entire book - Chris Hables Gray

[ 66 ] The Present
radars; the ship's own position; target and other information from humans)
and distills it into information for the humans and the weapons through a
system of 16 Unisys UYK-7 mainframe computers, 12 Unisys UYK-20
minicomputers, and scores of terminals, run by 28 different computer programs.
The weapons include Harpoon ship-to-ship missiles, Standard shipto-air
missiles (up to 122), and two 6-ton, 6-barreled Phalanx automatic
machine guns that can spit out fifty 20-millimeter uranium-core bullets a
second. The humans can either choose the targets and tell the computer
system to engage them or put Aegis on automatic and it will do all that itself
(Editors of Time-Life, 1988, pp. 94-96).
There are actually four Aegis operating modes: automatic special,
automatic, semiautomatic, and casualty. Only in the automatic special mode
are targets meeting specific preprogrammed criteria automatically fired upon.
Even in this mode humans can manually override the system. All the other
modes have humans in the loop to some extent. However, in these modes
the Aegis system automatically inserts targets into the engagement queue
and schedules equipment for launching and terminal illumination. Trial
intercepts are computed in all modes "and a time of fire predicted" (Pretty,
1987, p. 160).
In an interview, Rear Adm. Wayne Meyer said, "My guess is that in a
Vincennes 1 situation no admiral would ever have given any other ship the
right to open fire" (1988, p. 103). In understanding the destruction of an
Iranian Airbus Flight 655, on July 3,1988, the cause most emphasized by the
Navy was the context in which the Vincennes was operating. The very reason
the Aegis cruiser had been sent to the Persian Gulf was intelligence that the
Iranians were considering using Chinese Silkworm missiles to attack U.S.
ships in the Gulf. Other information indicated that Iran was planning to
strike a major blow against the United States (the "Great Satan") around
July 4. There was also official speculation that the Iranians might arm F-14
fighter-bombers with air-to-sea missiles, instead of the iron bombs that they
normally carry, or use a commercial airliner for a kamikaze attack. Despite
these concerns the Navy did not, or could not, supply air cover to the Persian
Gulf units, so that direct identification of air threats by carrier aircraft could
not take place (Goodman, 1989). There was also the acute awareness of the
Vuncennes crew of the crippling Exocet missile attack on the Stark the
previous year, a major encouragement to be aggressive.
Finally, and most important of all, the immediate situation of the
Vincennes was crucial. She was several miles inside Iranian territorial waters
engaged, with the frigate USS Elmer Montgomery, in a surface action against
a number of small Iranian patrol craft, one of which may have been sunk by
the Montgomery. Despite initial U.S. claims that this battle took place in
international waters, later admissions by the U.S. government in the World
Court, where Iran sued over the incident, and by Adm. William Crowe (who