USS Fitzgerald

USS Fitzgerald damage above waterline

The destroyer USS Fitzgerald collided with a commercial cargo vessel off the coast of Japan back in 2017.  Seven sailors died, drowned when their compartment was flooded. There was a lot of noise about the incident at the time, but now that things have had some time to shake out we might be getting a better understanding of what happened.

USS Fitzgerald patch over hole below the waterline

The Navy Times has the story, and it paints a pretty sad picture of the state of affairs in everyday shipboard operations. It's all very nice to have a ship full of fancy weapons and electronics, but all that fancy stuff needs people who know how to use it, maintain it and repair it when it goes wrong. If you aren't going provide the necessary funds to staff the ship, you may as well not buy the ship in the first place.

Same thing with Trump's wall. You can build the wall, but you are going to need a small army of people to patrol it, and paying for that army is eventually going to cost more than the wall itself. But building the wall will be a grand gesture. Maybe that's all Trump is after, getting recognition in the history books for his 'great wall'.

Via Comrade Misfit

P.S. You can measure the distance between two points on Google Maps by right clicking on your first point and then selecting 'measure distance' (imagine that) from the popup menu, and then clicking on the second point. Using this technique I was able to determine that the Fitzgerald's collision happened about 75 miles south of Tokyo.

P.P.S. If the type on this page, or any other, is too small, then CTRL+ is your friend. I have to hit it two or three times on most any page in order to make it large enough to read. I probably should put this in the banner.