USN is quickly moving away from INMARSAT. Too slow for our needs today - at this point, only a few ship classes still use it (FFG, some amphibs). Everyone else is using an EHF/SHF link to the Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS) - several geostationary birds parked over the equator that allow T-1+ access. We share that out based on who is in the area - the big guys (carriers, etc) stay close to T-1 bandwidth, fairly typical for a destroyer-size ship to have something like 512 or less. We have several networks that ride over that data path. But that does need a pair of big antennas under gyro stabilization....since the best setup is a pair of primary SHF with automatic failover to the EHF pair (aimed at a different bird).

Their real point is successful intercept of the entire missile body != intercept of the warhead, not that the intercept missed entirely. Of course, the SM-3 system has actually done an exo-atmospheric intercept (failing satellite over the Pacific).... (speaking as someone who actually used to run a ship capable of doing this.)

Great quote from the UK article: "Since buyers are likely to have a lot of disposable income and not much sense...." TFA is wrong - malware is aimed at the Winbloz boxen, by offering a download of a "new iTunes" program. Macs and iPads are not impacted.

At the moment, this is being used as a defense-against-the-user, not against intruders. Problem came up when malware got loaded onto a clean network via a USB drive, unknown to the user. Many of the military networks are set up to protect against intrusion from the outside, with decent firewalls/etc between the internet and the 'inside' network. The USB used by a stupid user obviously jumps the firewall....now the worm/trojan/whatever is loose on the inside. Network policies already say "don't use the same drive at home and at work"...but if everyone followed the rules, we wouldn't have malware....can't easily kill the USB ports since most of the keyboards/mice/etc are USB-only. Essentially, all this thing does is provide a way to sweep the networks and check for compliance. File transfers between classified and unclassified systems are a completely different problem.

I don't work in a building....and the view from my "office" changes depending on where I take the ship. Of course, that also means I eat, sleep, and otherwise spend time in my "office". Hard to get more than 300 feet away without going "glub."

When you get right down to it, rad waste disposal is not technically hard - we've known how for a bunch of years. It is, however, _politically_ hard.

First: the 10,000 year mandatory storage requirement: not driven by science, fact, etc; driven by law. As I recall, there is nothing man-made (not piles of rocks) on Earth that old, but we wrote law to say we had to build something that would last that long. And prove that it would.

Second: If we really wanted to get rid of waste, we could - the oceanic subduction zones are perfect.
1. Shape all your high-level waste into chunks
2. drop it into a subduction zone
3.???
4. in a few years (profit!!) it goes deep into the Earth where it came from.
But, we (the US) have mandated that you must be able to check on your waste storage, ensure it is still there, happy, and no one else took it. So, lots of the good permanent solutions are out-of-bounds.

C. Yucca Mountain: the site was chosen by Congress, without actually completing a 'competitive' review. There were several sites under consideration; Congress picked Yucca, then told the DOE to perform sufficient studies to deem it safe. There actually is some evidence that surface water penetrates to the storage tunnel levels quickly (100s of years). (No, I don't have the link anymore; is from DOE site reports in the mid-90s.)

D. On-site storage: All the powerplants are currently storing high-level waste on-site; not in any 'secure' location. Why? Because the government declared that a high-level waste storage facility would be available in 1996....and yet we wait.

Lastly, somewhat off-my-own-topic: you can't usefully use a nuclear powered ship for electric power generation - a very small percentage of total power generated goes for electricity. It takes far more energy (in the form of steam, to turbines) to drive a hull through the water. Thus, if a hypothetical shipboard power plant was rated at 50MW thermal, it probably only produces 5MW in electrical power. You'd have to completely re-vamp the steam plant to dedicate the entire thermal output to electrical generation.

Disclaimer: Yes, I actually am a nuclear engineer. I've been running Naval power plants for 15 years, and spent a few years doing research on rad waste disposal. Just don't have any of my references handy (something about being at sea.)