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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.
"And in other news, the USS Bigship crashed into the USS Otherbigship because someone forgot to turn ESSID broadcasts off."
"... 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)
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.
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?
Interestingly enough, I have a friend who designs and implements repeater systems on big ships (aircraft carriers). He once described to me the difficulty of making a simple walkie talkie radio work all around the ship. The excessive steelwork and armory are the least of his worries. Making it all work with less than 1mw is the big issue.
Remember, "stealth" is important, and when a carrier group goes dark to be more invisible, the last thing we want is the enemy sniffing out a little walkie talkie somewhere.
Take that little walkie talkie times a thousand repeaters and you are looking at quite a bit of radiation. They literally have to make sure that only one is operating at a given time on a given frequency. In a ship with 5000 occupants, this is quite difficult.
Then again, this is just a little destroyer the article is talking about. I imagine 802.11b is probably alright still, but they will probably use something like bluetooth--lower power--and then putting a tranciever in every room. Still, interesting to think about..
Cool! Amazing Toys.
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'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
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.
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.
It's called Buzzword Bingo, and everyone's playing. That will be the main reason for this; it sounds cool, it sounds like a neat concept, and we'll be the only players, right? We don't need to worry about The Enemy building a 15dBi omni, and at least listening in, and at most actually taking over? Surely not. Never. They'd not do that. Nobody has that capability.
Lo and behold, what was designed and implemented as a battlespace advantage quickly becomes your biggest battlespace disadvantage.
Given the military's strong chain of command - and the near heresy of so much as thinking questioning thoughts, the techs implementing this won't dare mention what a Bad Idea it is.
But hey, it's not as if I have any experience in large defence projects. Oh, no. Definitely not.
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.
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.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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.
[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