The reports also cited other factors that contributed to the crash of the USS John McCain, and a spate of other crash incidents that occurred in the western Pacific in 2017: poor operational oversight by the Navy, poor oversight by the leadership of the ships, and also fatigue, which increased the likelihood of crew mistakes.

Frustrations with arguably over-complicated digital systems has been rampant across the Navy, according to internal fleet surveys. “We got away from the physical throttles, and that was probably the number one feedback from the fleet. They said, 'Just give us the throttles that we can use,'” program executive officer for ships Rear Admiral Bill Galinis said in an address earlier this month.

The complaints are nothing new, according to Weston Ross, a postdoctoral researcher studying mechanical engineering at Duke University, who has looked at the design of system on US Navy aircraft carriers. Navy personnel “tend to be a group of people that like low-level technology because it works all the time,” he says.

In an email, Naval Sea Systems Command spokesperson Colleen O’Rourke said the Navy is “driving toward commonality across bridge configurations on surface ships,” which would also make it easier for personnel to handle the systems, and for the Navy to train them.

These issues—safety-critical digital systems that don’t quite line up with their users’ preferences and needs, or ones that their users aren’t equipped to use—pop up often when humans must interact with machines. Boeing, for example, took pains in the 1990s to make sure that the controls in its first software-based “fly-by-wire” system mimicked what pilots had used when the physical yokes and buttons controlled each flight. But pilots complained that Boeing hadn’t warned them about the existence of a software system it built to compensate for a design change in the 737 MAX, the aircraft involved in two fatal crashes that has been grounded since March.