NavList:

It appears that this is an announcement of an intention to turn on AIS in some situations, and probably soon, but I don't think it has happened yet. It's certainly a good idea in peacetime in most cases. The news stories circulating appear to be a result of statements by the Chief of Naval Operations before the US Senate yesterday: 
“We had, I think, a distorted perception of operational security that we kept that system secure – off – on our warships,” Richardson said. “One of the immediate actions following these incidents – particularly in heavily trafficked areas we’re just going to turn it on.”

A couple of articles:
http://maritime-executive.com/article/cno-us-navy-warships-will-start-transmitting-ais
https://news.usni.org/2017/09/19/deadly-collisions-navy-will-broadcast-warship-locations-high-traffic-areas

Given the great similarity between the two collision events in June and August, it's very hard to believe that there is not a common cause. Something was going wrong, systematically, aboard USN warships in the western Pacific leading to numerous deaths and the near sinking of valuable ships. Either there was a deliberate attack on the computer systems aboard these vessels allowing external forces to take control of their steering and position them directly in the path of oncoming commercial vessels, or there was some sort of training exercise --maybe a computer-system-out training exercise-- that was creating an equivalent failure. The scary thing for us all is that this could, in fact, be a pair of deliberate attacks by a foreign military, or perhaps as likely, it might be blamed on some adversary of the US by default. Two major USN vessels have been effectively neutralized, and 17 young sailors have died. If these incidents were the result of deliberate hacking (there's that word again) by some identifiable government, then it would be difficult to argue that these are not acts of war. And yet there are still major holes in this model. If a vessel's control systems are not responding and the crew is conscious and can see the impending collision, why were no collision alarms sounded?? I suppose it's possible that a cyber attack could be so thorough, so complete, a maritime Stuxnet (maybe repurposing the NSA's own code), that even alarm systems could be shut down... but is that credible?? The public at this point has a genuine "need to know". We're looking at war. It's disconcerting and, I feel, dangerous that the US Navy has kept their investigations secret. We have learned that heads have rolled, but what really happened??

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com / HistoricalAtlas.com
Conanicut Island USA