Five years later: Inside the Navy’s data-driven quest to avert a future Fitzgerald or McCain collision
By Megan Eckstein
Jun 16, 09:20 AM
US Navy guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald arrves at its mother port US Naval Yokosuka Base, Kanagawa prefecture on June 17, 2017. The US and Japan launched a major search operation to find seven missing American sailors on June 17 after their navy destroyer collided with a container ship, crushing the side of the military vessel. / AFP PHOTO / Kazuhiro NOGI (Photo credit should read KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images)
For the last five years, Bud Couch has been on a quest to make the surface navy safer.
As the director of operational safety at Naval Surface Force Pacific, Couch helped generate 117 recommendations after two U.S. Navy destroyers were involved in separate fatal collisions in summer 2017. But that wasn’t enough.
He knew those recommendations would help, but they wouldn’t fundamentally change how the Navy looked at readiness and safety. So Couch set off to reframe the conversation.
“Given the billions of dollars we’ve dumped into the readiness accounts, and literally the thousands of mishap report recommendations we’ve accomplished, why aren’t we getting measurably better?” he asked in an interview with Defense News.
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2022/06/16/five-years-later-inside-the-navys-data-driven-quest-to-avert-a-future-fitzgerald-or-mccain-collision/
