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(Continued from page 6)
By then, Batfish sonar technician Daniel Lawrence had figured out the Yankee's "acoustic signature" and could relocate it without much trouble after the distractions passed.
"Each submarine has its own acoustic characteristics," Evans said, like "when you hear Frank Sinatra over the radio, you don't have to be told it's Frank Sinatra, but you know who it is." Evans said the Soviets never knew they were followed until they learned it through espionage - the infamous Walker spy case.
Retired Navy Warrant Officer John A. Walker Jr. pleaded guilty in 1985 along with his son, Navy Seaman Michael L. Walker, 22. The father admitted passing secrets to the Soviets while he was a shipboard communications officer and, after his retirement, by recruiting his son, brother and a friend to provide fresh information.
U.S. intelligence officials later came to believe that when the Soviets learned about missions like Operation Evening Star, they realized their submarines were vulnerable and embarked on a budget-draining effort to catch up that eventually contributed to the end of the Cold War, Evans said.
The Navy last year declassified some information about the Batfish - and a similar 1972 mission - so the information could be used in an exhibit at the National Museum of American History honoring the centennial of the U.S. submarine force.
And what was his top-secret order, had the Batfish determined that the Yankee was about to fire a nuclear missile?
"Only the captain had those orders sealed in his safe," said Evans, the captain, "and they remain classified today."
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Navy to use Gigabyte Ethernet aboard ships
To ease administration and speed data, the Navy has decided to use Gigabit Ethernet to run the second generation of modernized Navy shipboard networks.
Rear Adm. John Gauss, commander of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, approved the new shipboard design last month after a six-month review, according to Scott Randall, program director for naval networks and information assurance at Spawar.
Randall spoke Wednesday at the Navy Connecting Technology conference in San Diego. The Navy has been using both Ethernet and Asynchronous Transfer Mode on its local-area networks and found they're too hard to maintain together, Randall said. Using Gigabit Ethernet simplifies LAN administration, he said.
Gigabit Ethernet also offers the benefit of greater speed, supporting data transfer rates of 1,000 megabits/second. Ethernet supports rates up to 100 megabits/sec, and ATM can support 25 to 622 megabits/sec.
And Gigabit Ethernet enables network administrators to set policies so that high-priority users and applications take precedence when there's a bandwidth crunch.
The Navy is implementing Gigabit Ethernet on ashore networks through its Navy Marine Corps Intranet contract with Electronic Data Systems Corp., Randall said. Navy officials are considering using NMCI or another contract to purchase equipment for their program, "Information Technology for the 21st Century," and they may also lease systems. "The refresh rates on ships are nowhere near what NMCI provides," Randall said.
Using similar systems under both programs should reduce training costs, he said. Furthermore, he said that installing Gigabit Ethernet aboard about 300 ships will cost no more than what the Navy has been paying to install ATM and Ethernet networks under its IT-21 program.
In addition to "back-fitting" IT-21 ATM and Ethernet LANs with Gigabit Ethernet and installing new networks, the Navy also is consolidating its shipboard Microsoft Corp. Windows NT 4.0 and Unix servers, Randall said.
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Workers
There were two guys working for the city. One would dig a hole. He would dig, dig, dig, the other would come behind him and fill the hole, fill, fill, fill. These two men worked furiously. One digging a hole, the other filling it up again.
A man was watching from the sidewalk and couldn't believe how hard these men were working, but couldn't understand what they were doing. Finally he had to ask them.
He said to the hole digger, "I appreciate how hard you work, but what are you doing? You dig a hole and your partner comes behind you and fills it up again!"
The hole digger replied, "Oh yeah, must look funny, but the guy who plants the trees is sick today."
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