Actually, there have been three collisions, the one that gets forgotten, most likely because there were no deaths, was when the Lake Champlain cruiser was hit by a South Korean trawler a few months back. My assumption on that one was that the cruiser "saw" the trawler but the cruiser was not going to move to avoid a collision since it was part of the screen to an aircraft carrier. I have not seen a report that says my assumption was right or wrong.
Why would one think this was anything other than yet another collision?
The USN has had many groundings and accidents in the last few years. A submarine ran into a sea mount, a ship ran into shallow water off of Hawaii, and a mine sweeper ran up on a reef. These were simply complete failures to navigate their vessels. No excuses what so ever in having this happen. None.
If the Chinese know where our ships and subs are located, their heading, and can then move reefs and sea mounts in front of USN vessels, well we better start learning how to speak Putonghua.
The USN has had multiple collisions between it's own vessels over the last few years as well. A USN sub surfaced into a Japanese trawler off Hawaii killing many of the vessel's crew. This was just an absolute failure on the part of the CO and crew.
I am not anti USN but they have a problem and I think the problem is up the chain of command from the ships COs. Here is a link to a merchant marine captain who has interesting comments that I think get to the heart of the problem:
Red Over Red, The Failure Of U.S. Navy Leadership gCaptain
Later,
Dan
