Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson has said the U.S. Navy did not find evidence that cyber attacks caused the separate collisions of two guided-missile destroyers in the Pacific over the past three months, Military.com reported Thursday.
Richardson said in a Facebook live-stream call that the Navy has investigated the cyber warfare aspect of the collisions involving USS John McCain on Aug. 21 and USS Fitzgerald on June 17.
USS Fitzgerald collided with a Philippine-flagged container ship near Honshu, Japan while USS John McCain underwent a similar incident with an oil tanker off the coast of Singapore, prompting Richardson to order an operational pause for all Navy fleets worldwide.
The service branch has begun to review collisions and mishaps in the past decade to identify possible systemic causes of the recent accidents, the report noted.