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View Full Version : Is someone hacking our 7th Fleet? Navy to investigate after USS John S McCain collision



Teh One Who Knocks
08-22-2017, 10:59 AM
By Edmund DeMarche - FOX News


https://i.imgur.com/YDtUsK0.jpg

A top U.S. Navy admiral on Monday called for a swift and thorough investigation into Monday's collision of the USS John S. McCain into an oil tanker near Singapore-- marking the second deadly mishap that occurred in the Pacific in the past three months.

Adm. John Richardson ordered an operational pause in all the fleets around the world while the Navy works to determine the factors behind the collision. Richardson tweeted that the Navy will conduct a wide investigation, including a review into the possibility of "cyber intrusion or sabotage."

http://i.imgur.com/5uP9j4R.png

Adm. Phil Davidson, the head of the Navy's Fleet Forces, will lead the investigation.

Richardson made clear that there is no evidence of a hacking at this point, but some cyber experts have raised to possiblity given the location of the warships.

Jeff Stutzman, an ex-information warfare specialist in the Navy who works at a cyber threat intelligence company, told McClatchy that “there’s something more than just human error going on."

http://i.imgur.com/nCNQkNr.png

"When you are going through the Strait of Malacca, you can't tell me that a Navy destroyer doesn't have a full navigation team going with full lookouts on every wing and extra people on radar," he said.

Richardson called for a review of the 7th Fleet’s maintenance, personnel and equipment in the region. He called on a new focus on surface warfare training, which includes tactical and navigational proficiency.

The USS John S. McCain suffered “significant damage” to its hull after a collision with an oil tanker on Monday near Singapore.

The 7th Fleet said in a statement that damage to the guided missile destroyer's hull flooded nearby compartments including crew berths, machinery and communications rooms.

Ten sailors are missing and four were hospitalized in Singapore with injuries after being evacuated by helicopter. A multinational search and rescue effort involving Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the U.S. is underway.

On June 17, the USS Fitzgerald was badly damaged in the collision off the coast of Japan. The waters off Japan are considered congested and considered to be challenging to navigate.

The seas were relatively calm, and visibility was unrestricted. The bow of the container ship, the Philippine-flagged ACX Crystal, slammed into the Fitzgerald's right side above the waterline, quickly flooding several areas inside the ship, including a berthing, or sleeping, area.

Seven sailors drowned.

The New York Times reported that there were radar officers working on the bridge and combat information center below and “should have spotted the freighter’s image on their screens.” One sailor wrote the paper: “All I can say is, somebody wasn’t paying attention.”

The top three leaders aboard the USS Fitzgerald were removed from duty.

Aside from the USS McCain and USS Fitgerald incidents, the Navy cruiser USS Antietam ran aground dumping more than 1,000 gallons of oil in Tokyo Bay in February. In May, another cruiser, USS Lake Champlain, hit a South Korean fishing vessel.

Itay Glick, the founder of a cyber security firm called Votiro, told News.com.au that his initial reaction to news of the USS McCain collision was that it may have been hacked. Glick worked in the cyber-warfare unit of the Israeli intelligence agency and pointed to the possibility of involvement from Russia and China.

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Glick said. “Both USS McCain and USS Fitzgerald were part of the 7th Fleet, there is a relationship between these two events and there may be a connection.”

Hikari Kisugi
08-22-2017, 06:01 PM
Well I heard it stated, that if you hit an oil tanker, unless you're another oil tanker, its your own fucking fault.

Is this linked to the Philippians' (sic - we'll claim, I have no fucking idea how to spell it) collision where the US destroyer some time ago hit a ship and didn't realise until hours later, its own sailor dying in flooded compartments?

PorkChopSandwiches
08-22-2017, 06:09 PM
Seems odd for 2 ships of our to run into other BIG ships. Does anyone actually look where they are going

Hal-9000
08-22-2017, 06:30 PM
Seems odd for 2 ships of our to run into other BIG ships. Does anyone actually look where they are going

That was my first thought. Getting aside from the oodles of tech they must have on the ships, how about LINE OF SIGHT?

Oil tankers are HUGE ships and the destroyers can reach five stories tall.

Teh One Who Knocks
08-22-2017, 06:45 PM
Maybe they were cloaked? :-s

Godfather
08-23-2017, 01:21 AM
I like the speculation I saw online that, while there's for sure playability to the technology, China using it during peacetime for such small disturbances would be a huge risk vs the reward.

There was a GREAT write up on Reddit describing life on a Destroyer and why this could be happening:




I averaged 3 hours of sleep a night on my DDG and CG. Sometimes I'd go days, 48-36 hours, depending on scheduling, before I could catch more than a 90 minute nap over lunch in my shop.

Quarters is at 07. Work goes until 1700, give or take until 2000 if there's a big project going on.

Watch was port and starboard, so, 0600-1200, and then six hours off, and then 1800-2400. After three months we got someone qualified and we jumped to three section, which was worse: five hours of watch followed by ten hours off, followed by five hours of watch. Keep in mind that work, PT, your current qualifications, and meals must all fit into this schedule.

Then, I was on flight quarters. We pretty much ran helo ops from 2000-04, maybe 0500 every night.

Break this down for you, this is what my day looked like.

0600-1200, watch.

12-1230, lunch

1230-1600 work.

1600-1800, dinner/quals/gym.

1800-0000, watch. If we were at flight quarters, I'd get relieved by another watchstander and I'd go man up the flight deck.

Flight quarters would go until 0400. I'd be lucky to catch two hours of sleep before assuming the watch again at 0600. I often showered and would nap in my shop.

If we were in five-and-dimes, my day would look like this:

0600--Breakfast. Which I wouldn't get up for, because that's an extra hour of sleep.

0700--quarters, work until 0800 when I would assume the watch.

0800-1200, watch.

1200-1230, lunch.

1230-1600, work.

1600-1800, dinner/gym/quals/personal time to decompress. IF we we had a huge project, I'd be back at work from 1800-2000.

Flight quarters would man up....give or take their schedule was usually at 2000, sometimes earlier, sometimes later.

Watch again at 2200-0300. Again, if at flight quarters, someone else had to fill that in. If not, I'd get to go back to sleep until the next day.

Same schedule, but this time my next watch would be 12-17 and 02-08.

(watch blocks on five and dime look like 07-12, 12-17, 17-22, 22-02, 02-07.....watch for five, off for ten hours. Repeat. It's awful. Even if you don't have flight quarters and you get broken sleep with that rotating schedule, what ends up happening is you have a sleep deficiency of hours, it eventually adds up to you being so tired that you're hallucinating. NPC did a sleep study and found that after a week on a rotating watch schedule you basically are operating as if you'd been two beers (or more) deep. Here's the solution the Navy developed, but nobody wants to implement, in order to fix this problem: https://my.nps.edu/web/crewendurance/index

So. I don't know what the other guy is saying about "being run ragged" is an exaggeration, but I have personally gone without sleep for so long that I have seen and heard things that weren't there. I've witnessed accidents that could have been avoided because the person was so tired they had no right to be operating heavy machinery, including an incident in which someone got descalped and someone else almost losing a finger. I've been off sea duty for about six months and my sleep schedule is so fucked I can't go more than about four hours without jolting awake and having to basically go through a relaxation process to get myself to go fall back asleep. Past experience has shown it'll take me another 6 months to a year to get out of the just enough sleep to function" phase and then I'll be up for sea duty again, anyway.

I'm not bitching about my underway work schedule, I'm stating it as a fact: It's fucked, and I'm not happy about it.

Edit: and don't even get me started on drills.

Edit2: I woke up this morning to my kid brother younger brother (who is an Army combat vet; he'll always be my "kid brother" though) texting to tell me I hit bestof, and this has garnered a lot more attention than I was ever expecting. I am reading every response even if I don't reply--I'm stationed in Japan so it's the middle of my work day now and I can't skate off on my phone for long stretches to reply to everyone. Also, to everyone who had worse sleep schedules, I don't envy you, to everyone who had it better, I know, I should've gone aviation like my husband. He gets that blessed "crew rest" on deployment.

And thank you for the gold:)

Edit 3: Twice gilded, wow. If ya'll really want to put your money to good use (not that supporting Reddit server time isn't great), please consider donating to the Navy Marine Corps Relief Society. They really took care of the sailors onboard the USS Fitzgerald and I know they're going to do the same for the Big Bad John. They've also personally helped me and my sailors deal with family emergencies and other life-problems like wrecked cars, flooded houses, tree-damaged roofing and general budgeting and short-term loans. Also NMCRS is tax-deductible.

redred
08-23-2017, 04:39 AM
US Ship:*Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.

CND reply:*Recommend you divert*your*course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

US Ship:*This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert*your*course.

CND reply:*No. I say again, you divert YOUR course!

US Ship:*THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA*, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!!

CND reply:*This is a lighthouse. Your call.



Why does it remind me of this

Teh One Who Knocks
08-23-2017, 11:10 AM
CBS News


https://i.imgur.com/SzuqCrP.jpg

The United States Navy will remove from duty the commander of the 7th Fleet amid the latest incidents involving four collisions in Asia, CBS News has learned.

Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin -- a three-star commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet based in Yokosuka, Japan -- will be relieved of his duty Wednesday for loss of confidence in the wake of four accidents.

An announcement will be made by the top U.S. Navy commander Adm. Scott Swift early Wednesday, CBS News' national security correspondent David Martin reports.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report the news.

Recently, the USS John S. McCain struck an oil tanker near Singapore that left 10 sailors missing.

A collision early on Monday with that oil tanker tore a large hole in the side of the McCain. U.S. Marine Corps. and Navy divers joined the search effort on Tuesday, accessing flooded compartments of the stricken ship, which is now docked at Singapore's Changi Naval Base.

Adm. Swift reiterated on Tuesday that there had been no indications of a cyberattack and he said any negligence on the part of the U.S. Navy crew aboard the McCain, or the other vessel involved, would be a "determination of the investigation" which was ongoing.

The chief of Naval operations officially called for all U.S. Navy ships worldwide to halt operations and review basic training in a video posted online.

Vice Adm. Aucoin was the admiral who held the first press conference in wake of the USS Fitzgerald collision in June that left seven sailors dead off the coast of Japan.

The fatal collisions involving the McCain and the USS Fitzgerald recently followed two other less disastrous accidents, Martin reports.

The cruiser Antietam ran aground in Tokyo Bay and another cruiser, the USS Lake Champlain, collided with a South Korean fishing boat.

Hal-9000
08-23-2017, 06:42 PM
I like the speculation I saw online that, while there's for sure playability to the technology, China using it during peacetime for such small disturbances would be a huge risk vs the reward.

There was a GREAT write up on Reddit describing life on a Destroyer and why this could be happening:

No offense to him or others who have duty on a Destroyer, but he's essentially saying this happens because people were tired? Oil tankers and destroyers are huge craft and one would think they have enough personnel on the ships that can actually view the ocean? They can't rely on technology to navigate every mile...unless they're in a submarine :lol:

Godfather
08-23-2017, 11:44 PM
Not really that hard to imagine IMHO. The Airline industry for example is highly self-critical and analytical. I'm not sure any industry is more regulated and closely studies its own accidents... and they estimate that almost 80% of their accidents are human errors.

Combine that with this guy's (and many more former seamen who commented in that thread) saying they were so overworked and undermanned that they'd fall asleep standing up. That's a recipe for disaster.

deebakes
08-26-2017, 02:15 PM
seems weird :shrug: