Navy finds hidden Starlink dish on ship:
Still, the ambassador had nothing on senior enlisted crew members of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, who didn't like the Navy's restriction of onboard Internet access. In 2023, they decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to secretly bolt a Starlink terminal to the "O-5 level weatherdeck" of a US warship.
They called the resulting Wi-Fi network "STINKY"—and when officers on the ship heard rumors and began asking questions, the leader of the scheme brazenly lied about it. Then, when exposed, she went so far as to make up fake Starlink usage reports suggesting that the system had only been accessed while in port, where cybersecurity and espionage concerns were lower.
Well, it is a pain in the rear end to get hooked up to SIPRnet ...
Of course, there's been a general helping of Courts Martials to everyone involved.
And the funniest bit? Elon Musk had Starlink change the default WiFi SSID to "Stinky" to encourage customers to change the damn defaults.
10 comments:
Sorry about that, messed it up. So let's try again.
If one ship's crew has done this, best check everything else.
The LCS. The poop-deck that keeps on giving and giving.
And reading the Navy Times article, the Command Senior Chief who instigated this and lied about it is still in the Navy, along with the others involved. She got a reduction in rank, though.
Even worse, she's a friggin master’s degree in business administration with a concentration in information security and digital management, so you can't tell me she didn't know better.
Reading the full article, the story is even far worse than you'd think. The second-in-command was removed for other reasons, the new-second-in-command found out about it but didn't tell the captain for 6 days after a civilian contractor found it. The depths of lying by the ringleader and everyone else was Mariana's Trench deep. And the Captain was an idiot and should have been relieved, but wasn't.
And the LCS in question? At least 3 Commanders aboard, the Captain, 2nd in Command and the temp 2nd in Command. That's a tad rank heavy, isn't it?
Floggins and keelhauling seem more in line of real punishment.
Two points. One; the CMC at the center of this goat rope is an obese woman of dusky complexion. Under this administration there is no chance she'll get more than a slap on the wrist out of this. Two; the really scary part for me is that for months (Months!) the officers on what is, we are told, a freaking WARSHIP, didn't even notice a bloody great box strapped to the deck of their damned ship! Good thing it wasn't something like, oh, say, a freaking bomb, isn't it? Would any of these yoyos, who I am sure are all experts in the use of politically correct pronouns have said something like; "Strange, that wasn't there last week, I wonder what it might be?" Evidently not. The Chinese are laughing, giggling, and nudging each other in the ribs.
I think it's interesting that the old salts are sweating little things like EMCON and TEMPEST and electrical safety and the rest of that old Navy stuff. Everyone knew it was there and nobody said anything until someone got pissed off and even then it got swept under the rug many times before coming to 'light'. There are probably 30 other warships with starlink onboard and it was sanctioned so it's not like this is uniquely awful. It was just the sort of thing you get when you run a 3rd world navy.
You forget DEI. SHE clearly is one of those, as probably also are several of the others you mentioned. One simply cannot hold them accountable for violating white male Christian standards, bro!
Ha ha! Exactly. USN has become a total joke.
Some that saw it probably thought it was just another antenna put on the ship that they didn't need know about or maybe it was a Starshield antenna (the U.S. Government version of Starlink). But if they were "electronics" folks on that ship they should have at least asked questions.
What in the world has happened to the Goat Locker? In my day the rest of the chief's mess would have put the kibosh on that scheme because of the affect it would have on the rest of the enlisted crew.
(Retired for 42 years Senior Chief here.)
One wonders how many of today's chiefs own the gerbil farms on said ships.
I can tell you this is no worse than what routinely goes on at the Pentagon. Like the guy (O6) that brought in GoPro wireless cameras to watch what was going on in the secure spaces he was responsible for. Hey, he had to know what was going on, even from home on his personal computer, right? Or a former CNO who insisted on conducting business from the home phone in his bedroom. Couldn't be bothered with the hassle of using the secure phone in his home office.
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