Bob's right, as usual, having seen personally what the process is, when you have an incident like this in the military, costing mucho taxpayer dollars and/or crewman's lives. It is a process that would make those of us who at least had union reps when we tore up RR stuff cringe....

And, he's definitely right that it is those poor sailors and their families, that we should be grieving with, accident or otherwise, as they just did make the ultimate sacrifice, in serving and protecting us.

It's going to be an interesting investigation, though. Because it is somewhat hard to understand, even in darkness and/or severe weather conditions, why and how a modern electronically outfitted/multiple radar equipped modern naval ship, which is much more maneuverable, and capable of 3 or 4 times the speed of that container ship, could have managed to have basically put itself into such a position, as to be effectively "T-boned" by the much slower and much less maneuverable oncoming container ship?

As is often the case with "civilian" NTSB rail and aviation accident investigations, the Naval inquiry will probably result in some new lessons learned...... the "old fashioned", "hard" way.