- American ships are driven 'by amateurs'. From what was explained to me by someone in a foreign military that had joint exercises with American ships, most of the ship captains do very little skippering. They have a fairly short interval as ship captain, and navigation is just one of a billion other details they have to handle. People move through jobs very quickly. Most shipping captains spend their entire careers actually working a ship. Navy captains work fifty bazillion other jobs/duties and do not stay long enough in their positions to really understand them. Same applies to other personnel as well.
[ahem]
US Navy ships are driven by amateurs. There are plenty of US Military vessels that are skippered by officers that spend their entire career just doing that. That's why the Army uses Warrant Officers as Vessel Masters, so that they don't have officers with years of sea experience wasted on shore duty and stupid non vessel handling positions. The USCG, likewise, has their vessel captains predominantly be a vessel captain, even if they do stoop to using regular officers.
Yeah, unless I'm missing something, that's just stupid. Seems like there would be ZERO reason (dogmush, freak, dm1333, correct me if I'm wrong) that there would be an operational need to turn AIS off in a busy shipping lane during a normal transit.
There seems to be an ongoing cultural tug of war among the US Military services as to how much to interact with civilian vessels while underway. My experience has been that it's not just AIS. US Navy Warship commanders (at least if the ship is over 500' or so) don't like to communicate on non tactical radios, or talk to Vessel Traffic Systems, or work out passing arraignments, or much of anything. It seems to be cultural from the blue water Surface Warfare* Guys. The smaller coastal patrol boats, LCS's, and LCU/LSD's I've worked with don't have this issue. Nor does the Coast Guard.
As to AIS specifically, the US Navy does not transmit (at least I've never seen them do so). There are valid reasons for not transmitting warship location and track data, ever. And the military AIS systems can receive but not transmit, so you can still use the system to help stand watch. It's up to the Vessel Master to weigh the traffic, tactical situation, and mission to decide where the greater risk lies. That's why we get the big staterooms. As far as I know there isn't (yet) a blanket policy on AIS transmission. I know the Army doesn't have one.
FWIW, when I'm OCONUS, I only transmit AIS when I'm actually IN a controlled Vessel Traffic System. And only then while I'm actually talking to the controllers. So, I'll fire it up about 5 min before the fist call in, and kill it as soon as I check out. That's my SOP even on non-tactical OCONUS transits, so that no one can keep track of when I turn it off and figure out I'm doing something interesting on any particular trip. But other skippers do other things. My watchstanders and I understand though, that when I choose to do that, it puts even more responsibility on us to be vigilant and communicate with traffic, because we aren't automatically populating on their equipment.
*and subs on the surface. Those aholes never talk to ANYONE, and try to enforce stupid separation rules with no authority. "I know I'm in a channel that's 1000yds wide, and the water is 6 feet deep outside it, but you need to leave me 2 nautical miles to your port". F Off, ya big whale, we'll pass just fine.
ETA: It's also worth mentioning that every US Navy Chief Boatswain's Mate I've ever met or worked with has been a solid professional mariner. Perhaps the Officer's of the Watch aren't listening to the Chiefs, or the Navy is having SR NCO retention issues as well, I don't know.
