Why Did the Missing Titanic Sub Use a $40 Video Game Controller?

A tiny submarine controlled with a gamepad has gone missing after it set off to visit the wreck of the Titanic. People online are obsessed with the Titan, a submersible that vanished off the coast of Newfoundland with five people aboard, including billionaire Hamish Harding.

Reporting since the sub went missing has shown a series of reasons to suggest that the mission—inside a cramped pipe with few amenities—shouldn't have happened. Many are focusing specifically on the fact that the sub is being piloted with a slightly modified Logitech G F710 Wireless Gamepad (MSRP $39.99). 

“We run the whole thing with this game controller,” Stockton Rush, Oceangate CEO, told CBS Sunday Morning's David Pogue in a segment earlier this year. Pogue laughed and put his face in his hands.

“Cmon,” Pogue said. “It seems like this submersible has some elements of MacGyvery jerry-rigged-ness. You are putting construction pipes as ballast.”

Since the submarine disappeared, people have been mocking OceanGate's use of a mid-tier games controller. But it has become increasingly common for serious military equipment, including tanks and submarines, to be controlled using off-the-shelf or slightly modified video game controllers.

The U.S. Navy is currently deploying Xbox controllers on its submarines as replacements for bulky flight sticks used for controlling periscopes and photonic masts. In this case, the Xbox controllers aren’t controlling the whole sub, just a part of it. But gamepads are controlling much more of other military machines.

Controllers are great off-the-shelf solutions because they’re cheap, and younger recruits are already familiar with them. It’s not just submarines. The U.S. Army has used Xbox controllers to maneuver bomb disposal robots. The British military has developed a driverless all-terrain vehicle controlled by an Xbox controller. In Israel, there’s a tank that uses an Xbox controller. 

When the world’s militaries aren’t using a controller manufactured specifically for video games, they’re ripping off its design. The U.S. Army’s M-SHORAD, a combat vehicle, has a beige controller that looks like a beige N64 gamepad. The fire controller for the Challenger 2 tank also looks like a game controller.

Militaries and vehicle designers are using gamepad and gamepad-inspired designs because video game controllers are excellent at, well, control. It’s a ubiquitous design that most of the world is familiar with, even if they aren’t a gamer. We may never know what happened to the Titan, but it probably wasn’t an issue with the Logitech controller. Too many other things can go so disastrously wrong when you’re traveling underwater. A hull breach, loss of fuel, or leak in an oxygen container are more likely culprits.

Logitech did not immediately respond to Motherboard’s request for comment.