photodog
Lord High Commander of Upper Broughton and Gunthor
What on earth has that got to do with it? The ships are staggeringly expensive. I'd have thought it worth a few kroner, and a little care, to teach the crew how they work.
The Norwegian ships were built in Spain by Navantia and cost about 1/2 billion usd each.
Talk of “stealth mode” is really a misnomer... in reality these ships have a lower RCS but are not actively stealthy... so they are still visible on radar they just look a bit smaller...
What these guys don’t do, is emit ANY radio signals... and this is more commmonly known as “Full EMCON”... and navies have been operating under those conditions since radios were invented...
And whilst this may mean that a ship can’t see anything over the horizon, it’s not the case that pilotage should be effected by this in good visibility, or even at night... they should have good visual watchkeeping via the mark 1, and also have excellent IRST systems which are actually their primary eyes most of the time..
These are very manoeuvrable ships, and have well manned bridges, and visual pilotage is hardly a new thing... so this accident really has very little to do with the ship operating under EMCON, and more with just normal stupidity by the watch team... and that’s hardly a new thing, Having been the cause of numerous accidents in particular by the US navy, the Canadians had a collision with HMCS Kootenay in 89 off the west coast in thick fog, and in the case of the RN, HMS Nottingham’s grounding as well...
And they really need to operate in these conditions... if they operate/ train whilst emitting, then they tell the Russians about their training, and that is the last thing we want them to know... the Norwegian navy is on the front line with the Russians, and revealing operational practices to them would be the height of stupidity.
It’s a shame, this frigate has had an interesting career since commissioning, and her loss diminishes the Norwegians naval combat capacity by 20%...
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