This mission-critical enterprise was...

This mission-critical enterprise was ... When Computers Went to Sea: The Digitization of the United States Navy, by David Boslaugh; IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, Calif., 1999; (714) 821-8380; hardcover; 467 pp.; $35. ISBN: 0-7695-00242

Employees and assets scattered all over the globe. Competitors that will do anything to challenge and overcome you. Senior management more concerned with internal politics than with solid business decisions. Sound familiar? Is it just another global enterprise? Not when you consider that this enterprise's failure to accomplish its mission could result in death, war, or global conflagration.

Long before many of today's companies considered applications for digital computing-long before many of today's multinational corporations even existed-the U.S. Navy embarked on a mission to incorporate computers into solutions for increasingly complex tactical challenges. In the fall of 1961, an experimental, digital-based computer system was installed on three ships in an attempt to automate fleet defense against air attackers, whose high speeds were overwhelming existing radar tracking systems.

Boslaugh's richly detailed book explores the history of the Navy's secret development of code-breaking computers and their adaptation to solve the critical radar data handling problem. In spite of seemingly impossible technical challenges, the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) is considered one of the most successful projects ever undertaken, and the author explains exactly why that is so.

Beginning with the Navy's radar system development and its deployment in World War II through the challenges presented by supersonic aircraft, Boslaugh's early chapters give the background for the Navy's acute need for digital processing power. Next he discusses how the Navy brought in super secret, code-breaking computers to wed them to a radar air defense system.

The author goes on to discuss how the foresight and conviction of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Secretary of the Navy overcame the stiff resistance of the majority of senior naval officers to this newfangled technology. Boslaugh concludes with a discussion of how these air defense technologies were applied to other warfare areas.

With a 30-year Navy career introducing technology to naval warfare systems, Boslaugh is just the person to present this account of the progression of the NTDS. Any Naval or digital technology history buff, real-time process control system designer, or automated system project manager will find this account both interesting and provocative.

-Donald J. Miller

Books and More is edited by InTech technical editor Nichols Sheble.

Copyright Instrument Society of America Jan 2000
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