Why does fault matter? Wouldn’t the carrier always have a clear path to avoid the collision? Isn’t that why we have all the radars, sensors, and human look outs?
My personal interest/concern isn't who was at fault but how Any civilian vessel was allowed to get inside the security perimeter of one of our Aircraft Carriers...
As far as fault goes its my understanding that usually the larger vessel (gross tonnage) has the right of way and then the situation (if equal vessels) would defer to whoever is tracking from the starboard (right) if they were about to cross at the same point...
How this happened is baffling and the deepest fault may lie with the failure of the screening DD (Destroyer) to not have intercepted the civilian vessel before it was able to impact the Carrier... Night shouldn't have anything to do with it given the radar, sensor arrays and night vision capabilities of both the Carrier and its accompanying Destroyer (assuming the Destroyer was actually in position to act as a screen for the Carrier).
Now all my background is simply from what I've read over the years (along with some light craft wind driven sailing), so I defer to Aloha's real life expertise on the topic... I'm just approaching the question from a laymans "common sense" perspective...
My big concern is that enemies will see this through the lense of "why don't we give that a try(?)"...
