Learning lessons from the loss of the Norwegian frigate Helge Ingstad | Hacker News Reader

Learning lessons from the loss of the Norwegian frigate Helge Ingstad

navylookout.com

86 pointsilamont67 comments

>Some hasty judgements were made by those speculating about the event, with some suggesting the accident “must have been the fault of the tanker crew as a highly trained naval personnel on board a modern warship with sophisticated sensors would be unlikely to make such a mistake.”

That certainly wasn't the general opinion in Norway at the time. Everyone blamed the frigate crew from the start.

Yeah, there was a recording published quite soon after the incident, of the conversation between the seemingly older and experienced tanker captain (speaking in a typical western coastal dialect as if he was born on a boat), and the seemingly quite young naval officer (who sounds like he's from the middle of Oslo), which I'm sure shaped opinion quite strongly:

https://youtu.be/NYqGxbKF0AI?feature=shared&t=110

And most people know that captains of civilian vessels have good navigational and maritime education and have worked their way up, especially on big ships like tankers, while the navy is full of 20 years old cowboys.

Commercial shipping has its fair share of cowboys, too.

That transcript is wild!

Tanker announces itself and calls out danger repeatedly the whole way into the collision, announces it has hit the warship and then minutes later after announcing it's lost power the warship further describes the situation "we've hit an unknown object".

Complete lack of situational awareness on the bridge.

Well, the navy has been trying to make Navantia take the blame for quite a while.

> confusion and internal communication problems limited damage the control effort

It is hilarious to me that the sentence blaming communication issues is so grammatically incorrect as to be incomprehensible.

The report link in TFA isn't working, I think this is the relevant report but it does not actually contain that sentence.

https://msiu.gov.mt/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/PDF-Safety_In...

So I wonder what the source for that line is.

Think it a silly gramatical error and should read:

> confusion and internal communication problems limited the damage control effort

That is the only reading consistent with the rest of the article. But by itself the sentence is just as close to the opposite meaning.

In several similar incidents, it was clear that the, or at least a major, cause of the accidents, was that the officers on watch had been forced to work overtime and deprived of sleep to the point of cognitive impairment.

How many hours had the officer on watch in this case worked that week? How many hours of sleep did he have?

And why is no one except me asking those questions?

> Lessons

> It would be wrong to entirely blame the inexperienced OOW and poor performance of the bridge team for the incident, the investigation showed there were management failures that extended to the highest levels of the Navy. The pressure caused by the operational tempo, something the RN and USN would recognise, resulted in inadequate training time and personnel lacking sufficient experience in relation to their responsibilities.

Sounds like other people have asked. And the lack of time for sleep is only one aspect of the answer.

I read that paragraph, but my reading of it was different from yours. As far as I can see, it only discusses training time and experience. No mention of time for sleep.

Though yes, I do give it credit for going at least a little of the way - not far enough, but a little - in pushing back on the 'human error' scapegoating, in favor of asking questions about procedures and policies.

Point. I read the sleep deprivation meaning into the phrase "pressure caused by the operational tempo, something the RN and USN would recognise" - because I'm somewhat familiar with the subject.

Try a search on "naval officer sleep deprivation", and notice just how many military, government, and adjacent sites have been talking about that specific problem. (For me, its role in accidents and collisions pops up in the 2nd sentence of Google's AI overview.)

This is Norway. Nobody is forced to work to the point of sleep deprivation, doubly so in the public sector.

Most likely answer, based on [1] is that this was investigated and not a contributing factor. I infer this from thinking that investigators know for sure that the operational awareness of the watch can be impacted by watch schedules.

Training for the test versus training for operational deployment.

[1] Safety Investigations by Other Countries - https://msiu.gov.mt/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/PDF-Safety_In...

The Norwegian Defence Ministry did not cover itself in glory by suing the classification society DNV for $1.7Bn in damages but was forced to drop the case when the investigation showed the ship ultimately sank due to the failure to close internal doors.

Ouch.

> There was a reliance on visual cues for too long and ironically the accident would probably have never happened if the visibility had been poor.

Ironic indeed.

The incident reconstruction video a bit further down the article is well done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXUf6B2wLtw

> Despite the very heavy investment in warship survivability measures, this makes one wonder just how little damage modern combatants can sustain without being immediately crippled.

The essence of the article.

Makes one thing just how effective simple ramming could be. Not to even talk about explosives... Take a basic steel boat. Fill with say styrox, mount large engines and remote controls. Just drive it at full speed to warship.

You could mass produce something like that for less than 100k from stock standard parts.

I suspect the logistics of having such a ship close enough to the conflict at the right time would be the biggest challenge. You wouldn't want to drag them around with you on larger ships. I think you're right though, there's probably an appropriate balance of range, size and location where it makes a lot of sense, especially during wartime where it's harder to spin up complex weapon pipelines and simple stuff can be churned out faster.

I think it might work in coastal areas. You could transport them to suitable locations on very basic trailer. Or just on board of a truck with simple crane lift.

In general such things would only travel relatively short distances, be relatively simple to conceal and probably relatively easy to have not too big radar cross section.

You’ve mostly described big part of the Iranian naval strategy. Small, fast attack boats that can Zerg-rush larger vessels.

The drone aspect, however, is not in play I don’t believe.

Japan used explosive motorboats during World War 2, building thousands. They were not as effective as planes, I'd guess due to difficulties in evading defensive fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinyo_(suicide_motorboat)

I'd imagine a larger boat would be even easier to sink.

If you do not need the internal volume you could fill it with something which even with hole would still float. I think you could find some reasonably buoyant material that could take some beating. And on other side I think there might have been changes in ship construction and armaments which might still make this approach valid for a while.

Compare and contrast to the recent collision of Chinese combat ships around the Philippines - much more severe damage, much less severe outcome.

Someone needs to take a very hard look at this.

It's more illustrative of the state of readiness of the ship and crew than construction or crew quality or anything else.

Furthermore, just plowing head on into something is way more survivable for a ship than a side swipe. I would say it actually took less damage, albeit more dramatically visible above the waterline.

If you are making this comparison to build quality, I think there are some large problems in your logic.

The Chinese combat ships were at a much higher level of combat readiness, and hence a lot more crew who knew what they were actively doing and had their stations prepared accordingly.

The Norwegian vessel had most of her crew asleep and we're navigating in friendly waters.

> ... already inadequate bilge pump system which failed to remove any water from the ship. Many hatches and doors that would maintain watertight integrity were left open, essentially to facilitate movement of personnel and portable pumps which proved ineffective.

And the article goes on to say that the ship's watertight doors and hatches would have save her from sinking, if the crew had bothered to close those on their way out.

If you are miserably incompetent at the very basics of both design and operation, then "investing" in more advanced stuff is just a cool-sounding waste of money.

I would expect a war ship to not even have doors between compartments - only move between compartments at the end of shift, by climbing stairs above the section wall and descend on the other side.

The deepest compartments (below the waterline) are often like this. It is not always possible for taller equipment spaces (engineering, magazines) in small ships. Crew berthing is often below the waterline and accessed via deck hatches as you say, but you do end up with hard choices when the space is flooding and people are still unaccounted for. Hope you can stabilize the ship or run it aground before it sinks, or 100% guarantee that some crew will drown?

Above the waterline, it is common to have “loops” of passageways for movement of equipment and people (including casualties). Firemain stations will be spaced along such a loop because they are used to both fight nearby fires and dewater the compartments below.

Look at the damage that the tanker did in terms of hole size and compartments breaches. It's on the order of a hit from an anti-ship missile.

The frigate was in a peacetime "basically in my home harbor" configuration so it's not like the ship was all buttoned up in preparation to take battle damage nor was the crew on any sort of alert.

Had they been in a more "normal for situations where you might get shot at" state of alertness they wouldn't have blundered into hitting a tanker and if they did it wouldn't have sunk them.

There's a reason these accidents happen in friendly waters and not the area of the world where you have both oil tankers and unfriendly forces.

Notably, however, enemy navies love to surprise their opponents like this. So it’s a pretty good indicator of what would happen if you caught a frigate like this off guard (or it hit a mine).

Yes, and blue water navy advocates have been wilfully ignorant to this for at least a decade now.

In this instance, the excuses given are always:

* the small number on watch did not provide enough people to effectively commence damage control,

* the poorly trained crew did not close bulkheads as they evacuated from berths,

* the design did not have sufficient redundancy.

This ignores that all navies now:

* run lean crews and ultra-lean watches, relying on automation,

* training standards are dropping everywhere due to cost, and far fewer seafarers enter naval service with prior experience,

* ships are becoming more automated and cost-sensitive, so new frigates like the Type 26 (that will replace the Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates) or the upcoming US DDG(X)-class are likely to have significantly reduced redundancies and damage-control capacity, given tonnage is increasing by 40+% but crews are shrinking.

I'm by no means a military expert, but with modern missiles is it really reasonable to take a hit and continue operation? It's a valid strategy to invest in defenses to prevent a hit from landing rather than survivability if one does.

With good damage control a modern missile hit may not even mission kill you if you get somewhat lucky. A single hit shouldn't sink you unless you suck at damage control.

How do all the people involved, IRL, cope with the reputational impact of being part of such an event? Do people change name, move, cut off ties with their past etc? Or never tire of telling the story?

Edit to add: I was wondering about the emotional angle as well as the career angle.

For example there is the The Mizuho Securities "Fat-Finger" Error in 2025 that cost a Japanese bank $340M. According to management anecdotes the employee was kept by the bank and the bank chief said that they will never find a more careful and diligent employee in the future. However, quick ask of an AI says that the anecdote ending is probably a urban myth told to demonstrate a management principle, so we don't know what happened to the employee nor how they feel.

Mostly they put full blame on the trainee they put on overtime guard duty and called it a day. https://www.nrk.no/vestland/vaktsjefen-pa-_helge-ingstad_-do...

Navy's, governments, companies, people in general - at least the behaviour is consistent.

Well, reading the both articles, the OOW was the proximal cause of this collision, so I think his punishment is quite light.

The AIBN report seems robust, although not acknowledging that the brass are the distal cause of collisions like this.

If you look at the article, they do not use his name. Even after there is a final judgment against him. He only got 60 days of probationary prison, while I personally found it weird he was the only one that got punished. I'm sure the punishment could be a lot worse.

On the name side, the names of the people involved where sparingly if at all mentioned in the press. The did use the names of ministers and top military and navy officers of course. But not the crew. I'm sure their peers knew who they where, and that some careers got hurt. But if you left the navy and did something else, it probably wouldn't follow you though.

I think it's a little bit perverse to pile a lot of punishment on the OOW when it seems pretty clear that it's a training and experience problem, combined with years of efforts to cut crew sizes.

The ship is lean crewed and relies on automation. When that fails, the lack of slack in the system - too few people responsible for too much, suddenly, in a situation they've never been in before - the cliff is much worse.

> The ship is lean crewed and relies on automation.

That is true in general and may be a reason for the lacklustre damage control efforts, but not on the bridge.

Commercial vessels of any size usually have a bridge watch of two (OOW and lookout) to three (if a helmsman is needed). 7 is on the high-end for peacetime transits for a destroyer in friendly waters. 5 would be normal (OOW, quartermaster, helmsman and two lookouts). Only below that could be considered lean and the ship could be safely commanded with a watch of 2-3.

The fact is that the watch and especially the OOW were negligent, in a manner you would not expect from a junior sea scout.

From "7 personnel were standing on watch on the bridge, including the OOW, an officer and a rating under training and 4 other ratings." and "The OOW and trainee officer discussed the floodlights but believed they were ashore and stationary." it can be inferred that the OOW (who was punished) was not a trainee, but a full-fledged officer.

Generally it would be career-ending for a naval officer (both OOW and captain), but it really is a systemic problem present in a lot of other navies. Seamanship is simply neglected because of the cost (both in time and money) of proper training.

The article mentions the collision would likely have never happened in poor visibility, because the OOW would have kept watch on radar (which they should be doing in all weather conditions, anyway) and would have been a lot slower over ground.

That's because a lot of young (post-PC/smartphone era) sailors hold much more confidence in electronic nav tools than their own abilities. The OOW was most likely accustomed to relying on AIS (which they had turned off for tactical reasons).

> The OOW and trainee officer discussed the floodlights but believed they were ashore and stationary. Confirmation bias and lack of experience led the OOW to keep thinking this was the case until too late. Inexplicably there was only brief use of navigational radar and AIS to check the situation and they interpreted the tanker as a stationary object alongside at the terminal.

The simplest check could have resolved this. If the lights maintained a constant bearing as the warship made way, it would have been obvious (unless heading straight for or away) that it was another vessel. Watchkeeping 101.

It's an issue we see again and again at sea. Militaries and corporates alike aren't willing to put in the time to make seafarers (which takes years) and relies instead on electronic aides, which are excellent and work 90+, 95+ percent of the time. When they don't, though....

Obviously I know nothing about navigation - but is relying on AIS a good idea, I was surprised the other week to observe quite a large vessel in the Firth of Forth that looked unusual so I checked an app that uses AIS and it didn't show it. However, what it did show that it was surrounded by three tugs - which I hadn't noticed at first. I concluded that it was being towed by the tugs and wasn't powered up (or whatever the nautical term is) and therefore didn't show in AIS? No idea if that is correct or not.

It's not so much a matter of relying on AIS (which is never sufficient by itself), but the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (IRPCS or Colregs) require every vessel maintain a proper lookout (Rule 5) and it must be done using all available means, including sight, hearing, radar, GPS, and other electronic aids like AIS.

This is the most fundamental requirement for safe navigation and it is table stakes for everyone on the bridge, OOW or not.

So AIS is not enough, and sure enough the tanker identified the frigate even though it was not broadcasting AIS and even communicated the need for the frigate to manoeuvrer, as the tanker was constrained in its ability to do so.

> However, what it did show that it was surrounded by three tugs - which I hadn't noticed at first. I concluded that it was being towed by the tugs and wasn't powered up (or whatever the nautical term is) and therefore didn't show in AIS? No idea if that is correct or not.

AIS is a broadcast system using VHF transceivers, and services like MarineTraffic rely on shore stations or satellites (S-AIS) which receive AIS signals and forward them via the internet where the central server then pushes them out to the app/web users.

This means that depending on local VHF conditions, you may not see all vessels broadcasting AIS via online services, even though any vessel close enough to be a collision risk would have no issue receiving the signal.

In this specific case, had the OOW consulted either their eyes and compass (ie taken repeated bearings to the lights which would have shown they weren't static/ashore) or radar (which did clearly show the tanker on a collision course - constant bearing, decreasing range), the collision would have been avoided. AIS should have been used only to augment radar and visual data only (ie to identify the vessel, class, draught, etc). Even without broadcasting on AIS, they were receiving this data from other vessels like the tanker.

In addition, had the warship been broadcasting on AIS, VTS (maritime analogue to air traffic control) would most likely have identified the collision risk and also directed the frigate to manoeuvre to avoid the collision. As it was, without broadcasting AIS, the frigate was invisible to VTS (in particular as the VTS had failed to manually plot the warship's route when the warship called in to enter their area of responsibility).

Awesome answer, thanks!

The watch crew should have realized the lights had constant bearing decreasing distance, the key visual marker of a collision course. Distance can be hard to tell at night, but I'd expect professional seafarers to know this basic skill.

Yea, even I know that and I’ve only been in a boat a couple of times in my life.

Come to think of it, they said they thought the lights were on shore. Shore lights wouldn't have a constant bearing.

> If the lights maintained a constant bearing as the warship made way, it would have been obvious

I'm not a mariner, but I learned this at some point in time, and I must say it also comes in handy on the road.

The ships captain / commanding officer was kicked up in the system.

The officer of the watch, as is military tradition, received all the blame. But it should be said that the commanding officer was ready to take all the blame...but the court eventually found the officer of the watch to be responsible. And that is correct. When you work/serve in the military, at least in Norway, the hierarchy of responsibility is very strict. Even the lowest ranking officer can end up being responsible for a billion dollar vessel / station / etc.

The names of these people are not made public, and it is fairly simple to write your resume in such a way that it will obfuscate your role. The only people that know, are those intimately familiar with the case (from the inside), or know someone that does.

When I worked in the military, albeit in a civilian role, one of my co-workers had been a sailor on this ship around the time this happened.

In the modern US military, it’s a truism that if anything seriously goes wrong on a ship, the captain has ultimate responsibility and will be fired. (Whereas before WW2, future admirals like Nimitz ran their ships aground and were not fired.) This leads to a zero-defects mentality on the part of the leadership of a ship, which in turn explains why junior officers fail to call the CO to the bridge (or call too late) when they get into a bad situation.

> However, quick ask of an AI says that the anecdote ending is probably a urban myth told to demonstrate a management principle, so we don't know what happened to the employee nor how they feel.

Mine says there are two Rs in strawberry, but who knows your oracle of truth might be right

Traditionally, a key duty of senior NCO's has been to babysit (in effect) young naval officers, when the latter are in command of critical things. That's both to prevent expensive noob goofs, and to have a seasoned leader on hand if the "routine" situation suddenly jumps out of the young officer's limited competence zone.

Might anyone be familiar with the Norwegian Navy's traditions or practice in this regard? From the article, it sounds like the "young and relatively inexperienced" OOW was probably the most experienced (years of service at sea) person on the frigate's bridge. With two trainees under him, who he'd have needed to keep eyes on.

Can’t speak for the Norwegians but that is not how at-sea watchstanding works in, e.g., the US Navy. The OOD is the captain’s delegate in operating the ship. In peacetime steaming, there may not be another khaki (officer or chief petty officer) on watch who is qualified to stand OOD - the JOOD/JOOW is typically a trainee, and the CIC watch officer is often a non-OOD-qualified junior officer or chief petty officer. They can and should all provide support to the OOD but usually nobody is available to babysit or step in. All of the babysitting should have happened before the OOD ever got their OOD qual.

Which btw tells you what has gone wrong in many of these situations: the OOD was given a qualification they were not ready for, because not having enough OODs means the actually-qualified OODs will be standing port/starboard watch and be exhausted all the time. COs and XOs give the weak OODs quiet steaming watches they think will be easy, but a shipping channel can get busy earlier than expected and everything can go to shit really quickly.

I often wonder whether modern advanced battle systems might be more easily disabled as they have more complex and delicate sensors, etc. but this is on a different level. Not sure if any ship is designed to survive this but a total power failure disabling comms (and thus modes of restoring control) seems to be a weak point here.

As always, communication and coordination are crucial, so they should have been prepared to fall back to older comm methods (the "runners" manually carrying messages). With the steering gear still working, this might have changed the outcome of the incident.

Naval vessels carries spare hardware for all that sort of stuff and "we've taken a hit in the <pick some compartments> the comms/power/water/steam/hydraulic line is severed, run the spares, fight the fires" is a fairly standard drill.

The Norwegians badly needed more warships so we've sold them some new ones, to be built in the UK.

The approach is so different in airline business (but not sure about military).

What I learnt from this article: the Combat Management System of these Norwegian frigates must be hot garbage.

A modern CMS will automaticaly plot anything moving in the range of the ship sensors and warn of an approaching vessel. That doesn't excuse the human error obviously but you have to wonder how outdated the Norwegian navy equipment must be if that kind of thing can happen.

The Integrated Platform Management System (IPMS) on HING was state-of-the-art at the time, having been upgraded prior to the collision. The report found that the system operated as expected, but that the OOW had not been trained on its proper use and was not able to recognise the alarms.

Just like USS John S. McCain and USS Fitzgerald, until fully autonomous, the ships are only as good as their command and crews.

I mean they were hit by a bloody tanker. If they managed to miss their CMS alert for that, I stand by my point that it must be hot garbage.

Your other exemple is interesting because American CMS have notoriously bad UX by the way.

A tanker that was talking to them on VHF, telling them to manoeuvre.

If you can ignore lights increasing in intensity on a constant bearing and verbal commands via VHF, then you can ignore the radar and AIS proximity alarms (which both operated as expected).

Unless the computer is running the show, there's no way to overcome confirmation bias with beeps and flashes. I've seen it first-hand many times in training helmsmen. Sometimes in-person verbal commands are not enough, and physical control must be obtained.

It's simply a training and experience deficit. There's no substitute for time at sea or time under instruction.

No this was absolutely not an UX issue.

So finaly It isn't Navantia's fault, they fucked up.

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