Decisions should not be made lightly. Otherwise, serious incidents may occur, such as the one that affected the American replenishment tanker USNS Big Horn in the north of Arabian sea in September 2024.
The boat, of nothing more and nothing less than 206 meters in lengthran aground after decided to take a shortcut that saved 18 kilometers of travel through dangerous waters due to their shallow depth.
Now, has made public the investigation that the US Navy has carried out about the event. And one of the main conclusions of the investigations is that “The incident was avoidable.”
In that sense, the US Navy points out that not enough attention was paid by the crew, since “Music played on the bridge as sailors ignored important navigational warnings.”
In fact, the research highlights that “during the journey, the ship’s system activated security alarms. These were silenced, but they presented visual signals; “There is no indication that they were activated.”
The accident was due to “a series of wrong decisions”
Based on the aforementioned facts, the US Navy report states that The accident took place as a result of “a series of erroneous decisionsfailure to comply with procedures, application of open sea navigation techniques to restricted waters and lack of adequate risk calculation.”
The shortcut taken by the captain of the replenishment tanker USNS Big Horn It has ended up being very expensive for the US Navy: 20.4 million dollars (about 17.7 million euros, at the current exchange rate).
Specifically, the invoice breakdown that the US Navy has had to face is the following:
- Trailer: 7.5 million dollars.
- Services in Oman: 8.6 million dollars.
- fuel discharge: 1.9 million dollars.
- Additional expenses in the US: 2.4 million dollars.
