Scanning the net before work, Lex’s post reminded me of the incident that shaped a variety of things in the days afterwards. The things not so obvious in the the story of a ship attacked and damaged with lives lost…..”Battle Orders” became a standard item in the daily underway routine. In addition to the long used “Night Orders” that laid out the Captain’s wishes for the hours when he would be getting that most valuable commodity, sleep. “Battle Orders” reflected the settings of the Combat System of the ship, and any anticipated changes in readiness already planned, that the watches in the night could operate on, without waking the CO.Damage control changed. New pieces of equipment were rapidly fielded: “FFE,” the fire fighting ensemble, the “NFTI,” an infrared detection device, exothermic torches to allow cutting of aluminum bulkheads and decks, and the Jaws of Life were the major ones. Along with those came training changes in the “train the way you fight” methodology.Lectures were held in the school houses discussing the issues of crew fatigue in the long effort, in a hot, smoky environment. New discussions were earnestly held about “what condition do you place the CIWS (Mk-15 Close in Weapons System) in and when? “Auto/Auto?” Much more was talked on.Last year, here’s what I posted about my arrival at work in regards to my part of involvement in this day in history.I’ve not only walked the decks of a sister ship for 18 months, and sailed in the same waters, doing the same mission as the STARK a little over two years after the incident, but earlier in my career, I ran the office that trained the FFG-7 (Flight I and II) Pre-Commissioning Combat Systems teams. STARK was one of the crews my shop worked with for 4 weeks in the FFG-7 Combat Systems Operational Team Training Course at Fleet Combat Training Center, Atlantic. It was an interesting journey across twenty years that kept interacting with the little ships that did so much, for such a bargain basement price. Brad Peniston’s book, “No Higher Honor” about the USS SAMUEL B ROBERTS (FFG-58) mine hit also covers the history of the acquisition and design decisions of the OLIVER HAZARD PERRY Class Guided Missile Frigates. I’d recommend the book again, to help frame some of the issues the STARK faced as a result of the work done in getting that class of ship to the building ways and to sea.A few more years later, and I think 10 years ago this month, I reported to the NAVSURFLANT Combat Systems Mobile Training Team as the Combat Systems Assessment Officer. On those hundreds of inspections I did over three years, I regularly walked up to talk with the lookouts during the Detect-to-Engage (DTE) exercise and asked them where the “threat” (usually a contracted Learjet) for the scenario. Most every time they hadn’t been clued in by the CIC team as to what was happening, let alone where to look. I’d spend a few minutes letting them know they were important eyes for the ship and how little time they were likely to have when a cruise missile came over the horizon at them, but it was maybe their only chance…..The STARK hit affected quite a lot of the “business as usual” conditions.Update: CDR Wm Boulay, USN (Ret), the XO of USS CONYNGHAM (DDG-17) left this comment today, but on the post from last year:

Thank you for this post. I was the XO of the Conyngham that you referred to. I am so very pleased to see that the contributions of the “Gus Boat” crew mentioned. I also drafted the message you read, using the immediate observation of my chiefs and officers for the body. Today is the 20th anniversary and as I do every May 17, I say my prayers for the men we left behind, and search the ever dwindling news stories for mentions of the anniversary. That is how I found this post and the absolutely correct summary of our message. I will finish with the observation that a few years later, Surface program Director under the watch of Joe Taussig, the Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy for Safety and Survivability, I helped make good on those words by deploying COTS solutions for the most serious material deficiencies and later, at the Office of Naval Research, helped develop a fire research program EX-USS Shadwell in Mobile Alabama. On her we can simulate the 2000 degree fire that almost took the Stark and from what we learned and continue to learn there, our fire fighting posture is vastly improved.

Tracked back @: Yankee Sailor

From this month’s issue of Popular Science:

Javelin SpeedSled

No longer must drivers confine themselves to the limitations of conventional sports cars, with cramped interiors, aerodynamically compromised styling and body-battering ground clearances. The new all-electric sport cruiser’s performance-tuned suspension cuts aggressively through turns, while its four powerful hub motors—individual electric motors built into the wheels that generate a combined 450 horsepower—send it blasting down straights, reaching 60 mph in less than four seconds on its way to a top speed of 200 mph. But the real innovation is its aerodynamics: Instead of fighting high-speed airflow, the car takes advantage of it, channeling the air around the central, low-slung pod to generate huge downforce. Furthermore, the hub motors eliminate the need for a large engine, freeing space for three passengers to ride in a unique 1+2+1 seating configuration.

Modify your aerodynamics to tweak either speed, handling, or economy; change the paint scheme on the fly…I like!

Now this certainly will come to the front quickly (NOT!) or there will be efforts to, at the least discount, at best, bury, any detailed looks into this report. Talk about and embarrassment at the party’s refreshment bowl, on any side of the aisle:

“I Found Saddam’s WMD Bunkers” from Melanie Phillips’s column in the Spectator.

The reported find of bunkers built under the Euphrates River bed doesn’t seem all that outrageous. Remember the reports about German engineering firms constructing elaborate bunkers for Saddam? No one disputes that. So, possible from a technical standpoint? Yes. Possible from the track record of Saddam? Yes to that, also.

Will we see more to help ferret out the truth? Not likely. Our children will most likely know, long after we go and books are written by historians.

H/T: commenter nuke gingrich at Little Green Footballs

Last post discussed the Explosives Handling Personal Qualification/Certification Program (EHPQCP) and how it came to be, as a component of the investigation of the incident aboard the USS SARATOGA (CV-60) in the Med.

Today, some beginning information on the Personnel Qualification System (PQS) and, as I continue, how it played into this incident.

One of my assigned team members, LCDR Don Diehl, wasn’t a big proponent of PQS. While he wore the “water wings” of a Surface Warfare Officer, he has spent much of his career aboard aircraft carriers, being assigned to the USS EISENHOWER (CV-69) in the Operations Department at the time of this assignment. At first, we locked horns many evenings, as we traveled the East Coast and all the way to the Red Sea over the need for this program. He eventually saw my point, as we cut through the standard standard objections fleet sailors like to put forward.

I intend to take the issue of how PQS works up in detail one day soon, as I ended up getting elbow deep in the program in the last half of my career, but the basics of PQS is to validate that training has been held and the knowledge from training retained by the person who will be “qualified” to stand watches of preform various duties aboard ships. In the aviation world, the analogous program is NATOPS. On submarines, they use some PQS, but then have another program in place to validate crew members can perform their duties.

Aboard the USS SARATOGA, the key players in the scenario were:

• Tactical Action Officer (TAO) (Navy Aviator LT (O-3)), Not qualified by PQS
• Ship’s Weapons Coordinator (SWC) (Navy Aviator LT (O-3)), Not qualified by PQS
• Target Acquisition System (TAS) Operator (FC2 (E-5)), Qualified by PQS
• Firing Officer Console (FOC) Operator (FC3 (E-4)), Not qualified by PQS

The TAO did have a letter of designation from the Commanding Officer, an essential piece of paper to allow someone other than the Commanding Officer of a vessel to employ the Ship’s weapons. This position came about during the Vietnam era, when the age of anti-ship cruise missiles rose into a real possibility, reducing reaction times dramatically from the days of gun fights at sea, where you generally had some notice before the first was joined. It is an job of great significance, as it requires a great degree of discretion and sound judgment under conditions requiring split second decision making skills with accuracy.

The path to qualification for the TAO required attending a shore based course (it was six weeks long during my career), where you are first given the “threat matrix,” massive lists of the weapon systems that we were likely to face and their technical capabilities. These were to be memorized, as the information must be readily available when sensors alert you to the inbound weapon, or presence of a threat platform.

Upon return from the school, and usually after some period of “under instruction (UI)” watchstanding, the Commanding Officer would convene a qualification board of the crew experts and you would be grilled on the ship’s specific processes, procedures, current operations orders, rule of engagement (ROE) and your knowledge of the friendly and enemy threat capabilities. If you passed muster, then you were given a letter of qualification, to be filed in your record and annotated on your fitness reports, and allowed to bear the responsibility of the authority to say “SHOOT!” and have people do what you say in a life and death situation.

Were is PQS in this? There was one, the 43304 series. Back then, it was either the B or C edition, but it is now up to the D edition. If it existed, then its use was required. Who says? Well, the Chief of Naval Operations, for one. From OPNAVINST 3500.34F, para. 4.F.:

4.F. PQS use is mandatory, except when suspended or canceled by the lead respective Type Commander (TYCOM). […]

It had that same paragraph for my time in service, therefore, unless Commander, Naval Air Forces Atlantic (COMNAVAIRLANT) had issued a directive to not use the PQS for TAO, it also had to be a part of the path to qualification for the TAO’s aboard SARATOGA. I say SARATOGA, but off all the PQS’ in use, I regularly had arguments with Commanding Officers on surface ships, saying the TAO qualification was up to them, and they didn’t think they needed to use PQS to qualify TAOs. I always figured 4 stars beat any oak leaf or eagle, but that might have just been a pet peeve with me….

There is/was PQS for the Mk-23 TAS Opertator, 43406 series, and also for the MK91 Fire Control/NATO Sea Sparrow Missile System Operators (43328 series). I didn’t regularly work aboard aircraft carriers, and I can’t find a listing for PQS for the Ship’s Weapons Coordinator for a CV Combat Direction Center (CDC), but I suspect it existed.

More later on the PQS issues and the incident….

It’s almost like this could be in the WaPo or NYT any day now…

Dateline: Washington, DC March 14th, 2007

Congress, acting quickly on their success of changing when Daylight Savings Time goes into effect wasted no time in trumpeting their resounding success: The US is noticing a cooling “climate change” and Speaker of the House Pelosi wants people to know it was her push to change daylight saving time which actually accounts for the cooling seen last month as well, that made this happen.

To continue the trend is establishing a downward track of US temperatures, several House and Senate committees have been holding hearings on how a change in the Law of Gravity would further reduce the production of greenhouse gases. Initial response from the public has been over the top positive, says a new USA Today poll, showing a solid 92.7% of all those living in the US (includes, but did not identify by name and address illegal aliens responding) think it would be “a great idea” to reduce gravity by 25%, while another 5.2% would support the President signing a bill that had a long term reduction equal to 20%, implemented over a 10 year period, rather than a large cut all at once.

Harry Reid (D-NV), at a press conference to announce the bill he was sponsoring, the Unified Gravity Reduction Bill of 2007, told the fawning Washington Press Corps the change in gravity would reduce the amount of fuel needed for all sorts of transportation, therefore, a reduction of greenhouse gases would be achieved and the planet would once again find itself cooling off, possibly as early as August 2008, in time for all American citizens to see how once more, the Democrats have been real problem solvers, while the President did noting by try to make more pollution with his tax cuts, that encouraged economic growth and manufacturing.

While most Americans seem fine with this measure, “non-weight challenged” citizens voiced displeasure with the plan, one man outside on the Capitol steps, a short, skinny, buck-toothed redneck looking idiot, held up a handmade sign with this inscription: “Reduce Gravity and What’s Next? Slowing Down the Speed of Light?” In an interview off the record, this rube had the audacity to question the wisdom of such a great and obviously spectacular bill being forwarded by Congress. He must have been expelled from elementary school for carrying a licensed firearm and missed his environmental science lessons. He went on to say, if the trend caught on, since most Americans are “weight challenged” (his words of “d*** obese” have been changed as to not offend anyone who is too lazy to stop eating), if they chose to reduced gravity even more, he and the other skinny people would be the first to suffer “unintended consequences” by being blown away in a stiff wind. He went on to comment that fat people just liked the idea because their excess wouldn’t be pulled down so hard and for once in their lives they could claim “normal” weight values on such documents as medical insurance applications, while staying reasonable affixed to the earth, even in strong winds. Not stopping there, he said some of his weight lifter friends were complaining about how people who never had set foot in a gym would soon be able to lift like they have been all along, drawing a parallel to Barry Bonds taking steroids just so he could pound the ball out of the park all the time: It’s an artificial advantage and is an uneven playing field.

Not everyone is happy with this measure, which will benefit the entire world, even if the law is only placed in effect in America to begin. While 90% of the scientists are in consensus that this is a good thing to do, there are almost a full 10% who have taken a hard line of junk science saying mankind has no way to reduce or eliminate gravity at a whim or the placing of some ink on paper. It can be done for short periods, but they say it requires a significant expenditure of energy, thereby negating any savings of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Several well known scientists have refuted these types of statements, calling them part of the outcasts in the science community and labeling them as “reality physics deniers.”

Al Gore, was not available for comment, but his spokesperson said he was holding a conference with the Boards of Directors of the company he currently purchases carbon credits from before he makes any press releases on his position.

One organization that is heralding such a measure passing as “great news for us” is the United States Parachute Association (USPA). A boon for jumpers and pilots alike, getting to altitude will take less energy and jump ticket prices should start dropping, which, as the USPA Executive Director, Chris Needles, projects will “begin to increase our stagnant membership numbers, as jumping becomes more affordable for more people and experienced jumpers will love being able to put 25% more freefall time in their logbooks per jump!”

The United Nations Secretary General, while not yet making a full statement, has been heard discussing with his staff if this might give the US an advantage over the other nations of the world, further having the appearance the at the US is “going it alone, without testing this new idea in the Court of World Opinion.” He also has wondered out loud if this measure might be looked upon as a leadership in global environmentalism and actually be a good idea for the rest of the world to try. The ambassadors for both China and India were heard to be protesting that they might be subject to any such rules in a working group of the Security Council this afternoon, fearing it might somehow cut into their productivity and fight to reach economic parity with the US.

President Bush, the worst President in the history of the US, was asked about this new proposal during his press conference where he was falsely claiming how the Surge in Iraq was already quickly reducing violence and civil unrest, said he wasn’t sure what gravity current was rated at, once more demonstrating what a shrub he is.

V(oice) A(ctivated) L(aptops for) OUR-I(njured) T(roops), in case you need a briefing…

The program continues, providing assistance to those wounded and unalbe to use a keyboard, permanently, or while undergoing rehab. Laptops with voice activated software provides a link, that many of us take for granted, withour ease of access to the internet and a keyboard.

If you have a few spare doallrs, might you consider a donation now, and periodically in the future for this great cause?

Oh, and my ad for the project: 100% of the donations go directly to the cost of hardware and software. Not a lick of “overhead” or “administrative” cost burden this endeavor, for the rest is “all-volunteer,” just like our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and coast guards.

It’s not been pretty, reading editorials from CPU Magazine and Maximum PC regarding the operating system new to the market….

One of the editorialists happen to be the man who brought us DirectX as a Microsoft employee. Credibility in my book.

Long story short: It drags down your hardware (therefore, get ready to do major upgrades), it assumes there is much piracy and takes a very “conservative” look for DRM (digital rights management)….and now, I find out when visiting Bad Vista that it seems many mainstream programs will require an upgrade (read…more $$$ out of your pocket). Also, it seems Vista isn’t doing well with many games.

Seems to me the “complete re-writing” of the OS has left the run of the mill MS user in quite a quandary…stick with XP (better buy a copy if you’re planning on building a new system, MS doesn’t make it anymore), or dump a lot of cash for the OS upgrade (BTW, XP Pro will not upgrade to Vista Home Premium), then more into more memory (512M is the absolute bottom amount you can have, with 4GB (can you say “$350+, Thank you Mister Gates!”) being the “sweet spot”), and then….possibly have to buy upgrades to business programs.

Toss into the punch bowl a friend of mine recently hired his first employee and bought a system for the new guy and figured he’d just get two to establish a baseline. They came with Vista and he couldn’t use his Canon printers. Canon techs told him they can’t get drivers to work, so either buy new printers, or drop back to XP. He also had some problems with QuickBooks Pro 2005 not being able to run. Net result of this first person report: Scrubbed the drives and installed XP.

Bad Vista looks like a place to keep up with the latest gouge and get a few giggles for you Mac guys, too….

I’m sure the business world isn’t gonna be happy….

Trackbacked @: Third World County

Distributed computing has become a valuable tool in analyzing masses of data. One of the first was the SETI@Home project (about 2.7M years of computing time has been used on this effort), which needed help searching through the volumes of collected radio spectrum data pulled down. Since that project modeled a method to use other computers across a large area network to assist in culling through the info, there are now protein folding project at Stanford University. Here’s what they say the work is for:

Our goal: to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases

What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? Proteins are biology’s workhorses — its “nanomachines.” Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or “fold.” The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.

Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. “misfold”), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

You can help by simply running a piece of software. Folding@Home is a distributed computing project — people from through out the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer makes the project closer to our goals.

Folding@Home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems thousands to millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.

From the “Results” page, what the project has accomplished already:

2005 First results from Folding@Home cancer project published. We have been studying the p53 tumor surpressor and our first results on p53 have recently been published. You can find a summary and link to the paper on our papers page.

If you’re a biology geek, or have an interest in Intelligent Design, there is some really interesting information about proteins at the Stanford site on using anoantubes and the information for help design drugs absed on this research.

Who’s playing? Lookee here!

Just an recommendation to use some of that electricity wisely while you’re not actively using the CPU cycles for your direct use…

Tracked back @: Third World County

I know it’s been quiet here, but I managed to get the 2.1.2 upgrade to WordPress in. I’m not so cavalier with my blog data as I sometimes am with other stuff I do, but I really step through is carefully, fearing a massive tear in the database time contiunium will lose valuable info. Well, that assumes this is valuable stuff….

I’ve been toying with a new widgetized theme on another parallel blog to tweak it into submission. I’m learning the CSS stuff bu hunt and peck/trial and error. Some moments I have success, some I do not. I enjoyed the ability of Regulus to swap header pictures easily from the presentation controls, and I’m trying to recreate that capability by grafting it into the new theme, a three column style. I’ve been head down in that for three evening after work and getting close….

In the meantime, for you Seadogs out there, check out Together We Served. So far, after being invited to sign up, I have already been in contact with 4 old shipmates, and a few people who I must have crossed pates with. Anyhow, possibly a better system to re-connect with the people you went to sea with, and maybe find some others you need to catch up with.

Work is picking up, as the days get lighter longer. Wednesdays will still be a standard feature for sea stories. I invite (currently) non-bloggers, who may have a story to share to send them along and I’ll be happy to post them for the historical value of it all.

Coming this week: “JC” Weigman on how to get things done….

Oh, and the current tech item of consideration: Neurok iZ3D LCD monitor.

1680×1050, 5ms response time, iand two DVI inputs, it uses two LCDs, sandwiched with two feeds off your video card, and then all you do is wear polarized glasses (no wires/batteries)….is $819 (if you order by 3/15/2007) a good deal? Flight simmers say any 3D system makes the flying, especially formation flying, far more lifelike and easy to do….

And onto the topic of Explosives Handling Personnel Qualification Certification Program (EHPQCP). There is a history to this program (like all others) and it has it’s good and it’s bad sides. Like the Personnel Qualification System (PQS), the EHPQCP arose from disaster, and formalized what has been done in the past by less bureaucratic means. PQS will be dealt with later in detail, separate from this series.

One of the bad parts of the EHPQCP was it “pig-piled” on other qualification processes, which increased the administrative loading on the Fleet operators, which takes time away from actual training efforts.

While the EHPQCP does not play a direct role in how this incident occurred, it was something we had been checking on surface ships for compliance during the Combat Systems Assessments, and during Cruise Missile Certification exams.

EHPQCP has it’s roots in the flight deck fire on the USS FORRESTAL (CV-59) off Vietnam on July 29th, 1967. Just about an hour before noon (local), as the air wing began it’s launch cycle. The story of the heroism and tragedy of that day are well chronicled in “Sailors To the End” by Gregory Freeman. That story is about East Coast sailors wanting to do well, and “modifying” the approved procedures, coupled with a starined logisitcal system that sent WWII bombs to fulfill the requisitions of the carriers, whihc cause more loss of life.Side historical note: LCDR John McCain was strapped in his A-4 Skyhawk, waiting to launch, when the initial missile was fired from an F-4 Phantom due to electromagnetic interference (EMI), starting John’s plane on fire. He crawled to safety off the nose and refueling probe of his flaming Skyhawk, dropping to the deck clear of the flames from the ruptured fuel tanks and ran to safety. It’s a great read, I highly recommend it.Net result of the fire: Another layer of training and qualification, titled “certification.” In addition to this efforts, the certification must be renewed annually. The basics of the program is that all persons who handle or “operate” ordnance must be certified for the discrete actions (loading, maintenance, firing, etc) on specific systems (Mk13 GMLS, Mk45/54 Gun, NATO Sea Sparrow, etc). Demonstration of knowledge of the tasks to be preformed is the intial step, and then the annual renewal to make sure the knowledge is retained/updated for newer procedures/system modifications.That, in and of of itself is not bad, but, with it’s proscribed forms, it was easy to “pencil whip” the paperwork for inspection and assist teams, which is the problem.

In the surface Navy, the program had been emphasized at the paperwork level, in detail by the Combat Systems Assessments. Surface Navy sailors would routinely question the need for such “extra” work, as there were systems such as PQS in place for the ordnance systems, complete with plenty of safety knowledge requirements, but they did it, albeit most times grudgingly.

Then, an incident in the surface Navy brought the EHPQCP right to the forefront: USS IOWA (BB-61) on 19 April 1989. The loss of 47 lives in that explosion resulted in a Court of Inquiry, in which a co-worker of mine had to sit at “the long end of the green table with no coffee cup and no ashtray” and answer some uncomfortable questions. He, a few months before, had been the inspector that gave a passing grade to the EHPQCP after scanning a small portion of the many thick notebooks of records aboard the ship. Needless to say, this brought a whole new level of attention to not only the forms, but the process in place aboard any vessel in the surface Navy. The inter-community friction over this program was that aviators caused the problem, but it was the surface ships who were chastised for not keeping up the extra paperwork, while the air Navy thumbed their nose at it. Even the Naval Air Forces, Atlantic Ordnance Handling Officer thought we were way too obsessive with the program (and that was in the early 90s, after IOWA’s accident)

As a result of the carriers I had to visit in the wake of the SARATOGA incident, I can say many ships did not use the program.

There’s a little history involved in several other parts of my Naval experience, that also was an area we would inspect.

The saga will continue….