For a variety of reasons, including operational security, a crew’s internet access is regularly restricted while underway, to preserve bandwidth for the mission and to keep their ship safe from nefarious online attacks.
But the senior enlisted leaders among the littoral combat ship Manchester’s gold crew knew no such privation last year, when they installed and secretly used their very own Wi-Fi network during a deployment, according to a scathing internal investigation obtained by Navy Times.
As the ship prepared for a West Pacific deployment in April 2023, the enlisted leader onboard conspired with the ship’s chiefs to install the secret, unauthorized network aboard the ship, for use exclusively by them.
So while rank-and-file sailors lived without the level of internet connectivity they enjoyed ashore, the chiefs installed a Starlink satellite internet dish on the top of the ship and used a Wi-Fi network they dubbed “STINKY” to check sports scores, text home and stream movies.
I’m amazed. Basic IT training should be enough to know that Starlink systems at the very least would be advertising their location to a third party non-US megacorp.
Easy solution: nationalize Starlink. That keeps it out of the hands of a lunatic man-child, and sailors can get their sports scores! Talk about a win win situation.
Third party, sure, but Starlink is absolutely a US corporation. They have joint projects with the US military, even