U.S. Navy Investigating if Destroyer Crash Was Caused by Cyberattack 
 
 The military is examining whether compromised computer systems were responsible for one of two U.S. Navy destroyer collisions with merchant vessels that occurred in recent months, Vice Adm. Jan Tighe, the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, said on Thursday. 
 
 Naval investigators are scrambling to determine the causes of the mishaps, including whether hackers infiltrated the computer systems of the USS John S. McCain ahead of the collision on Aug. 21, Tighe said during an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 
 
 Investigators are not, however, considering the possibility that the USS Fitzgerald collision, which took place on June 17, was the result of hacking. 
 
 “With the McCain incident happening so close to the Fitzgerald,” questions immediately arose about whether computer manipulation could have been the cause of the crash, Tighe said. The Navy has no indication that a cyberattack was behind either of the incidents, but it is dispatching investigators to the McCain to put those questions to rest, she said. 
 
 Tighe said the Navy plans to use the results of the McCain probe to look at cybersecurity in future investigations. 
 
 The two collisions left a total of 17 sailors dead and the Navy humiliated. Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson ordered a temporary halt to operations after the second collision and called on the service to review safety protocols for its global fleet. 
 
 While the idea of a cyberattack causing a collision remains purely speculative, U.S. intelligence officials have warned in recent years that this sort of digital threat could pose a major problem for the Navy’s sprawling armada. Tighe said on Thursday that the service has already set aside $1.5 billion between fiscal years 2014 and 2023 to improve defenses. 
 
 The Fitzgerald and the McCain, both Arleigh Burke-class destroyers outfitted with a suite of advanced sensors and weapons, represent two of the most capable ships in the Navy’s arsenal. The collisions have raised troubling questions about the readiness of the American Pacific fleet at a time when it faces a number of threats in the region, from North Korean missile tests to China’s territorial claims over disputed islands. 
 
 Early assessments of the two incidents have blamed both crew training and the growing demands of the Navy’s fleet of warships. Following the McCain collision in August, the Navy relieved the commander of the 7th Fleet, Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, citing a “loss of confidence in his ability to command.” The skipper of the Fitzgerald has also been dismissed, along with several of the ship’s officers, for losing “situational awareness” ahead of the June collision. 
 
 If hackers breached the McCain’s digital defenses, it would represent a startling development in naval warfare. American intelligence officials have theorized that hackers working on behalf of an enemy state could conceivably hack into a ship’s computer systems and blind its commander by, for example, displaying an inaccurate location of the ship on its charts. 
 
 Such a deception could conceivably result in a nighttime crash, such as the McCain‘s. The merchant vessel Alnic MC struck the ship’s left, or port, side and left a huge gash in its hull. 
 
 Tighe said the Navy is preparing for potential digital warfare and said the service has to “be able to fight through” a cyberattack. Ships must monitor their own computer systems, she said, and if one method of communication is knocked out, naval forces have to be able to rely on other methods to relay commands and information. 
 
 “Semaphores” — a system of communicating using hand-held flags — “are going to be really hard to hack,” Tighe said. 
 
 “That’s a joke,” she quickly added. 
 
 Photo credit: ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/Getty Images ||||| WASHINGTON, D.C. — Probing potential cyber tampering and cyber intrusion will now be a standard part of U.S. Navy accident investigation following the Aug. 21 collision of guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) with a chemical tanker, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran told Congress last week. 
 
 As part of the investigation into McCain’s collision, a team from the Navy’s U.S. 10th Fleet cyber arm traveled to Singapore to see if a reported steering failure of the destroyer was a result of cyber tampering, USNI News reported last month. 
 
 Vice Adm. Jan Tighe elaborated on the effort during a U.S. Naval Institute and CSIS maritime security dialogue on Thursday. 
 
 “We will look for a couple of things. One, try to confirm cyber did not have anything to do with the collision and then how do we move forward in making sure these are a normal part of these investigations,” she said. 
 
 “It is something that we think about a lot and we have to have both the authorities and the human capital ready to respond.” 
 
 Last week, Moran told a joint hearing of the House Armed Services readiness and seapower and projection forces subcommittees that the possibility of a cyber intrusion to either 
 
 “It’s relatively new ground for us. This is the first time we’ve sent a team from our cyber command here in Washington — commander 10th fleet — sent a team over there to pull as much data from that ship as possible, that records data to see if there were any disruption or interruptions that are abnormal,” Moran said. 
 
 “I would also offer to you that just about every three letter agency in Washington, D.C. has looked to see if there were indications of an intent or a potential acknowledgement of a cyber attack. We have seen — I have personally not seen any evidence of that. But we’re not stopping there. The team is in place in Singapore today, has been for several days capturing all of the computer and network information to see if they can find any abnormalities or disruptions.” 
 
 The effort, called Operation Orion’s Hammer, focused on the reported failure of the aft steering mechanism that early reports say helped cause the collision between McCain and a chemical tanker off the coast of Singapore on Aug. 21 resulting in the death of 10 sailors, several Navy officials have told USNI News. 
 
 Much attention has been paid to the possibility that a cyber attack could have been responsible for not only McCain’s collision but also the June 17 collision between USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) and a merchant ship off the coast of Japan that killed seven sailors. While investigations into both collisions have not revealed evidence of a cyber attack, the Navy promised to thoroughly investigate the possibility. To allay future concerns of intrusion, the Navy now intends to build in cyber looks into future accident investigations, Moran said. 
 
 “This is the first time we’ve done this and we’re not stopping just — we’re — this is to try to institutionalize doing cyber as part of any mishap, aviation, submarine, you name it,” Moran told the panel. 
 
 “We need to go look at it as an order of business and not hand wave it to it’s cyber. So that’s where we’re headed.”
– In what Foreign Policy says could be a "startling development in naval warfare," the US Navy is looking into whether last month's crash of the USS John S. McCain, which killed 10 sailors, may have been the handiwork of hackers. Per the Washington Free Beacon, the Navy has dispatched its Cyber Command 10th Fleet to Singapore—its first time overseas—where the team will "look for and assess any anomalous activity that may exist onboard," Vice Adm. Jan Tighe said Thursday. That investigation could take months. The Navy is taking the possibility of its computers being compromised so seriously, in fact, that looking into cyberattacks will now be standard protocol after accidents, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran told Congress last week, per USNI News. Hacking isn't, however, what investigators are looking into in the crash of the USS Fitzgerald, which ran into a container ship on June 17, killing seven sailors. In fact, no evidence of a cyberattack has emerged for the McCain crash, either—Moran says "just about every three letter agency in … DC" has looked into it. There's also the possibility the McCain wasn't the vessel hacked—it could've been the Alnic MC, the merchant ship it collided with, per Breaking Defense. The Navy simply wants to cover all its bases. What's worrisome is that both Navy ships are considered top of the line—meaning if there are problems with those two vessels, questions are now arising about the fleet's ability in general to face down a litany of possible threats in the Asia region. Tighe noted Thursday that the Navy has allotted $1.5 billion to bolster its defenses.