But the Navy last fall learned a difficult lesson about automation: The very
information technology on which the ships depend also makes them vulnerable. The Yorktown
last September suffered a systems failure when bad data was fed into its computers during
maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, Va.


The ship had to be towed into the Naval base at Norfolk, Va., because a database
overflow caused its propulsion system to fail, according to Anthony DiGiorgio, a civilian
engineer with the Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center in Norfolk.