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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.
Terrorist take over the United States Navy, w/o Wires!
"And in other news, the USS Bigship crashed into the USS Otherbigship because someone forgot to turn ESSID broadcasts off."
Whoever makes 802.11b repeaters will have their stock shooting up in the next few days then. With their excessive steelwork and armory, a warship is an extremely BAD place to run on 802.11b as the signals will bounce around everywhere (being at the high frequency they are).
Funnily enough, a lot of people predicted the coming of 'war boating' just three months ago here on Slashdot.
mogorific carpentry experiments
So you have some terrorist who jams things or sends confusing orders to the ship. The crew is trying to figure out what is going on when WHAM the strike takes place.
If weapon systems are under control of such a remote control pad then it is even scarier.
"... allow the captain to control the ship from anywhere on the ship."
Great, just what the crew wanted: Their captain giving orders while he's in the head.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
This is flat out one of the worst ideas I've ever seen. Worse than those Navy crusiers running on NT 4.0 (when the systems crashed the ships went dead in the water IIRC)
Simply, if a whole bunch of people get killed on the ship, then there are still enough left to run it. This is not insignifigant, after all who wants to have an undermanned ship after 1/4-1/2 the crew dies?
In other news, the export of Pringles, laptops and speedboats to the Persian Gulf region has increased dramatically.
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
"It sounded like a great idea until the terrorists released a virus called WOPR that exploited a vulnerability in MS Captain and launched a thermonuclear war..."
What kind of chalk marks would indicate this kind of access point?
"What'll it be tonight, sir? Minesweeper, or battleship?"
I used to work for Supershuttle, a van service that transports people to and from the airport. In my case, I was taking people to and from the San Francisco airport. One place we serviced was Treasure Island, then a Naval Base. I always asked the sailors what they did for the Navy. Almost every single one was a shipboard firefighter.
After a while, I came to the conclusion that there are probably a lot of shipboard fires during naval combat.
So, my point is, is it such a good idea to reduce the complement from 300 to 90?
But what do I know. I'm just a shuttle driver. Or I was just a shuttle driver, anyway.
MM
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By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
Oooh, this was an obvious one...
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I think they'd be suspicious of a little speedboat with a nerdy guy playing with a laptop and aiming a pringles can at their warship.
I further bet his pringles can won't be much of a match against three marines in scuba gear.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Destroyer captains were notably irritated after being presented with their newly mandated hats that included an embedded Airport base station.
An anonymous officer complained "I've got 10 pounds of circuitry on my head now...first the anti-homosexuality halo, now this!"
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
I'm not sure how many people have noticed, but most railroads are now running radio-controllable locomotives.
I'm a bit of a rail buff and I from time to time I like to go down to the yard and watch them assemble trains. Nowadays the engineers have a large remote control, in the form of a strap-on breastpack. From this control they can pretty much operate all of the primary functions of the train (IE throttle, brake, horn, bell, etc.) This makes it possible for the engineer to build the train essentialy unaided. He can drive the locomotive up to a switch, jump off, drive the whole train past the switch, throw the switch, then back the train all the way down untill the locomotive clears the switch, throw it back and jump back on the locomotive. In the past this operation would have either required two people, one to drive the loco and one to throw the switch, or else the engineer would have to walk the length of the train twice (not really a viable proposition when you've got a mile-long train on a busy line.)
Is it dangerous? Working on the railroad is always dangerous. But in reality it's probably safer than otherwise. Fewer people to keep track of. It's a pretty neat system.
Now IMHO it's fucking retarded that they are planning to use 802.11 for this. BTW the article link is 404 so don't bitch at me for not reading it.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Not exactly sure what the us navy is up to, but I can guess. The big items of military equipment are getting too expensive to buy, even for the us. The only alternative is to make extensive use of COTS hardware and software to push down the prices. The aim is to modify cheap stuff to deliver what you need, with the idea that at least that way you can have a lot of them, even if they might have some compromises.
NT & 802.11b are just two examples of this, I'm sure if people do a little digging they will find more - in particular the computer hardware.
After all, a destroyer is just a platform for missiles and a radar. And a target, of course. Never say that to the navy though, they are kind of sensitive to that type of thing.
The question of /. readers is, how could they be supported in doing this better ? As usual, they get a load of contractors in who sell them the advice that Microsoft is a sure bet. What would an open source warship look like? Even better, how could you retro fit an existing hull to provide a cheap platform that be some use?
One thing is for sure, other countries have picked up on the same idea.
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.
Pringle's cans are now covered by ITAR export restrictions.
My first objection to this concept was to wonder what would happen to all this automation when it gets things shot through it. But then I recalled that modern ships are not designed to withstand attack and still be effective. With so many kinds of modern weapons, if you're hit, game over.
Our existing naval ships were designed like this so much that they could beat off an attacking air squadron, but could not get a shot off at four men attacking the ship from a rowboat.
Modern ships are a curious mix of outmoded ideas, window dressing, high technology and ludicrous "cost cutting" measures. It is a wonder they function in their missions at all. Replacing the expensive human element with more weird hardware by the lowest bidder will not make them perform their missions any better. We all know how hard it is to get complex distributed systems to work 24/7 - and that is when they're sitting in some purpose built office block. The only thing comparable to naval service for those systems would be a +7 earthquake. Anyone like to take bets on being able to print out a document on the 7th floor East printer 20 minutes after a nice big earthquake?
But this is not about making capable, survivable, robust ships. It is about trying to fight better and cheaper wars. It's a numbers game. If you "need" 25 ships to accomplish your mission objectives worldwide and you can only get them to work 50% of the time, then you need to buy 50 of the things. How much money do you save by eliminating sailors vs. how much do twice as many ships cost?
By turning over the world to bookkeepers we've done away with style, service, elegance, and quality. Maybe, if we turn war over to them they will succeed in making it so efficient that it also ceases to exist.
The relevant naval saying here is: "Ships don't fight, men do." ...even if they don't use Windows.
However, I distinctly remember that the navy used to be proud of their lack of automation. This allowed warships to survive severe amounts of damage without perishing. If a radio operator is severely wounded, you can replace them. If your transmitter board is damaged, you can throw in a new one. If a jolt takes out the hard drive on your software radio, you're screwed. Perhaps the US hasn't been in a real war for so long they forgot how to design for damage?
I'm not saying I want a war, or that I dislike the idea of warship automation, but the original stated intention of the Navy seemed somehow admirable in a way that installing 802.11b wireless helm control just doesn't. Increased automation does tend to increase the fragility of a device, and the amount of problems that might occurr. What happens when the captain walks out of range of a transmitter? What happens if the laptop is stolen, or comandeered? What is stopping someone from dropping little 802.11b jamlets onboard?
And what OS, praytell, will this system support? Will the Navy solicit imput from BMW?
-c
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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.
Okay, lets see:
-world's most insecure networking technology...check!
-world's most insecure, unstable, practically-end-of-life'd operating system....check!
(remember, WINNT is the OS of choice in the navy, despite that whole dead-at-sea-had-to-be-towed-in incident)
I think we've hit upon the Destroyer equivalent of "screen door on a submarine". Only way this could get any better is if they use ColdFusion for the web interface with a MS-SQL backend(and, of course, Exchange for email.)
Still, that's going to make for some fun dialog boxes:
"Searching for newly installed hardware- Found, AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense System. Please insert vendor CDROM"
Better hope you don't have an IRaQ conflict!
Wait wait, I'm on a role.
PocketPC:"oooh yeah baby, oooo[pop click click DING!]
Captain: "#$@!%$"
[wham! Clink clink clink clink...]
"CAPTAIN IN THE GALLEY!"
Captain: "SEARGENT! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU, MICROWAVE OVEN USE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED WHILE I"M TRYING TO DOWNLOAD PO...uh...TECHNICAL SPECS!"
Seargent: "SIR, SORRY SIR, I WILL FINISH MY POPCORN IN THE AFT GALLEY!"
Oh, but there's more.
"Anyone up for a fireworks display?"
"Oh, the USs Potshot back in port?"
"Yeah, grab the pringles can."
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.
thanks to MS-Windows NT: "For about two-and-a-half hours, the ship was what we call 'dead in the water,'" said Commander John Singley of the Atlantic Fleet Surface Force" ... read on (1998)
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.
The military could and should go with software that is based on open standards: UNIX/POSIX, X11, etc. And in their implementations and deployments, they should then stick as much as possible to those open standards. They can then buy software and hardware from many different vendors and have a choice among multiple implementations, including some open source ones.
The parent actually raises a good point. Can the captain stay informed enough in any given position on the ship to make command and control decisions effectively? I doubt it.
for whatever reason, the boss had a telephone extension installed in his office bathroom (he owned the building)..one of the things you learned there very quickly was, when you were paged to extension 13, you did NOT pick up the phone.
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
I don't think this really is about letting the captain command from anywhere. It was mentioned in the article, but most of the article talks about automating the monitoring of the ship's systems: using a computer to listen to a bunch of sensors, rather than having a crewman 'sense' manually by patrolling the systems and checking readouts. This is entirely different from controlling the main functions (weapons and propulsion) of the ship.
These days, a captain would spend most of his time (at least when the ship is in action/at war) in the Combat Information Center. There, he's surrounded by 5-30 specialists, who each have a console with 2x21" screens and two radio channels (one in each ear). These people supply all the information the Captain needs to deploy his ship.
There's no way you can do this with a laptop, as some posters have suggested.
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