When the warship Fitzgerald collided with the hulking AXC Crystal container ship off Japan on June 17, 2017, one midgrade surface warfare officer recalled being horrified \u2014 but not exactly surprised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He had commissioned into the surface fleet in the 2000s, a decade when the \u201cstruggle bus to competence\u201d was the name of the game, and SWOs were often thrown into life-or-death ship-driving realities with little to no hands-on training, a shortfall on the fundamentals that was grimly acknowledged by Big Navy brass<\/a> in the wake of the disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLooking back a decade or more to the state of surface warfare training, it was an abysmal nightmare,\u201d said the SWO, who, like other surface warfare officers interviewed for this report, requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Fitz disaster that killed seven sailors in their berthing was followed roughly two months later with the warship John S. McCain\u2019s collision with an oil tanker, which killed 10 shipmates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur chickens came home to roost, and it was bad,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople died.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t