One of the things my ETC became responsible for was approving personal electronic equipment for use on board.  Not quite sure how that happened and not the Electrician's Mates?  This would have been mostly "Boomboxes" or cassette players, etc.  He may have been suggested by the Eng gang because he was strictly following (I guess) NAVSEA(?? 40 years) Safety requirements and he'd squirt the external plug jacks full of RTV before stickering them.  After making several new "friends" we got the word to be less persnickety about it.  The issue was safe compatibility with the ship's wiring system and proper, safe grounding. So this commercial besides being a security risk, it could well have been a safety risk (mounted on a pallet??).  On the exterior of a ship with specific "stealth" design features.

Reading more up on this, I'm not surprised a not ship's company member spotted it and questioned it.  I would have expected it. Homeported in Yokosuka, we'd also have shipyard availabilities in Subic (not these days of course) for exterior maintenance, gear work, we'd have MOTU assistance on particularly wonky gear, any or all of which I'd expect to spot it.  They had to run cabling, add other gear - extenders, etc.  This wasn't a DIY vcr to tv on the mess decks.  And they swap Bue/Gold crews.  The Goat Locker should have expected it to be discoverable.  Maybe had they played the Welfare and Rec/Morale side openly, some sort of accommodation might have been developed (sometimes "unofficial" command participation can do things.  "Shocked, shocked I tell you!").  But this has OpSec, electrical safety, fire safety, penetrating the skin of the ship? issues. Looks like the whole Chief's Mess is compromised to some extent.

I've been out for awhile--retired in 2005--but I'm still working for the Navy as a civilian.

Here's the thing about Chiefs--there is an incredibly rigorous, complicated selection process for making Chief (E7) in the Navy, and while mistakes get made--it's a human system--they're not made very often.
In my 20 years, I saw two Chief selectees that probably weren't the best choices...Two.  And that doesn't account for personal animosity, which I definitely had.

If you make it past a Chief's selection board and actually get to put on anchors, you're pretty much top notch.  Not just in your field, but against everybody else that's up for it.

What is shocking to me isn't that a single CMDSC displayed such poor judgement--I'm shocked that every other Chief in the mess went along with it.  Not something that I've ever seen before, or even heard of.
Having said all that--not my world.  I never made Chief, so wasn't privvy to a lot of their inner workings until after I retired.

Probably more a factor of arrogance than stupidity, or at least equal amounts.

I agree.

Nurses are OK.  Clerks in non combat areas OK.  Otherwise no.

The simple fact that most if not all of that Mess was in on this deception, and that not a single Chief thought twice about it and tried to correct it, is depressing to me.  Because all that does is further destroy the hard-earned respect and excellent reputation the Chiefs before us handed down to successive generations going back to 1 April 1893.  To make matters worse, Chiefs are supposed to train junior officers (which in the Navy goes to O-4) on how to do their jobs the right way, and that's kinda hard to do when you have E8s/E7s behaving like this.

JOs don't forget shit like this, and they grow up to be officers who then don't trust the Mess to guide them correctly on enlisted affairs and mission completion.  And officers who aren't trained correctly can very quickly fuck shit up.  But when this happens, the Mess will have no one to blame except themselves.

LOL - If they can see the WiFi signal they can literally see your ship.

Especially with the spoken, out loud, policy of women and minorities receiving promotion preference.

In 50 years when current capabilities are declassified, people will be amazed at what can be today.

And ESBs

Supposed training and experience in Naval Intelligence and IT...Yikes

While I don't necessarily disagree, this is a character issue more than any inherent gender issue.

They merged the EWs into the CT ratings.

"EWs do it with frequency!"

In general terms. A cmc who has an unsuccessful tour is removed from the navy. They cannot go back to their old rating and are no longer assignable as a CMC.

So regardless she’s out.

Also, guilty pleas at courts martial nearly always include a waiver of the right to contest administrative separation.

Yes, the court martial punishment was only a reduction in grade, but the effect is probably to strip her of most of her benefits including retirement.

Ah ok.
Literally never heard of that before. I think we had one visit out in Yokosuka when I was there once but nobody knew anything about them.

This has nothing to do with her being a woman. The vast majority of misconduct in the military is committed by men.

There are shitbag women in the military and shitbag men. It’s not related to gender in my experience.

That.  Just from what's already been declassified, I'm in awe.  Something like Rhyolite, with modern signal processing algos?  

What's the radiated power on a typical 5Ghz Wi-Fi router anyway, and how does that signal correspond to things that ELINT etc platforms are supposed to be able to see?

what about side lobes or superstructure scattering of the main uplink RF?

Hold up. Do you think that because your phone or laptop can only pick up a wifi signal from inside the house, something like the RC135 can’t detect it from across the ocean and vector in a missile/bomb truck on it?

Wow, I had no idea. If that holds in this case it wasn't just a slap, it was a punch. I went looking, she enlisted in Aug 2002, making her retirement eligible now. If that holds and she loses her retirement she's just lost hundreds of thousands in lifetime annuity.

Worth reading the entire article in the OP. Long and very detailed...she has it coming.

Maybe. When I served on the Mount Whitney and the Arthur W Radford forty years ago you didn't see any nonsense like this from the Senior Enlisted.  Maybe you are right and the male sailors are just as bad as the females now. It's pretty sad.

I actually just looked it up (all court martial results are published), and it looks like they didn't address the admin sep issue -- so she might get to retire, she might not.  Hard to tell, and adsep info isn't published as its privacy act protected.  

Forty years ago, Sailors didn't get in trouble?  What Navy were you in?

I joined the Navy 30 years ago and I can absolutely tell you that 30 years ago they certainly did get in trouble.

https://www.twz.com/sea/the-story-of-sailors-secretly-installing-starlink-on-their-littoral-combat-ship-is-truly-bonkers

Now granted, I am not a ship captain, but in my uneducated opinion I'd assume almost crashing the ship is what got him relieved, not having a scope on backwards. But I'll defer to you.

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-navy-fired-captain-didnt-fix-steering-problem-near-miss-2024-9

It also sounds like he got fucked by big navy based on this article, but there may be missing details.

Yeah I wonder what the full story is here. It says he sent multiple casreps in, requested the contractors go to sea to complete the work and the Navy said no. Supposedly he said it was beyond his crews ability to fix... What exactly did they expect him to do?
It does also say that the correct procedures during the refuel were not followed, so there's that too.