Based on what? He's quoting people he talked to and reports what he's seen. Whereas you just naysay.

Based on my first-hand experience as a solider in the US Army, talking to 4-5 low-ranked sailors is unlikely to give a meaningful picture of the whole system. I don't have specific experience with Navy systems to judge the technical details of komali2's post, but I would caution against taking a summary of second-hand accounts from operators as fact.

I would take his recollection with a grain of salt but what they told him most likely was more true than false.

So that leaves a number of specific statements which you could each refute, in part or in their entirety. Judging from the title of this article and a number of other anecdotes in this thread (some by other people that served) it seems his anecdote is entirely believable.

That you can't extrapolate to all of the army would be a given.

>>I don't have specific experience with Navy systems to judge the technical details of komali2's post

Well, there you go then. Thanks for being honest at least.

I have multiple decades of experience with Navy and Army systems and personnel, and he's correct.

Can you expand? Why are the IT people I talked to, working on these systems, so poorly informed about how they work?

First, most IT personnel on ships (especially one as ancient as the Bonhomme Richard) do not work on weapon systems. Most of them would not even be able to discuss where on the ship they are intelligently, let alone what they connect to. The people you talked to simply aren't informed. You even note that you were talking to 19 year old kids, and they're not generally the ones who know what's going on.

Well that's a question I have as well - who actually knows what's going on there?

People like me.

People named jki275 that post one-sentence replies on Hackernews? ;)

What kind of work do you do? You're in the military? What's your rank / job description? That's the kind of information I'm curious about. If the answer is "I can't tell you because it'll expose personal information," well, I'm not the one that outed you lol.

I gave very specific comments above, and explained that I have many years of experience with these systems. No, I'm not going to give you details other than that I'm a very senior person in the field. And I'm not 19 years old...