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War(ship) Driving For 802.11b Controlled Destroyers
Jason Straight writes "There's a story at pcworld, that describes how navy warships will be equipped with 802.11b networking to allow the captain to control the ship from anywhere on the ship.
" The point of the article also gets into the issue of cutting manpower for the ships - going from 300 people on each to destroyer to 90, and makes the point that the only way to do is through automation.
Taken from http://www.gcn.com/archives/gcn/1998/july13/cov2.h tm that you provided in your other post :
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.
So obviously it had nothing to do with NT4, it was due to a database problem, that's completely independant of the OS underneath.
They could have run their ship with QNX or whatever else, had there been an overflow in the database software, the result would have been the same.
"Of course, saying you're a fireman is much more impressive than saying that you spend your days chipping paint and mopping floors..."
Bah. Noone mops floors on a ship. They swab decks.
And saying you're a "fireman" does sound better than the truth ("I'm a lowly snipe.")
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I happen to write software for a few Navy platforms, and this article is not quite on target.
For starters, the idea is to reduce emissions and radar signatures, not enhance it. Since a $200 parabolic antenna can pick up WiFi at 20 miles, and get enough of a signal to make use of it, 802.11b has a problem here. Of course, on a subsurface plaform this is not an issue.
Second, huge sections of Navy ships are RF quarantined, with no emissions allowed. Sometimes it's for security, sometimes it's because they don't want RF signals popping up around weapons with very sensitive electronics. Even the captain has to follow these rules. I said the first paragraph wasn't an issue for submarines, but this paragraph is, in a big way.
Third, 802.11b enabling the captain to "run the ship" from anywhere presupposes that the captain can "run the ship" whenever he or she has a network connection and... what, a PDA or PC? Again, nope. The captain has a staff, external communications, and a ton of sensor data. About the best the captain can do with a PDA is to see what's for dinner and check email.
First off, there is no need for the captain to be "instantly reachable". It's not like he's the only one which can make command decisions on a ship. It's been a while, but IIRC the title of the person who is in control of the ship is the Officer of the Deck. Should neither the captain nor Executive officer be on the bridge, one officer is designated the OOD and has effective command of the ship. Now, in a crisis, the XO and Captain almost always attempt to return to the bridge to reassert command, but the OOD can make all decisions (including breaking previous captain's orders, should the OOD deem it necessary) until relieved. So, it is silly to design a system to allow the captain to controll the ship from anywhere. Someone in the chain of command is already doing that from the place most suitable to do so, the bridge (or CIC, as appropriate).
Second, virtually all ships have a voice intercom systems set up throughout, which can relay orders back to the bridge far faster and more efficiently than some silly handheld WAP thingy. They're hardwired, so no emissions. They are invariably redundant, and far more likely to survive damage than a WAP system.
Finally, reduced manpower is a great goal, but generally is highly driven by putting in machinery which requires fewer operators. Communications systems are not really any manpower saver. And, as noted by others, you need twice as many people on a ship as it takes to operate all machinery: remember you have to run the ship 24x7, so you need at least two shifts (there's a little overlap, but 2x is a good rule of thumb), and you better have some extras for damage control and casualty replacement. So, you'll get manpower savings by automatic ammunition loading systems, better fire-supression, more efficient engines, better EW weapon systems, but not by adding WAP points.
Dumb idea.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I believe that proper operation in this case is to trap the error and kill the application in question.
But in that SmartShip debacle, the OS trapped the error and killed itself instead of the errant application... Starting a chain reaction that caused EVERY MACHINE on the control network to crash. Not just one small routine, but the ENTIRE NETWORK.
It's all about damage compartmentalization. Something the Navy knows quite a lot about in the mechanical world...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You talking about WEP? a gig of captured data and it's cracked.
You are right about WEP. The thing is that nobody said anything about WEP so I would imagine that they are not using it since it is well known to be easily compromised. I would place my bet on them using either TKIP (better than WEP but not best) or AES. The problem is that I think AES is in the 802.11i spec not 802.11b. I wonder if they are really going to use 802.11b as the article states or if it is a proprietary 802.11x implementation?
Note: This article is a really good primer on 802.1x excryption techniques. They state that AES is now a Federal Information Processing Standard, FIPS Publication 197, that defines a cryptographic algorithm for use by U.S. Government organizations to protect sensitive, unclassified information. The Secretary of Commerce approved the adoption of AES as an official Government standard in May 2002.
So no, WEP is not likely.
[Retired Navy with 20 years as a Data Systems Tech.] That line in the article about the captain having "control" of the ship from anywhere was poorly written and reflected the writer's imagination, not the Navy's intent for this kind of technology.
To begin with, the captain ALREADY has "contol" of his ship wherever he is, even while in the shower. At the same time, the captain of a ship NEVER has "control" of his ship even when on the bridge. The point is what you mean by control. The ship is always under the captain's command, but he does not execute those commands himself. The captain never takes the helm, takes over damage control efforts, or actually uses any weapons systems himself. He gives the commands to see that those things are done, and is responsible for the training and performance of the people who do it. The article makes an unnecesary jump from wireless networked remote mechanical sensors and controls, to operational command and control.
As an example, the article mentions tying in the Integrated Condition Assessment System (ICAS), which is a system I know something about. This system is used to track the material condition and readiness of the ship, and to track damage control and engineering plant information. Wireless remote sensors might be a big improvement to that system, but is not going to result in steering the ship from Damage Control Central or the Chief Engineer's stateroom.
A good point is made about automation being a required step towards smaller crews on Navy ships, but that is not the only requirement by far. For example, a ship has a certain number of exposed square feet of steel and aluminum that require a certain number of man-hours per month to maintain. Sticking with damage control items - every water tight door, emergency light, and fire extinguisher/hose/nozzle on the ship gets weekly inspections and monthly maintenance. Automated "rust sensors" won't change those efforts a bit.
When a ship is in port overseas, usualy one third of the crew is "on duty" at time. The other two thirds can go ashore and see the sights. That leaves only 30 out of 90 onboard to man a dozen or so Quarterdeck and security watches through six four-hour watch periods. When half of a crew of 350 is on Christmas leave, you can still get enough people together to bring onboard the truck loads of milk, bread, printer paper, and spare parts that just arrived on the pier.
The scary thing in this is the possibility that the Navy will reduce the crew size without finding ways to reduce or outsource all these low-tech mundane tasks too. But I have reason to believe they are considering this issue, so I think the most likely change would be a reduction from 350 to 250, with high-tech wiz-bang stuff providing half the reduction, and marine contracting of some low-tech paint roller action providing the rest.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
My information could be wrong here, but when I was in the Navy, I asked some Gunners Mates on my ship about the ship being able to shoot itself. They said there are mechanical stops in the turret rotating equipment to physically prevent it from being able to target any part of the ship.
Missle systems might be another matter; the protection wouldn't be as 'solid and reliable' as the big honkin block of metal that stops the gun turret, but I would be willing to bet that a lot of time and money went into preventing them from accidentally (or intentionally) hitting the ship that launched them.
Believe me, if it were possible for a ship to shoot itself, some unlucky squid would be doing it about as often as we manage to accidentally shoot other friendly objects.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Adding a wireless network would only increase reliability as it provides an alternate path for the control network traffic to use. Each compartment would need a base station to communicate with critical nodes in its vicinity linked by a short wire to a base station in the adjacent compartment, as radio doesn't go through bulkheads or metal walls very well, but a microwave or other such noise source would do little to disrupt traffic flow. Trust me, the Navy is not going to let this technology on their ships unless it can be proven reliable, survivable (can work after the ship sustains significant damage) and scalable.
What they don't want is a repeat of the USS Cole bombing, where a blast in one part of the ship effectively took out the entire ship's systems. They had to send some guys in a small boat to shore so they could go call from the US Embassy because all their radios (in a different part of the ship) were down.
Back in the late 80's early 90's when I was in, they talked about how automation would reduce the number of people needed to man a ship. What nobody ever discussed was how they were going to man the watch sections. Let's assume that you have 4 sections with 22 people each (88 total crew plus CO & XO). In port you need 3 watch standers on the quarterdeck (POOW, OOD, and messenger), one roving patrol, one engineering watch, and one engineering rover. That's 3+1+1+=6 people per watch. With 6, 4-hour watch section in port you need 36 people to cover the in port watches. Even going to 4 six hour watches, you need 24 people to cover watches. This doesn't include duty radioman, master-at-arms, CDO, shore patrol if you are OCONUS, or anything else I've forgotten. This gives us 39 (or 27). Now the khaki answer is go port/starboard (either within or between watch sections), which is fine until retention drops to zero because being port and starboard 24/7 would suck (the snipes on the Midway were rumored to be doing this). During an in port emergency, you'd be hard pressed to man all the watchs, supply 2 fire teams, SAT, and the BAF. That is just for the normal in port watches, the problem becomes even worse at anchor or in a hazardous area (ie. UAE) where extra watch standers are needed. These aren't positions that can be automated away.
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