{"id":51825,"date":"2019-02-12T19:41:08","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T19:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2019\/02\/12\/admiral-to-congress-think-about-the-280-plus-ships-that-didnt-have-collisions\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T23:42:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T23:42:18","slug":"admiral-to-congress-think-about-the-280-plus-ships-that-didnt-have-collisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/naval\/2019\/02\/12\/admiral-to-congress-think-about-the-280-plus-ships-that-didnt-have-collisions\/","title":{"rendered":"Admiral to Congress: Think about the 280-plus ships that didn\u2019t have collisions"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/atype-video-jwplayer>
Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, gets into an exchange over ship collisions with Maine Senator Angus King.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 In a tense exchange before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the four-star admiral who led the U.S. Navy\u2019s internal review<\/a> into two deadly collisions in 2017<\/a> told members that while two ships had tragic accidents that year, the rest of the fleet was collision-free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adm. Phil Davidson, now head of U.S. Pacific Command, was responding to a question from Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, about warnings that readiness was slipping in the fleet, as detailed last week in an investigation by ProPublica<\/a>. The report dug into the years preceding the collisions of the destroyers Fitzgerald and John S. McCain in Asia that claimed the lives of 17 sailors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

King pressed Davidson about providing Congress with specific data regarding training and certifications of sailors prior to employment by the fleet, adding that the dual tragedies were preventable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of responding to the question about providing specific data, Davidson bristled and appeared to respond to the criticisms implicit in the ProPublica article, which laid out years of reports and warnings from senior leaders about readiness. Davidson took issue with the idea that readiness issues in the fleet were kept secret, and he pointed to his testimony in 2016 that detailed funding shortfalls for readiness<\/a> accounts. Then Davidson pivoted and attempted to point to places where the Navy has been successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese two collisions were a tragedy, there is no doubt about it,\u201d Davidson said. \u201cAnd all the senior leaders of the Navy feel a tremendous amount of accountability for it. But the fact of the matter is 280-odd other ships weren\u2019t having collisions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t