If the crew failed know where the override was for the autopilot or how engage it, then there was failure of training on top incompetence, this case trainers..
I was in the naval service, while not the high tech service of today. However, my later careers for a company I was employed as floater doubled as trainer. When someone evacuated a position when it wasn't possible previous person to pass on what they knew, the floater was there to guide next person in their job. To me there was failure in institution of the Navy to properly train their people. They're small service, I'm not military trainer by any stretch of the imagination. However, it's mission critical to make sure individuals who operate multi-million dollar (pound..) piece machinery know what and how their operation works. You can out source the maintenance but not the operation itself.
These people lost the ship and were left to rudderless. I can only say from my point view, it's the Captain who is responsible to make sure their people are trained. If there big gap in training, they should been rather loud to his bosses.
I think the mark of 'training issues' and maybe 'procedure issues' is bigger even than not knowing where the override is-they didn't know the system was engaged, or they were so used to the system being active they didn't know they needed to disengage it until it was too late.
either one of those is even MORE questionable than you're suggesting, as it reflects on a service that once upon a time was a model of professionalism turning into an amateur shit-show, possibly on an epic scale (what, after all, are the odds of an entire command staff and crew being blissfully unaware of this until the accident happens?)
While the ecological consequences aren't up there with Exxon Valdez, the lack of professionalism, knowledge of the vessel, or maintenance of critical systems is, well...potentially much more serious given the role navies play in that part of the world-the
multitude of roles naval personnel play in that part of the world.
An old guy I worked with at Boeing was old-school navy and he had a certain attitude about 'accidents'. "THere are no Accidents, there is only Negligence."
He explained to me that in any accident investigation, whether it's mechanical or pilot related causes, the dig will tend to show that someone in a position of responsibility or access prior, didn't do their job, and that failure led directly to the accident or incident in question.
Now, this was a guy who was in Naval Aviation longer, at the time, than I'd been alive and he was working in civilian aviation as his 'supplementary retirement' so you can take that as you will, but the situation described here suggests multiple paths of negligence probably resulted in this accident, with only the Captain of the vessel being at the final straw to break the back of the camel, not the originating failure.
I suspect it begins at a level best covered by Rule 4, so I won't bring that up except that it likely contributed to a series of failures in chains of command including personnel assignment, evaluation, training, and maintenance both, along with more obvious commnand level mistakes including supplementary training and drill. This covers everything from how discipline and operations were conducted, to navigation, to ship's systems and maintenance, to likely crew proficiency as a direct result, and possibly morale.
Soldiers or Sailors, in other words, who hate their officers so much they literally only do what they're told even when they know it's not what's necessary.
Such conditions don't manifest in a vacuum. Officers who cannot lead do not get promoted in healthy organizations without intervention from higher up, whether it's nepotism or ignorance, someone promoted and assigned those officers without properly verifying they could and would build or maintain proficient crews.
In ground combat, this is like hiring a precision rifleman who doesn't know how to clean his rifle-or chooses not to out of laziness or dislike of the smell of gun oil.
An officer's weapon, after all, is not his (or her) sidearm, it's the personnel they command-failure to maintain that is failure outright in the role.
That kind don't happen without someone noticing long before tehy're given sixty five million dollars in equipment as their responsibility.
