, without being engaged in a clear and specific conflict the usual peacetime military diseases manifested. That's what Gen X grew up in.

Post 9/11 we had some clear conflicts, but they were compartmentalized to certain branches and warfare specialities. Additionaly those conflicts (after 2001-2003) were all low intensity COIN activitities.

So many components were distracted by LO/COIN GWOT for a couple decades, at the expense of funding/training/preparing for global security and peer/neer-peer MRC's. We had additional cultural distractions which started in the 90's and continued I guess until about a month ago.

Leadership selection criteria for Gen X and early Z was hit and miss... for some based on combat experience (of a type which didn't correlate to the peer competitor big picture), for others based more on peacetime metrics whic are always hit and miss.

Those leaders were saddled with a lot, and frankly a lot of it was distractions and inconsistency. While juggling all of that, they had to mentor and develop the younger generations... that is objectively more challenging than in the past, due to several things:

1. Significant differences in lived experience and outlook between generations.
2. Recent societal expectations about how people in general get treated, which bleeds over into the mil.
3. Recruiting challenges which have often led to lower standards, to account for a smaller pool of youth who are fit for service by traditional standards.

The good news is that the military tends to get youth who are more on the motivated side, so it's not an issue of slackers in Mom's basement. It's more how they expect to be treated, and also a tendancy to not want to do something just because somebody else said so, if they don't see a good reason for it.

If they stay in long enough they learn and come around, but we rely heavily on first-term members for a lot of where the operational rubber meets the road. On Navy ships, the people doing the actual driving on any given midnight shift are probably all low experience and young... that has led to watch team discipline issues which were found to have contributed to some collisions.

Ultimately the chain of command is responsible, but they can only do so much and juggle so many balls.

Post GWOT, we've definitely been shifting back to focus on peer competitor MRC/MCO. Hopefully they can continue to tighten the focus, culturally and programmatically.

 

Wow, congestion and reliance on tech by the command leadership wouldn't have anything to do with it. There are more ships and planes than ever before and we rely on tech and more and more to make the system work. The command responsible for, and that chose to operate "safely" in this manner is neither millenial or Gen Z.

 

Is the command ultimately responsible, yes. However, at the end of the day the vasy majority of functions in the Navy are run by enlisted. You could remove the officer staff from a destroyer or submarine and it would be fully mission capable- dirty, but lethal.

That being said, it comes down to the types of people hired to sit in front of that fire control console, radar, nav plot, DC central, etc. Usually a chief or senior E6 running the show. Our enlisted ranks are in trouble. Whether it is managaing damage control, propulsion or conducting squad tactics on the battlefield, it comes down to the NCO leadership within the enlisted ranks.

The US adopted the German way of fighting, we have lost that edge and replaced with some other metric for promotion.

 

Going to one of the most congested shipping lanes in the world that happens to be in a war zone without a high-ranking officer on deck would be a bad call. Either an older experienced officer made the call to let young enlisted alone command the ship or an older experienced officer was in command on the deck. Either way, not the fault of gen-z.

 

Very dirty on a DESRON, and degraded effectiveness. The O's in CIC train for years to manage complex battle problems. The E's could push a button and launch a weapon to engage a single target, but they can't manage a large-scale engagement, especially in CWC environment like a strike group.

On a submarine? Not a chance. The E's are very stovepiped into their tactical niches, the operation of the ship as a whole and most especially tactical employment 100% requires O's. With no O's, the E's could surface the ship and drive home, not much more. If they tried to engage say a neer-peer SSN, they would lose very badly. Kind of like saying an enlisted aircrewman could grab the stick and fly a full strike package mission in a hornet, with potential air-to-air and IADS evasion.

 

It's the goat locker that runs the surface navy and has shepherded every young O-1 through his/her formative years. My grandfather assured me of that.

 

They run the mx and systems operations. They absolutely do not lead, manage the tactical operations.

That's like saying strike fighters don't need pilots because enlisted maintainers and aircrew run the squadron.

Do chief's mentor junior O's? Sure, they have management oversight responsibility for mx and day-to-day operations, and the Chiefs are the experts at that. No Chief ever mentored me on fighting the ship.