I am an active duty, Surface Warfare qualifed Navy Lieutentant.
Much of the opinion here is short sighted. For those that have never been on a U.S Navy ship, much less on one while its underway, and further, underway on one for more than a few days would be hard pressed to really weigh in on the topic. Anything we do is speculation on your part until you have seen it.
That being said, to assume that the standard 802.11b would be used is absolutely riduculous. Yes, we are going to make all the ship's vital information available to any yahoo with a laptop on the water front. From what I read, it seems as though the Navy is run by the keystone cops.
Which ever standard is used, if this is ever implemented, will not be used to drive the ship, fire the weapons systems or fight fires. The current systems the "smart ships" have are mainly for monitoring purposes. It used to take 3 guys per watch, at least 12 total, to take readings in JUST the engine room. With the new monitoring, its down to the Engineering officer of the watch or Leading petty officer on duty to look up at a screen and see all the automated readings. Those are the things on tap for smart ship crew reductions. The ship will always be driven by a well trained, Captain appointed Officer of the Deck. A ship is not going to be driven without a set of human eyes on the bridge.
At best, this technolgy would be used for the CO to wander the ship and if he gets a wild hair, check the current course, speed and wind direction of his ship on his PDA. We do it now in a wired sense, this would make it a bit easier and less confining for the old man.
I am not quoting policy, just trying to give a realistic view.
Slashdot Mirror
Much of the opinion here is short sighted. For those that have never been on a U.S Navy ship, much less on one while its underway, and further, underway on one for more than a few days would be hard pressed to really weigh in on the topic. Anything we do is speculation on your part until you have seen it.
That being said, to assume that the standard 802.11b would be used is absolutely riduculous. Yes, we are going to make all the ship's vital information available to any yahoo with a laptop on the water front. From what I read, it seems as though the Navy is run by the keystone cops.
Which ever standard is used, if this is ever implemented, will not be used to drive the ship, fire the weapons systems or fight fires. The current systems the "smart ships" have are mainly for monitoring purposes. It used to take 3 guys per watch, at least 12 total, to take readings in JUST the engine room. With the new monitoring, its down to the Engineering officer of the watch or Leading petty officer on duty to look up at a screen and see all the automated readings. Those are the things on tap for smart ship crew reductions. The ship will always be driven by a well trained, Captain appointed Officer of the Deck. A ship is not going to be driven without a set of human eyes on the bridge.
At best, this technolgy would be used for the CO to wander the ship and if he gets a wild hair, check the current course, speed and wind direction of his ship on his PDA. We do it now in a wired sense, this would make it a bit easier and less confining for the old man.
I am not quoting policy, just trying to give a realistic view.
Gary