The critique of VMS is correct, and the general disdain for navy software, appropriate. VMS suffers from a combination of unintuitive UI spearheaded by mouse-on

The critique of VMS is correct, and the general disdain for navy software, appropriate. VMS suffers from a combination of unintuitive UI spearheaded by mouse-only interaction; extreme configurability, which the navy narrows down by requiring that everyone operate it the same way; and being generally slow and buggy. Having said all that, the author is placing way too much blame on the technology. It should be an aid and much less of an impediment, but there is no chance that the crew was operating correctly.