IP: Turn a ship into an anchor with NT

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 08:45:35 -0700
To: farber () cis upenn edu
From: Stephan Somogyi <somogyi () gyroscope net>


Feel free to fwd this to IP if you haven't already:


        <http://www.gcn.com/gcn/1998/July13/cov2.htm>


Software glitches leave Navy Smart Ship dead in the water


By Gregory Slabodkin
GCN Staff


The Navy's Smart Ship technology may not be as smart as the service contends.


Although PCs have reduced workloads for sailors aboard the Aegis
missile cruiser USS Yorktown, software glitches resulted in system
failures and crippled ship operations, according to Navy officials.


Navy brass have called the Yorktown Smart Ship pilot a success in
reducing manpower, maintenance and costs. The Navy began running
shipboard applications under Microsoft Windows NT so that fewer sailors
would be needed to control key ship functions.


But the Navy last fall learned a difficult lesson about automation: The
very information technology on which the ships depend also makes them
vulnerable. The Yorktown last September suffered a systems failure when
bad data was fed into its computers during maneuvers off the coast of
Cape Charles, Va.


The ship had to be towed into the Naval base at Norfolk, Va., because a
database overflow caused its propulsion system to fail, according to
Anthony DiGiorgio, a civilian engineer with the Atlantic Fleet
Technical Support Center in Norfolk.


"We are putting equipment in the engine room that we cannot maintain
and, when it fails, results in a critical failure," DiGiorgio said. It
took two days of pierside maintenance to fix the problem.


The Yorktown has been towed into port after other systems failures, he said.


[...]