The Aegis was originally developed during the cold war to counter Russian threats and has been upgraded numerous times. There have been incidents in the Middle East such as the two patrol craft that wandered into Iranian territorial water and got themselves captured. See the article that I linked to in my earlier post - these crews are going on four hours sleep. I couldn't do it.
(Warships don't have portholes btw.)
According to a navy friend of mine, since January of this year the US fleet ships in Asian waters were ordered to go black, meaning that 24/7 their "invisibility" defensive scramble electronics are now active until further notice. Other ships in the same heavily trafficked waters can't detect US ships as a result. So a bunch of non-US ships are running virtually blind in terms of where our Naval vessels are located.
He also said the standard monitoring protocols haven't been increased to offset this, mainly because when we monitor for other traffic, we can then be located (ping-back).
In high-traffic sea lanes, that's a recipe for disaster.
While I agree with you Doc, I can not help feel that it is going to weaken the US military. Now The White House has directed Defense Department to stop allowing transgender people to join the military. It makes me wonder, if women will be stop from joining the military too. While North Korea is very big issue, I feel the military is spread thin because of too many involvements around the world in other countries.
Just did a whole post on the transgender ban. He just signed it, and the ACLU is taking him to court over it.
Kim K. brings up a good point, wondering who's next on the military chopping block. This does nothing but weaken our military, and all to bring back a time period that's not possible anymore. Taking active personnel out and refusing to sign up able volunteers isn't going to do the Naval ships any good. Only lessens personnel watching the ships.
While there are other good points as to why this happens, given our current technology, it wouldn't surprise me if the next war was done by cyber means. This could do it.
Doc, ran across this explanation on how the whole "going dark" aspect makes collisions with US warships more likely. I had not heard that before.
I read in that article saying that both accidents occurred during nighttime. That is starting to make sense. It's hard for a commercial ship to avoid a warship if they can't even see it and doesn't show up in the AIS system either. It's looking like the US Navy simply screwed up and did not account for this with extra scanning methods.