{"id":28061,"date":"2019-01-14T22:53:31","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T22:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2019\/01\/14\/the-ghost-in-the-fitzs-machine-why-a-doomed-warships-crew-never-saw-the-vessel-that-hit-it\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T19:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T19:32:07","slug":"the-ghost-in-the-fitzs-machine-why-a-doomed-warships-crew-never-saw-the-vessel-that-hit-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2019\/01\/14\/the-ghost-in-the-fitzs-machine-why-a-doomed-warships-crew-never-saw-the-vessel-that-hit-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The ghost in the Fitz\u2019s machine: why a doomed warship\u2019s crew never saw the vessel that hit it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Navy Rear Adm. Brian Fort<\/a> stepped aboard the guided-missile destroyer Fitzgerald<\/a> in the aftermath of the 2017 collision with a commercial cargo ship, everything was off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any warship would seem a little off after a catastrophe that claimed the lives of seven sailors, but this was different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t look right, smell right, sound right,\u201d Fort said during a hearing last year for a Fitzgerald officer facing court-martial in the wake of the June 17, 2017, disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After gazing at the gash in the hull through which gushed the seawater that drowned the Fitz\u2019s dead, Fort and his team of investigators walked to the destroyer\u2019s electronic nerve center, the combat information center everyone calls the \u201cCIC.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It hadn\u2019t taken a direct hit from the bow of the Philippine-flagged ACX Crystal<\/a>, but it was trashed nonetheless and smelled like urine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He found a pee bottle that had tipped and spilled behind a large-screen display. Fort\u2019s eyes started to take over for his nose, and he took it all in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was debris everywhere,\u201d Fort said under oath. \u201cFood debris, food waste, uneaten food, half-eaten food, personal gear in the form of books, workout gear, workout bands, kettlebells, weightlifting equipment, the status boards had graffiti on them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d never seen a CIC like that in my entire time in the Navy,\u201d the surface warfare officer of more than 25 years recollected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more Fort looked, the worse it got: broken sensors that were reported for repairs but never fixed, schedule changes ordered by superiors high above the Fitz\u2019s command triad that delayed crucial maintenance, taped-up radar controls and, worse, sailors who had no idea how to use the technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About six weeks after the Fitzgerald collision, Fort signed and submitted his damning internal report to superiors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Designed in part to help federal attorneys defend against a wave of lawsuits from the owners and operators of the ACX Crystal and, indirectly, the families of the Fitz\u2019s injured, traumatized and drowned, the Navy sought to keep Fort\u2019s findings from the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Navy Times obtained a copy of it and began stitching his details to a growing body of court testimony by the crew of the Fitzgerald to reveal just how much worse conditions were on the destroyer than the Navy previously shared with the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What it all reveals is that a mostly green crew joined the Fitzgerald shortly after the warship left dry dock maintenance in early 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They learned to make do with broken equipment, a lack of communication between departments and, especially in the CIC, a world in which failure had become \u201csystemic across the board,\u201d as Fort put it at last year\u2019s hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or as his secret report described it, a lack of training in basic seamanship fatally combined with material deficiencies to create \u201ca culture of complacency, of accepting problems, and a dismissal of the use of some of the most important, modern equipment used for safe navigation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crew were simply “living in a world that had been accepted,\u201d Fort said.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/atype-video-jwplayer>
Darrold talks about receiving the news that his son was killed, and the aftermath that followed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Mission over maintenance<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CIC runs a warship\u2019s weapons systems and provides an extra set of electronic eyes for the bridge team, but that never happened throughout the night of the collision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Fort\u2019s report detailed a team of bridge watchstanders that were growing increasingly perplexed, then panicked<\/a>, while trying to track multiple vessels inside a bustling maritime superhighway, CIC sailors told his investigators that it was a quiet night down there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort found the CIC had \u201czero communication\u201d with the bridge team before the Crystal loomed seemingly out of nowhere to spear into the Fitz\u2019s starboard hull.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of Fort\u2019s report explores how a state-of-the-art warship outfitted with expensive electronic sensors could go blind, but a key finding soon emerged: It wasn\u2019t merely that they didn\u2019t know they were blind. They didn\u2019t know how to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the human waste and garbage collecting in the CIC, Fort\u2019s investigators found CIC watchstanders who \u201cdemonstrated a lack of knowledge about radar functionality and material condition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the Fitz\u2019s SPS-67<\/a> radar was listed as operational on the eve of the collision, it had actually fallen into a \u201cdegraded status,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CIC watchstanders couldn\u2019t use their remote control to guide it because it also was broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A dead radar control button had been \u201ccovered by a piece of masking tape,\u201d but Fort\u2019s investigators couldn\u2019t locate a casualty report chronicling the malfunction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A work order had been generated to order, install and test new control buttons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was 194 days before the collision, Fort found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that long delay was far from unusual on board the Fitz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort\u2019s investigators interviewed a watchstander who told them that a SPA-25G radar console had been broken for at least four months before the collision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there was the ship\u2019s Voyage Management System.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Used to navigate the destroyer without relying on paper charts, the Fitz\u2019s VMS was so freighted with problems that technicians cannibalized the set in the skipper\u2019s quarters for parts to keep the system running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Fitz\u2019s VMS had started acting up while the destroyer was in dry dock in 2016 and early 2017, Fort found. The bridge unit would lock up and take several minutes to reset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technicians were supposed to peek at it in April of 2017 but \u201cthat visit was cancelled due to FTZ\u2019s schedule change requiring the ship to be underway,\u201d Fort wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A \u201cBright Bridge\u201d console also was listed as operational before the ACX Crystal accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But like the VMS, one console had been cannibalized for parts to fix another console and no casualty report was found for any of that, the report states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A work order repair number, however, had been generated \u2014 135 days before the collision, Fort found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The inside of the destroyer Fitzgerald after it collided with a merchant vessel on June 17, 2017, killing seven sailors. (U.S. Navy photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018ghost in the machine\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the night of the ACX Crystal disaster, the SPS-67 radar seemed plagued with gremlins but no one was available to fix it and sailors didn\u2019t talk to each other about the electronic \u201cclutter\u201d they watched on the display, according to Fort\u2019s report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond talking to each other inside the CIC or conversing with the bridge during their watch, the sailors there also had \u201czero communication\u201d with other onboard departments for vital tasks like turning the radar, Fort later testified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMost of these folks we interviewed were not even aware that the radar-set controller was out of commission or what functionality they did or did not have, or what ability they had to even control it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the crew could\u2019ve turned to an auto-track feature on the SPS-67 radar, they didn\u2019t use it \u201cbecause they \u2018don\u2019t want to mess it up,\u2019\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was generally accepted that using the auto-tracking feature caused problems with the radar, and so it was just turned off,\u201d Fort added during the hearing. \u201cAnd folks accepted that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why a CIC petty officer worked in manual mode, punching a button 1,000 times in an hour just to track four of five vessels, when the radar could\u2019ve auto-tracked 50 contacts for him, Fort testified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a lot of activity, but it\u2019s not really what I would call vigilant activity,\u201d Fort said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort\u2019s report found that other sailors barely fathomed the rudiments of radar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne watchstander said he has routinely seen the radars poorly adjusted to the point that visible targets would not show up,\u201d Fort wrote. \u201cOne watchstander stated seeing other watchstanders seek out (a supervisor) for help on radar tuning, and receiving the response, \u2018do it how you like it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Electronic technicians said users reported problems that really were just operator errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnother watchstander called to complain that the radar was not acquiring targets, when in fact the watchstander did not know what actions were necessary to acquire a target,\u201d Fort wrote. \u201cWatchstanders will use the rain adjustment features when there is no rain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At last year\u2019s hearing, Lt. Cmdr. Ritarsha Furqan, a former Fitz officer who left the ship before the collision, attributed some bugs in the SPS-67\u2019s auto-tracking system to \u201ca ghost in the machine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she said when the Fitzgerald got back to port in Japan, technicians couldn\u2019t replicate the problems and it was never fixed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Shorting out <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this matters because how the Fitzgerald was described in public reports often doesn\u2019t tell the full story, or at least a fuller version that emerges in the Fort report and the accumulating testimony of investigators and former sailors on the warship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, Navy leaders have publicly stated that the crew was not using the ship\u2019s Automatic Identification System<\/a>, or AIS, to gather information on nearby vessel traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Fort determined that Fitz\u2019s sailors avoided the AIS laptop because it constantly crashed. It couldn\u2019t be moved because jostling a cable would short out the array.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort found it tucked behind other consoles in the CIC. Onboard technicians had told their shipmates not to budge the laptop \u201cbecause the cables were sensitive,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furqan testified that when she served on the Fitz, the AIS had been loaned to the warship so they were limited in the upgrades and maintenance they could perform on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDuring my tenure, the laptop failed at least once so we had to\u2026wait for a new laptop to be mailed out to us,\u201d Furqan said. \u201cIt would periodically lock up, and we would be unable to unlock it even with the correct password, so we\u2019d have to reboot the entire laptop and try again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A division has developed within the Navy over what all this means when it comes to finding fault and dispensing justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort\u2019s testimony and his report often seem to be grappling with how to parse out the blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When should shipboard leaders be held to account for failures? How much can those failures be ascribed to bad superiors on board the Fitz, at the destroyer squadron and 7th Fleet, even higher up the chain of command?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are real world consequences for these distinctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lt. Natalie Combs<\/a>, the senior CIC officer during the collision, \u201cwas derelict in the performance of her duties,\u201d Fort\u2019s report states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Cmdr. Anthony Johnson, the investigating officer presiding over her Article 32 hearing, heard the same evidence and recommended that she skip court-martial proceedings and go instead to a board of inquiry to determine if she should remain on duty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson was overruled by Adm. James Caldwell<\/a>, the Navy\u2019s Consolidated Disposition Authority in charge of meting out justice in the Fitzgerald and McCain cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her trial is slated to start Feb. 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\t