Before the Navy's Tragic Fitzgerald Collision, the Crew Faced These Big Problems

Warning signs that were ignored.

You know, so much has been said about this incident , it's easy to make some broad conclusions. A lot of what these reports reveal sounds not dissimilar to what I experienced a decade and a half ago or more at sea... exhausted, undermanned crews, broken equipment, barely-baked JOs, etc. Aside from where they were at, I'm not surprised at all that this bridge team was lacking one or all of the senior officers or SNCOs. Still, there are several things that stick out to me that are a little "shocking". First, the dynamic between the OOD and the CICWO- We had "bad blood" at times, but people did their jobs. Those of us who stood watch together often usually made it work (functional, if messy at times). Second, no STBD watch...that's just insane given where they were at the time. Sounds like they had a JO tasked with that, alternating from one side to the other=bad ju-ju. That watch is for someone whose sole occupation is looking for contacts... not trying to do a billion other things at the same time. Third, a well-liked and engaged CO... not the "stereotype" one expects from such incidents. From what we know, he sounds like a guy who genuinely cared about his people, was trying to fix a lot of inherited problems, and was trying to defeat the training deficit... but it also sounds like he may have been trying to use a "screwdriver" when he needed a "hammer". Just my $.02 but it sounds like he may have overestimated some peoples' ability, or underestimated some of their problems. You're always only as strong as the weakest link, and I suspect the Fitz had more than her fair share. I'll be blunt-I've not seen, read, or heard of a single shred of evidence that would convince me these people were abnormally incompetent (I'm actually not surprised by their ROR scores) or intentionally (let alone criminally) negligent. That doesn't excuse them of responsibility, or change the fact that they failed. Why they failed is as much a fault of the system as any one individual. I see over-reliance on technologies when a good pair of eyes would've been more useful. I see people trying to juggle all the "balls", when there were lots of "plastic" ones they could've dropped without breaking the "glass" ones. I see evidence of something no one seems to have spoken much about, but that I suspect had a major part to play...where's the Goat Locker in all of this? Had they been marginalized by the Wardroom micromanaging? Were there internal conflicts that kept them from forging a solid front? Maybe they just weren't there...maybe a couple decades of "zero tolerance", and asking a fish to be a turtle has led to fewer and fewer of the right people in the right places, and at the right times?

Wow, it seems Navy leadership was responsible more than most will ever know.