How To Defeat Japan's Best Radar Defense System? Use A Fishing Boat
from the ouch dept
A brand new Japanese warship that apparently has the country's latest and greatest radar system, was unable to spot a fishing boat in its path, leading to a collision and two missing fishermen. This is raising all sorts of questions about the quality of the radar system, but some are saying that the collision was really due to human error and that the radar system is designed more to watch out for missiles in the air, rather than ships below it. That's a fair enough response, but does point out that vulnerabilities come from all directions -- and you can make the best system in the world, but if it's looking for the wrong thing, it won't stop something bad from getting through. It does seem rather ironic to set this ship up to be the best in the world at spotting threats from the sky -- and forget to include a decent system to find threats right next to it in the sea.
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Filed Under: fishing boat, japan, radar, warship
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Hmm
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Why Does The US Navy Still Have Lookouts?
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From Japan with Love
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Excellent
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High Tech Ship
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SPY-1 don't work dat way
1. How far out to sea did this happen? I'm not sure what procedures the Japanese follow for radar their restrictions, but in most areas, that radar (SPY) cannot be radiated in vicinity of land/populated areas.
2. The radar is NOT designed to "see" close aboard. There ARE several systems onboard to designed specifically to deal with close in contacts.
I will say that the Japanese are excellent mariners and shiphandlers, but they may be learning now that with all the automation Aegis is capable of, there is no (repeat: NO) substitute for trained and experienced MK-1 eyeballs using ALL available sensors (visual, radar, etc) to drive the ship around.
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Both of them, really. Firstly, a warship is supposed to have highly trained people on every post. They shouldn't be hitting anything. Secondly, warships are really, really big, even the little ones. How didn't the fishing boat spot them?
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The Abrams tank is the best tank around but it has blind spots close up. The Titanic was an unsinkable ship, except for one small (or big, depending on how you look at it) problem.
Shit happens.
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Re:
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At least..
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Worst RADAR Ever!!!
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A someone who spent a few years at sea
Also, good point about the whales Gene C.
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Just Like Beggar's Canyon Back Home
~j
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Of course, since they just ran the boat over, guess there isn't much difference.
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Technology doesn't always fail. Humans frequently do.
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