ee163cz (02/17/83)
News item: L.A. Times, earlier this week... Ship's Computer Misread Exocet, Magazine Reports LONDON (AP)--The British destroyer Sheffield, sunk by an Exocet missile in the Falkland Islands war, had its computer programmed against Soviet missiles and identified the French-made Exocet that hit it as friendly, the weekly British magazine New Scientist said Friday. It said that after the attack, "all computers aboard the rest of the task force in the South Atlantic were reprogrammed to correct the error. A Defense Ministry spokesman did not deny the magazine's story but called it "inaccurate. No panic changes were made to the software in Royal Navy ships as a result of the Sheffield incident. Type 42 ships (destroyers) have the ability to distinguish between various missiles," he said. ... Or, in the words of the immortal Eccles: "Don't worry--dat mine, it can't hurt us--it's one of ours." A question for all you Motorola fans out there: can you sync a chip with an EXORset? Seriously, I like Asimov's approach to selling weapons abroad: install a hidden, remote-controlled cutoff switch to deactivate anything being used for inappropriate purposes. I think it was Anacreon that tried to attack Terminus with a ship that Salvor Hardin had had specially equipped for the occasion...