Crashes involving naval vessels are rare events. Yet somehow two of the U.S. Navy’s guided-missile destroyers have crashed into other ships in as many months:
- June 17: U.S.S. Fitzgerald Almost Foundered After Collision, Bodies Found
- August 21: U.S.S. John S. McCain Suffered Flooding After Deadly Collision
Might these deadly crashes share a common root cause? Both ships are part of the Seventh Fleet, which is headquartered in Yokosuka, Japan.
The word is that the second accident was caused by a “steering failure“.
As the public learned back in 1998, when another naval vessel had to be towed back to port after a software crash, this bit of critical American infrastructure was then dependent on navigational software that runs on Windows NT.
Are U.S. Navy ships still powered by a version of Microsoft Windows? And vulnerable to viruses? Could a single individual have smuggled a computer virus aboard both of these destroyers?
I’m no conspiracy theorist, but merely suggest that the possibility of a cyberattack at least be considered by those investigating if these crashes have a common root cause. It strikes me as likely that at least Russia, North Korea, and China would employ hackers to look for ways to weaken American naval power.
Tags: embedded, reliability, security
Wonder if ships have redundant computer systems such as airplanes. I get the feeling that it is maybe not that prioritized, even in warships.