US Navy removes 7th Fleet commander

Divers find remains of 3 missing sailors in a flooded compartment of that Malaysian officials had found a body, but it had not been determined if it was a McCain crew member.

“We will continue the search and rescue operations until the probability of discovering sailors is exhausted,” Swift said, adding that the Navy would conduct an investigation “to find out if there is a common cause ... and if so, how do we solve that”.

Cyberattack?

He said he had heard some reports speculating that the Navy could have been a victim of a cyberattack. “We’ve seen no indications of that as yet, but ... we are not taking any consideration off the table.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the 7th Fleet said the sea search by aircraft and ships from the US, Singaporean and Malaysian navies would continue east of Singapore where the McCain and the tanker collided.

The pre-dawn collision tore a gaping hole in the McCain’s left rear hull and flooded adjacent compartments including crew berths and machinery and communication rooms.

Analysts said the two latest accidents are especially sobering. In both collisions, no data on the warships’ movements are publicly available. In a common security practice by US Navy commanders, neither had switched on their Automated Identification Systems, which involve radio transponders to help prevent such collisions.

“It is truly extraordinary, not only that it should happen, and not only that it should happen to the US Navy, but that it should happen repeatedly within weeks in the same geographic area,” said John Blaxland, head of the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University in Sydney.

There were two lesserknown incidents in the first half of the year. In January, the USS Antietam guided missile cruiser ran aground near Yokosuka base, the home port of the 7th Fleet, and in May another cruiser, the USS Lake Champlain from the Navy’s 3rd Fleet, had a minor collision with a South Korean fishing boat.

The 7th Fleet, headquartered in Japan, operates as many as 70 ships, including the US Navy’s only forwarddeployed aircraft carrier, and has around 140 aircraft and 20,000 sailors.

It operates over an area of 124 million square kilometers from bases in Japan, South Korea and Singapore.