Thanks to Noam Rathaus for the tip: The U.S. Navy's Yorktown "Smart Ship,"
an Aegis missile cruiser that's being used as a pilot program for computer
controlled naval vessels, was left adrift at sea for over two hours earlier
this month because of problems with its Windows NT-based software. The
ship had to be towed back to harbor for the third time because of database
errors.
Officials confirmed that the Yorktown experienced an "engineering local
area network casualty,” though they stopped short of blaming Windows NT on
the problem. Anthony DiGiorgio, a civilian engineer with the Atlantic Fleet
Technical Support Center in Norfolk says that "using Windows NT, which is
known to have some failure modes, on a warship is similar to hoping that
luck will be in our favor.” DiGiorgio, who is a self-described
whistle-blower, says these kinds of problems would be deadly in a combat
situation.
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