Modern warship cost and the danger of cascading failures

Multiple data centres are a major part of a modern warship's cost, even beside the expense of its weapons. The hardware has to survive shock and battle damage, with electromagnetic-pulse protection also considered where its position requires it. Protecting an enclosure does not remove the need to protect individual components because damping and other safeguards cannot be assumed to work perfectly. Computing failures invite a comparison with uncontrolled fire or flooding: danger increases when the crew and installed safeguards cannot contain the damage. A properly redundant combat system should prevent an individual hit from disabling the whole installation. That claim depends on the quality of the design and is not a promise that every warship already meets it. If a vulnerable system cannot contain sufficient internal redundancy, a separate second system is offered as a way to remove the single point of failure.