Recommended: No Court-Martial for 2 Fitzgerald Junior Officers

You are correct that this is a service wide issue. The same conditions that led to the crashes in 7th Fleet exist in Norfolk, for example, as well. And because of this, Rowden lost his job as Surface Force Commander, likely costing him a fourth star. In the cases of the admirals, every one of these retirements represented lost promotions, which equate to huge amounts of prestige and money. It's a different atmosphere in the clouds.

The bottom line though was despite the failings of the fleet, basic seamanship failures led to these collisions. Nobody looked out the windows, the lookouts didn't report the contacts, and people were complacent about equipment failures instead of finding workarounds.

I had an event when I was on Capodanno where all the search radars crapped out at the same time. I was Weps, and didn't own them, but I did have a solution. I had the old style gun director that gets manned during operations. I had the Chief Gunner up in the turret doing sweeps with the gun director. Not in any way what it was designed for, but it kept us safe during a foggy navigation.

The folks on these ships should have done better jobs at safe navigation. When you say "I have the watch" you take on the responsibility for your ship and your crew. That is worthy of going to Courts Martial when you fail to keep your ship safe.

LCDR Rabbah Rona Matlow - I totally agree wit your last paragraph and BZ on your solution to a bad situation.

An Admiral being fired, loosing a star and "prestige and money" doesn't equate to a skipper or crew member who either is doing time, lost rank, DFR, or lost a life. If being fired is the gateway to getting one over on the system, then we ALL should strive harder to be flag officers. What's the worst that can happen to you? You're going to retire ALIVE, full benefits, and maybe a slight ding to your wallet that you'll make up for two fold in defense contracting or the medical field? That's not a "loss", that's a WIN. I agree fully with you again when you pin them on, it is a different playing field, and therein lies the issue. These skippers, Master Chiefs, JO's, and enlisted won't get that break. We see that now, and there is no way with two ships in the same fleet making almost the same mistake within a year someone could reasonably NOT think there is a more pressing issue the skippers and crew were dealing with that was leveraged from above on them.

From basic service, no one wants to be the one who says NO. Mitigate everything, if the risk assessment is high, mitigate it lower before the CO looks at it. Nothing higher than a weak medium. This standard cost lives, money doesn't matter. This standard makes it hard to say safety first, last and always. It means OPTEMPO first, mission first, maybe we'll get some repairs jury rigged and no documentation being it would have to go higher, and that just increased the risk assessment which cannot go above a weak medium. Who has the power to slow the train wreck? Of course the skipper, the Master Chief of the ship, but in the end, it falls on the commander of the fleet to ensure his fleet IS doing the training. IS doing the maintenance, IS following up on deficiencies in a timely manner, and not running around with equipment, Sailors, or ships that are not sea worthy or truly mission capable.

These two cases should've gone to courts martial if only to make the fleet staff to include the CO as Fleet Master Chief explain what are the standards, what is required of maintenance, how it can be overruled and why, then how the hell did this happen to two ships under them in less than a year. In a court room, under oath, the Navy itself does not want that. It doesn't want to face a reality the skippers of both ships knew, and they don't want to be held accountable for it. I'm honestly pissed at the commanders and SEA's of these ships, but I'm flabbergasted at the Navy's way to "fix the problem" and to "save face". Kinda like Patreus vs Manning. Same crime (to an extent), WAY different results.

SSG Warren Swan - indeed. It is a huge mess. And a similar principle applies to the cases of SSG Bales and SGT Russel, both of whom were JBLM soldiers now doing LWOP in Leavenworth.

Bales shot up a bunch of Afghani citizens, and Russel a couple docs at Camp Liberty. Why? THey had unmanaged PTSD and were sent back down range. Nobody in their chains had the honesty or spine to say these soldiers aren't deployable, given the realities of the war.

Everyone in the Chain, up to SecDef and POTUS should have been standing tall at the Green Table for these disasters, and that includes GWBush who got us into them in the first place. But nobody else was punished in any way for this colossal leadership fail.

LCDR Rabbah Rona Matlow Amen, Amen, and Amen.