Indian navy commanders congregate in a meeting to discuss the current issues of Bangladesh and how it impacts Indian maritime security.
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: this_feature_currently_requires_accessing_site_using_safari
Regime change in Bangladesh was the result of intense protest against Hasina's misrule by the students and people from all walks of life. No powerful country was involved in this student protest movement. As for BD Navy not being a cause of concern for Indian navy is your figment of imagination. Bangladesh will build a blue water navy in the future. So, your assertion that BD Navy will remain a small, weak, and with a 0 power projection capability is your personal opinion which is based on figment of your imagination.Regime change through cue in BD is a security concern particularly when it was engineered by other powerful countries. This need attention. However, BD navy was never a cause of concern for India and shall never be in future..
Regime change in Bangladesh was the result of intense protest against Hasina's misrule by the students and people from all walks of life. No powerful country was involved in this student protest movement. As for BD Navy not being a cause of concern for Indian navy is your figment of imagination. Bangladesh will build a blue water navy in the future. So, your assertion that BD Navy will remain a small, weak, and with a 0 power projection capability is your personal opinion which is based on figment of your imagination.
This is what we want from the Indians. Please do underestimate your adversaries like that to bring about humiliating defeat for Indian navy.Best of luck for it. There is a whole eco system which makes any military strong. Unless any country develops that, it can not have any system which can make any formidable enemy concern about that. India is even not much concern about Pakistani navy except its French submarines forget about BD.
I don't know what "eco system" you are talking about. 95% of all advanced signal equipment and sensors for IN are imported. IN is stronger in numbers though - but qualitatively - I have my doubts.Best of luck for it. There is a whole eco system which makes any military strong. Unless any country develops that, it can not have any system which can make any formidable enemy concern about that. India is even not much concern about Pakistani navy except its French submarines forget about BD.
How bad was it?Actually, their food was excellent. They also made really good tea, too. I drank nothing but hot milk tea my entire 5 days there because I was afraid of drinking the water (I saw their reverse osmosis units, dear god).
How do they runs things differently then the USN?15+ years old and they looked like nobody had done any maintenance in the last 5+ years. Their ROs were in such poor shape that despite having a greater fresh water production capacity than my ship by several thousand gallons, they were still on water hours.
How knowledgeable did you find the officers to be?Their engineering practices were abysmal. No undershirts, no steel-toed boots - they wore sandals - no hearing protection in their engineering spaces. No lagging (sound dampening material) in any space. No electrical safety whatsoever. No operational risk management. No concept of safety of navigation. Absolutely did not adhere to rules of the road. They more or less did not have any hard-copy written procedures for any exercise or event, at all. They had no concept of the coded fleet tactical system that US coalition forces and allies utilize (they literally made it up as they went along, and when I tried to interject and explain to them how it worked, they ignored me). When I arrived onboard they thought I was a midshipman and treated me as such. I had to be frank and explain that I was a commissioned officer and that yes, I stood officer on the deck onboard my ship and was a qualified surface warfare officer. They don't entrust their people with any responsibility until they are very senior Lieutenants (O-3s) and junior Lieutenant Commanders (O-4s). At this point in the US Navy there are literally guys commanding ships, and these guys couldn't even be trusted to handle a radio circuit.
Why do you think they're so incompetent and have such crappy operations?Well, their captain was driving the ship when it came within 50ft of the stern of a USNS replenishment ship and at any given time there were multiple officers on the bridge screaming at each other. They were generally clueless and had almost zero seamanship skills. I found their enlisted guys to be far more competent than their officers on the bridge.
1. Are you breaking any US Navy rules by telling us all this?Well, coming within 50ft of another ship at sea is never a good sign. But, afterwards, the general consensus/excuse that they came up with during their mini-debrief was "oh well, rough seas, better luck next time" not "holy ******* ****, we parted a tensioned wire cable made of braided steel under hundreds of thousands of pounds of tension". And wearing sandals during replenishment/helo ops/boat ops/in engineering spaces pretty much says it all. They legitimately didn't understand why I was wearing steel-toed flight deck boots. Things like these aren't cultural differences, they are golden exhibitions of their sheer lack of common sense and seamanship.
1 . I'm not breaking any rules in telling you this.
2 . It wasn't a wargame-type exercise. It was basically one big five-day photo op.
3 . I only have second-hand information about the Indian equivalent that came onboard my ship, but from what I understand he was impressed by the cleanliness of the ship and amazed that we had hot running water all day...
I read 'Indian Navy' and I immediately pictured a ridiculously crowded boat, with everyone living(?) in squalor. Is that at all the case?4 . Truthfully - bottom of the ocean. I would be surprised if most of their gear worked. The stuff I saw (I got a pretty extensive tour) looked like it fell straight out of the 60s and 70s and I would be genuinely flabbergasted if they got any rounds off. They could barely avoid hitting other ships in the middle of the Pacific, I doubt they'd be popping off any rounds with any amount of accuracy.
Actually, yes. Before I came onboard I was told to bring my own roll of toilet paper, if that alludes to the conditions that they live in at all. There was actually toilet paper aboard their ship. It was thinner than one-ply, if that's possible. I might as well have been wiping my * * * with my bare hand.
Awesome AMA so far. I'm former US navy as well, so I can appreciate your shock and dismay at their abysmal practices.After a particularly wet small boat ride over to their ship, I was dying to get out of my sea water-drenched uniform and into a fresh one (unfortunately, my entire bag was completely soaked to include my shirts, underwear, spare uniform, phone, camera, and my roll of toilet paper)... I walked into their "officer's head" (their are extremely, extremely hierarchical and classist, even from a military standpoint) and there was a good 2" of * * * * -water sloshing around back and forth across the deck and an obscure, probably live wire with it's end wrapped in electrical tape non-surreptitiously protruding from the wall. They have an entire "class" of civilians onboard. I still don't know what to make of them. I think they were some sort of cheap labor, but everybody onboard referred to them as slaves. As in, they used the word "slave". Anyways, the quarters those guys lived in was awful, it was basically a big open space partitioned with a sheet. They slept on a steel deck with a simple blanket and a pillow. Good times. Their enlisted guys didn't have it much better. Their berthing was infested with rats (a guy from my ship swore up and down that he saw a rat that was no-* * * * the length of his arm) and another US sailor from another ship came back covered in bed-bug sores. Dude looked like he had * * * * * * * chicken pocks.
- Have you ever seen a US ship do an unrep at sea? When we pull along side and shoot the shotline across (basically a thick piece of yarn for those who don't know) there's a nice soft tennis ball affixed to the end of it so that it'll bounce of the deck and someone can go retrieve it... the Indians shot a spear. A motherfucking spear. Like, a 16" long piece of metal with a point on the end....
2. Biggest priority was showering. I hadn't showered properly in almost 5 days, and all of my uniforms reeked of seawater.
3. I wouldn't dare try and assume the deck like that. Even on a US ship that would be extremely, extremely out of line. On a foreign Navy ship? ** it, I can swim... Honestly though, when they passed under (50 feet from) the replenishment ship, I was generally afraid they were going to collide. 50ft at sea is extremely, extremely close. I had to leave the bridge after that **, I just couldn't stomach it anymore.
On an arbitrary scale from 1-10, 1 being full *&*&*&*&*&*& and ten being space marine quality training and efficiency, how would you rate their sailors quality?4. And yes, I wrote up a full-debrief afterwards that was read by my CO/XO and presumably ISIC.
Why do you think this is? Are those guys not trained? Are their ships "overstaffed"? I have staff in India and find that there is a tendency to do nothing when they are unsure of something, instead of coming to me and asking for an explanation. They were great at doing the same things over and over again, but when I simply asked for an outcome and expected them to figure out HOW to do it, they were stumped.3, at best. They had some marginally competent folks, but for every one person who was half-competent, there were 4 other guys just standing around looking clueless.
NROTC Midshipman here. I didn't know CRUDES were undermanned why is that? Also, what rank are you? Ship? How do I not suck as an officer?Well, considering how undermanned US ships are at the moment (our CRUDES - crusiers/destroyers) are, on average, missing about 20-30 people give or take - destroyers more so.... I would say that it's a fault in their training, because they have more than enough people running around not doing anything of particular use. And I agree. These guys were having issues breaking/generating a fairly widely used NATO standard fleet tactical code system that we use among allied nations and I was trying (in vain) to show them how to say what they wanted to say. I literally wrote out word for word what they needed to pass over the rt circuit and they still refused to believe that I was correct...and continued passing incomprehensible gibberish over the airwaves..
Thanks for the AMA. Did you or any other USNS staff point out these obvious failings to your counterparts? Or was it all just for show and you were basically told to endure.CRUDES are very undermanned. USS LASTSHIP (flight I DDG) was at 262 when I left. The ships were built for about 315. Cruisers weren't quite as bad, but they're still lacking people as well. I'm a LTJG. Won't tell you what ship I was on, just know that it's a DDG out of Yoko. As for how to not suck as an officer? LISTEN TO YOUR CHIEF, YOUR FIRST CLASS, AND YOUR * * * *-HOT SECOND CLASSES. Always trust your people until they give you a reason not to.
Do you think the Indian navy will take any of this advice to heart? DO they actually want to improve? Or will they just brush it off or even be offended that you are insulting their capabilities?Oh, the USNS released a full sitrep (situation report) afterwards. And I absolutely told my chain of command about all of this stuff. There is a very specific process that we go through upon returning from any foreign Navy ship. Basically, we sit down and chronicle our entire experience.
Were there sensitive areas onboard the Indian ship you weren't allowed to enter? And vice versa, were the Indian exchange officers allowed to see the US ships in their entirety?The latter. They pretty much wrote off every piece of advice that I humbly gave them in my time onboard.
What is your opinion about their war capability?I saw some, but not all of their fire control spaces. I saw their "ops room" - basically their version of the Combat Information Center. However, I would guarantee that I didn't see everything that there was to see. And no Ally really truly ever sees every space on a US ship. There are spaces on our ships that even 99% of the ships crew isn't allowed to see. And that's all I have to say about that.
*How much of the poor conditions do you think can be attributed to poor funding/resources as opposed to the service not giving a * * * ?Truthfully, after touring their ship extensively I would be very much surprised if the majority of their armament even successfully fired, let along hit anything.
As a sailor....I'm so sorry sir! How the * * * * did you end up with such shitty orders though? I bet a deployment on a big deck is looking mighty fine after this!90% of it was the service not giving a * * * *. Their wardroom (where the officers ate/hung out) was EXTREMELY nice, clean, well-decorated, had a fully-stocked bar with and nice oil pantings and other contemporary decor...but the rest of the ship was a complete and utter pigsty.
That's a lot of acronyms. Any help for us rookies?It's all good. I enjoyed 7th Fleet and my time on a FDNF DDG taught me a LOT. I'm not a SWO anymore (I lat transferred to IP - part of the IDC community) but I grew a lot as a person, and professionally, out in Yoko... I actually chose to go out there. I'd love to go back for shore duty, but I'd never go back to 7th Fleet for sea duty, ever.
FDNF - Forward Deployed Naval Forces - this is how we refer to the US Navy's 7th Fleet, stationed in Yokosuka, Japan, because they are permanently forward deployed outside of the US.
DDG - The hull code for the kind of ship I was on - an Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer.
SWO - Surface Warfare Officer - what I used to be.
How did the Indian officers visiting U.S. ships react?IP - Information Professional - what I am now (basically network security/networking management).
How good was the curry?From what I remember, they sent a Chief Petty Officer (E-7) equivalent over to our ship, an engineering type. From what everybody back on my ship told me (after I got back, of course), they guy walked through our ship and engineering spaces and was amazed at how clean everything was and, ironically, that we had hot running water all day.
How did you wind up being on board the ship? How were you rescued?Pretty much all of their food was really good, but then again, I'm a big fan of Indian cuisine. They were all actually pretty surprised that I readily ate whatever they put in front of me. I ate the * * * * out of whatever they served my entire time there.
Holy crap, that was their FLAGSHIP?Well, I wasn't stranded or anything, so there wasn't a "rescue" per se. Basically, whenever the US does any sort of multi-naval exercise with other nations, it is pretty common that we exchange a few people from each ship as sort of a naval-cultural exchange. In this case, I was sent from a US Navy destroyer based out of Japan to the INS Delhi - the Indian Navy's flagship as part of an exercise that took place last March. As for how I got there, we did a fairly massive passenger exchange that consisted of about 5-6 ships pulling up in basically a big circle within about 500 yards of one another and then we all dropped our small boats in the water, exchanges passengers, and that was that. It was a particularly choppy day at sea and most of us were sufficiently soaked.
I know nada about the Indian navy, but I thought their armed forces were pretty professional. Can you prove your identity?They had a 2-star admiral embarked...lol.
The ship generally smelled "old". I dunno if you have every been on a ship - namely a warship - before, but this one smelled like it was * * * * * * * from the inside out. Rust, decaying paint, dirty spaces, mechanical fumes...it generally smelled musty, I guess is the best way to describe it. Imagine if you farted in a vacuum and then immediately sealed the door, and then you opened said door 10 years later...that's what their ship smelled like pretty consistently.
Nothing BD can do to keep up with the Indian Navy, eastern command alone has more than enough firepower to obliterate the whole country.
No hubris, it is the truth.
Not just one smelly ship, we have a whole fleet of them, including smelly SSBNs SSNs and smelly aircraft carriers.
Just pointing out the power disparity.If Indian Navy WANTED TO obliterate Bangladesh on instruction of their govt. they'd have done it already. That is a truth as well.
What does that tell you ?? đ
Maybe not worth it.
This is not DCS World for gamers, this is reality.