US warship collides with ship for the 5th time: Radar warning is blind?
A Japanese tugboat collided with the US guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold in the Sagami Bay area.
On November 18, RT (Russia) quoted an official announcement from the US Navy's 7th Fleet saying that a Japanese tugboat had a propulsion failure, then lost control and collided with the US guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold in the Sagami Bay area (Japan).
A statement from the 7th Fleet stated that the USS Benfold suffered only minor damage. No one was injured in the collision. The Japanese tugboat has now been towed to a port in Yokosuka.
The US Navy said the USS Benfold remains at sea and an investigation will be conducted.
The incident is the latest in a series of collisions involving US Navy warships this year.
According to statistics, since the beginning of the year, US Navy warships have collided 5 times.
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| USS Benfold |
In August, 10 US sailors died after the USS John S McCain collided with a container ship off the coast of Singapore.
Previously, in June, the US Navy's USS Fitzgerald collided with a cargo ship off the coast of Japan, near the port city of Yokosuka, killing seven US sailors.
In May, a US guided-missile cruiser collided with a South Korean fishing boat. In late January, the USS Antietam ran aground, spilling 1,100 gallons of oil into Tokyo Bay, causing an estimated $4.2 million in damage.
After a series of incidents, in early November, the US Navy announced a series of reforms to strengthen basic naval skills and enhance vigilance.
A review of a series of collisions involving US warships in the Asia-Pacific region found that sailors were undertrained and overworked.
Similarities
Before the US Navy announces the cause of the collision between the USS Benfold and a Japanese tugboat, we can look back at the most recent collision incident of the USS John S McCain.
After the USS John McCain destroyer had an accident, British news agencies commented that the cause of this collision was most likely related to the radar warning system on the USS John S. McCain.
This is also considered the main cause of a similar incident with the USS Fitzgerald in Japanese waters in June 2017, which killed 7 sailors.
Popular Mechanics reported that just before the collision, the crew was unable to use backup steering systems to control the ship after the main steering system failed.
A representative of the US Navy's 7th Fleet said that initial indications showed the destroyer lost control before the collision, and immediately after the incident, everything returned to normal.
Many news sites even speculated that the state-of-the-art US destroyer was attacked by a mysterious force and its GPS was jammed.
If the above information is correct, it is clear that technical problems in the USS John S. McCain were the main cause of the most serious incident in the history of the US Navy, not human factors as announced by the US.
Despite two consecutive catastrophic collisions, the US has yet to admit that the fault lies with the equipment system. Will the US continue to blame humans for this collision?
According to Dat Viet Newspaper
