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.

Comments

Re:Plenty of repeaters will be needed!

[chamenos]

not only that....given the military's track record of online security, the wireless network might not be properly secured, and enemy personnel could easily eavesdrop or worse, take complete control of the ship. i hope the military brass knows what they're doing.

802.11b

[kabars_edge]

First of all, as a Marine that has spent time aboard ships, this seems absolutely ridiculous. They Navy hates automation beyond email. Second of all, this is just asking to get hacked. 802.11b can be received for kilometers. Being on the ocean, one big reflective antenna, you could probably extend this distance to miles with a decent antenna, obviously with great latency, but it would work. I couldn't access the story, but I really hope the Navy rethinks this technological advance.

Redundancy

[tomgarcher]

The British Royal Navy has resisted automation for years. They purposefully take many more crew members than they need so that when they lose half of them in battle the ship can still function.

Re:Great...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Bad guys don't need to crack the VPN they'd run this thing over, to do harm.

Just broadcast a stronger, interfering signal on the same spread spectrum. They could probably use a home cordless phone (some of which seems to pretty much kill 802.11b in many residences) and a pringles can.