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Why the Navy Is Relying on WWII-Era Communications
The U.S. Navy, anticipating a future when a high-tech enemy could read its electronic communications, is going back to a hack-proof means of sending messages between ships: bean bags. Weighted bags with messages inside are passed among ships at sea by helicopters.
In a future conflict with a tech-savvy opponent, the U.S. military could discover even its most advanced, secure communications penetrated by the enemy. Secure digital messaging, voice communications, video conferencing, and even chats could be intercepted and decrypted for its intelligence value. This could give enemy forces an unimaginable advantage, seemingly predicting the moves and actions of the fleets at sea with uncanny accuracy.
Last week, a MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter delivered a message from the commander of an amphibious squadron to the captain of the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer. The helicopter didn’t even land to deliver it, dropping it from a hovering position before flying away. The message was contained in a bean bag dropped on the Boxer’s flight deck.
The bean bag system, as Military.com explains it, is nearly eight decades old. The system dates back to April 1942, when a SBD Dauntless dive bomber assigned to the USS Enterprise was flying a scouting mission ahead of the USS Hornet. Hornet, about to launch sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers on a raid against Japan, was traveling in extreme secrecy to preserve the element of surprise. The Dauntless pilot encountered a Japanese civilian ship and, fearing he had been spotted, dropped a message in a bean bag on the deck of Hornet.
[...] Bean bags aren’t the only old tech the Navy is bringing back. In 2016, NPR reported that the service was reintroducing sextants as a navigational tool for officers. The U.S. armed services are heavily reliant on the satellite-based Global Positioning System for navigation, making jamming or spoofing GPS signals a major priority for adversaries. If they’re successful, the military must be able to navigate from Point A to Point B the old fashioned way—by sextant if necessary.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 19 2019, @05:59PM (7 children)
I find quite the opposite: things I have automated perform "in the wild" pretty much as they do at my desk.
However, HIL (Human In the Loop) systems tend to demonstrate all kinds of novel, unanticipated behavior after leaving the development zone.
On a system as large as a fleet of ships, your HIL elements need to be highly trained, ready with redundant replacements, vigilantly monitored and yanked offline at the first sign of unreliability.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 19 2019, @06:17PM (6 children)
True - as far as it goes. But, you have to admit that when the HIL bangs his head, or even his knuckles, once or twice, he moans, and complains, until someone gives him some attention, and corrects whatever his problem is. The robot? It will smash itself into an immovable object twenty thousand times, unless the HIL happens to notice that the robot is wrecking itself.
I have sung the praises of robotics in the past. A robot doesn't get tired, or come to work pissed off at the spouse, or get high, or come to work drunk. The number of crashed molds in our plant has fallen dramatically since the robots were installed. But - robots DO crash, and they seldom alarm out, calling attention to themselves. (That last is a human fault, I think - the automation guy should be able to set up some alarms.)
So, six of one, half a dozen of the other.
However, in combat situations, you most definitely WANT your attention drawn to details that a robot may not notice. Humans are essential in maintaining a ship's combat readiness, because no programmer is god-like enough to anticipate every potential problem. In fact, I don't think that even the god of war could program good enough for a ship, or an infantry squad, or much of anything in warfare.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Gaaark on Monday August 19 2019, @06:38PM
Yup! Modern tech can be great: but if one EMP can take it all out and your ships have no fall-back tech (or it does, but your crew can't even use a fecking sextant let alone steer a ship manually or fire weapons on target manually), you. are. fucked.
So yeah...new tech good. Old tech good if crew is trained. If not, the enemy could leave your ship as helpless as a sinking dinghy.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 19 2019, @06:42PM (4 children)
Yeah, that's got a lot to do with design and management philosophy. When the engineers come to management and say: "You know that new $20M robotic system that's $5M over budget already? Yeah, ummm.... we've identified some failure modes that we could monitor and give early warning of component wear and probable impending failure. It's really cheap, only another $2M for the install, and it should reduce line-down time by more than 50% in the future, but... it will delay initial launch by another 5-6 weeks at least..."
My personal favorite, and current daily grind, is the immutable launch date - set with total disregard for input from the implementing engineers, as if schedule estimates are a negotiation like the price of soybeans. So, after the arbitrary deadline has already passed, a slow trickle of "new feature requirements" starts to flow... Didn't want to freak anybody out before the deadline, but since YOU are late already...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday August 19 2019, @07:26PM (3 children)
Let me introduce you to Miss. Management. She has a long and vast career. She's worked her magic at countless organizations, especially the biggest ones.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @01:31AM (2 children)
And, as usual, the fallout after Miss Management has squandered the funds, is the wrecked remains of the machinery that built the organization.
I've lived through a couple of these, and in both cases, the Cascade failure to Oblivion was initiated by the sale of the company from a private individual to an investment entity .
Lots of suits, ties, helicopters, private jets, and no knowledge of the details that made our stuff work. What they bought was our name and reputation, whisc was soon sullied.
(Score: 1) by Sally_G on Tuesday August 20 2019, @05:24AM (1 child)
I understand all of that, but why blame it on some female? It's not like we get to make any decisions, beyond what to wear to work. Often enough, we don't even get that much choice in our lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @07:08AM
I don't know; I've never seen that expression before.
However, in a few companies in which I've worked recently, the typical line engineer was male. Not all of them, but the vast majority. Also support, installation and to some extent sales.
And management was mostly female.
So were project managers, program managers and HR.
No, I'm not sure why, and I'm not complaining, I'm just pointing out that if management is turning female to silence sex imbalance complaints, perhaps this is what we'll see more of in terms of stereotyping.