Smart ship testbed
From 1996 Yorktown was used as the test bed for the Navy's Smart Ship program. The ship was equipped with a network of 27 dual 200 MHz Pentium Pro based machines running Windows NT 4.0 communicating over fiber-optic cable with a Pentium Pro based server. This network was responsible for running the integrated control center on the bridge, monitoring condition assessment, damage control, machinery control and fuel control, monitoring the engines and navigating the ship. This system was estimated to save $2.8 million per year by reducing the ship's complement by 10%.
On September 21, 1997, while on maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, Virginia, a crew member entered a zero into a database field causing a divide by zero error in the ship's Remote Data Base Manager which brought down all the machines on the network, causing the ship's propulsion system to fail.
Anthony DiGiorgio, a civilian contractor with a 26-year history of working on Navy control systems, reported in 1998 that the Yorktown had to be towed back to Norfolk Naval Station. Ron Redman, a deputy technical director with the Aegis Program Executive Office, backed this claim up, suggesting that such system failures had required Yorktown to be towed back to port several times.
In the August 3, 1998 issue of Government Computer News, a retraction by DiGiorgio was published. He claims the reporter altered his statements, and insists that he did not claim the Yorktown was towed into Norfolk. GCN stands by their story.
However Vice Admiral Henry Griffin denied this, reporting that Yorktown was "dead in the water" for just 2 hours and 45 minutes. Captain Richard Rushton, commanding officer of Yorktown at the time of the incident, also denied that the ship had to be towed back to port, stating that the ship returned under its own power.
Atlantic Fleet officials acknowledged that the Yorktown last September[year needed] experienced what they termed “an engineering local area network casualty,”
“We are putting equipment in the engine room that we cannot maintain and, when it fails, results in a critical failure,” DiGiorgio said:
“Ron Redman, deputy technical director of the Fleet Introduction Division of the Aegis Program Executive Office, said there have been numerous software failures associated with NT aboard the Yorktown”
“Because of politics, some things are being forced on us that without political pressure we might not do, like Windows NT. If it were up to me I probably would not have used Windows”
“Refining that is an ongoing process," Redman said. "Unix is a better system for control of equipment and machinery, whereas NT is a better system for the transfer of information and data. NT has never been fully refined and there are times when we have had shutdowns that resulted from NT.”
) könnte man ja vielleicht mal ein wenig anders argumentieren und auf die Erfahrung der Marine setzen, aber lest selbst:
