U.S. Army's Future Combat System Will Run Linux

jkastner writes "In 2001 Boeing was chosen to be the lead system integrator for the Army's Future Combat System. The bumper sticker description of this project is 'see first, understand first, act first and finish decisively,' and while Boeing's official FCS site doesn't have a lot of technical details, but you can find some good information at Global Security. To quote their page, "FCS is envisioned as a networked 'system of systems" that will include robotic reconnaissance vehicles and sensors; tactical mobile robots; mobile command, control and communications platforms; networked fires from futuristic ground and air platforms; and advanced three-dimensional targeting systems operating on land and in the air.' The Phase 2 request for proposals just appeared and the estimated price is $26 billion through fiscal year 2009. The fact that the Army is spending billions of dollars on a project isn't anything new, but a little known fact is that the OS for FCS will be Linux (FAQ 4 here.)"

Comments

money saving technique

[dgp]

I can rent terminator 2 for a lot less than $26 billion dollars. How about $26 billion for global no-cost healthcare and food? THATs futuristic!

Re:money saving technique

[cannon_trodder]

Because splashing £26 billion dollars on a "super-duper" defence system is easier than sitting down and talking to all the other countries in the world to sort out the real problems.

Re:money saving technique

[cannon_trodder]

The US are constantly claiming an attack on their beliefs and way of life. Yeah, it's not a religion but those people in the middle-east are certainly fighting for their beliefs and way of life. And land?? America would not fight to protect their own soil? I hardly think so.

Your argument is "we haven't enough to feed the world so it's ok to blow it on crap". If we invested this sort of money regularly in these countries, they'd feed *themselves*. They *do* have sunshine, soil, water and seed. It's just hard to grow food when your fields have been napalmed.

Re:money saving technique

[BarrettAnderson]

ehem... they're gonna LEARN to feed themselves if we invest in them? how does one invest in these countries?

one way, and probably the only way, is to rid them of horrible leaders, like hussein etc... HE is the one with an economy worse than the state of alaska who is spending most of its money on weapons, not us. Sure, the US spends a lot on the military, but why not? Whether the US participates in the causes or not, there WILL be more wars, and it's worth the lives of 300,000,000 people to develop a good military

Re: money saving technique

[cjsnell]

I'm really getting sick of all this anti-military hogwash that is showing up on Slashdot lately. To quote P.J. O'Rourke:

"Any rich man does more for world peace than all the jerks pasting VISUALIZE WORLD PEACE bumper stickers on their cars. The worst leech of a merger and acquisitions lawyer making $500,000 year will, even if he cheats on his taxes, put $100,000 into the public coffers. That's $100,000 of education, charity, or U.S. Marines. And the Marine Corps does more for world peace than all the Ben & Jerry's ice cream ever made."

Re: money saving technique

[composer777]

Fine, then whoever marked me a troll perhaps could log on anonymously and explain how someone can "earn" a billion dollars? That's not a facetious question either, how exactly does someone "earn" that much money? Unless you count earning as profitting off other's hard work and skimming off the top, which I see no reason to reward. Can someone explain why skimming off the top is a desirable behavior?

Re: money saving technique

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish more people understood basic ecomomics and why being rich is one of the best things that you can be. Barring stealing and other unfair practices consider the following:
You have an orange, and I have a an apple ( or a dollar). You want the apple more than I want the orange and vice-versa. So we trade. The wealth of both of us has increased because we are both better off.
Now consider this. Through my hard work and sacrifice, I have created the most delicious orange grove in the world. My incentive for doing so, is for the joy of it ( maybe ) and to make money at it. My super oranges cost $1 and 1 billion people want one. So I sell a billion of them. We are all now better off because of it. Everyones wealth has increased.
The #1 misunderstanding about money and economics is that if I have more money ( wealth) you have less. That's just not true.
Now, if we lived in some marxist dictatorship where the maximum amount of wealth anyone could have would be $10,000, and the government would take the rest. I might say, screw it. I'm not going to invent my oranges. And we would all be worse off.
Get it ?

Re: money saving technique

[Anonymous Coward]

Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, "Don't let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil- and he's the typical product of money." Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor- your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions- and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made- before it can be looted or mooched- made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss- the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery- that you must offer them values, not wounds- that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of GOODS. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade- with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability- and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality- the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth- the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money- and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it."

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another- their only substitute, demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich- will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt- and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money- the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law- men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims- then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion- when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing- when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors- when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice- you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while your damning its life-blood- money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves- slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers- as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money- and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being- the self-made man- the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide- as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns- or dollars. Take your choice- there is no other- and your time is running out."

Re:money saving technique

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Well, why don't you run for office and make some changes instead of claiming to have all of the answers on Slashdot? I'm sure you could have a nice chat w/ every country in the world and talk every dictator out of developing nuclear weapons in secret, right?

Re:money saving technique

[silentbozo]

We used to encourage industrial and agricultural development. Technical advisors were sent to teach modern planting methods. Grants and loans were provided for chemical fertilizers. But it all stopped. Today, we're content to export food from the US, grown with government subsidies that depress the world price for cash crops below subsistence, rather than have these countries grow their own food. And, rather than set policies that would encourage domestic food production in these impoverished nations, we just cut them a welfare check that barely keeps them above poverty level instead.

And we wonder why they're pissed at us???

Re: money saving technique

[the gnat]

Of course. The problem is that the modern market system often seems to defy the laws of economics. The absurd sums paid to CEOs whose companies tanked. The absurd stock prices for many dotcoms, which made some charismatic idiots far more wealthy than they deserved. The fact that at Enron, the people who did the actual work got screwed, while the people who cooked the books kept a great deal of money.

Personally, I view these as the price we pay for having a market economy (though a reminder of why we need some regulation), and not an indicator that our otherwise healthy system is broken. However, I can understand why some people might feel especially bitter about it right now.

Re: money saving technique

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets add to the quote, same source.

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

I wonder who he would have said he was making Nazi Germany safe for, the Jews? How about fascist Italy: the Ethiopians? Imperial Japan: the Chinese and Phillipinos?

War is merely the continuation of policy by other means. - Karl von Clauswitz, On War, 1832

Politics can provide results that are good or bad. You can use the political system to provide soup kitchens for the starving, or road contracts to people who give you kickbacks. War can be fought for both good and evil purposes. The Axis powers of WW2 fought to build new empires, and enslave millions. The Allies fought defend their people, to free the enslaved millions of the Axis powers, and to restore peace. The view that war is always wrong is as much ill-considered nonsense as the view that anything that the government does is wrong.* (I'll point out that war is usually an act of the government, terrorists and pirates excepted.)

General Butler was entitled to his views, but that doesn't make them correct, reasonable, or authoritative on role of our militiary and the use of our nation's power.

*Are soup kitches just ploys to enrich the food companies, and welfare the landlords?

Bittersweet news

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good news as it means that GNU/Linux will have another set of *very careful* eyeballs looking through the code. After all, it is now a matter of national security. The driver support for robotics and other real-time systems is also likely to improve dramatically.

On the other hand, I think that more than a few hackers will feel a twinge of sadness when they see footage of some people being blown up. Doesn't exactly make you want to point and say "oh look see, that was my code they used to send the `fire' command to that unit..." Especially if it is one of those not-declared-or-debated sort of wars that we seem to be getting into these days.

Re:Bittersweet news

[einhverfr]

Not necessarily, will they release their improvements ?? .. That is the question.

If they don't want to redo all the work the next time they want to upgrade the kernel, they will. If they don't mind passing over that the auditing task to the Department of Redundency Department, they will not release their changes.

Re:Bittersweet news

[tshak]

This is good news as it means that GNU/Linux will have another set of *very careful* eyeballs looking through the code.

Not necessarily. There is nowhere in the GPL that forces you to give away your source to the world - it only forces you to distribute (or make easily available) the source to those that you are selling/giving the binaries. So, unless Boeing plans on giving us their software (ya right!), we won't benefit at all. Rather, all of the donated work is benefiting a profiting corporation without any form of compensation. This is where the GPL fails IMHO.

Re:Bittersweet news

[Jason Earl]

You are right about what the GPL requires you to do. Boeing is going to be required to make the source code for any changes to the Linux kernel available to the DOD, but they don't have to make these changes available to the rest of us. They are also perfectly free to create proprietary software that runs on top of Linux.

My guess, however, is that most of the changes to the Linux kernel itself will make its way back to Linus and friends, and the reason for this is simple. Maintaining your own fork of the Linux kernel is hard, and such a beast would have very few benefits. After all, one of the reasons that these folks chose Linux in the first place is that it would allow them to offload some of their work on the rest of the Linux kernel developers. If secrecy were the primary goal they would simply write their own OS from scratch. What's the point of using Linux if you are going to distance yourself from all of the neat stuff being done by the rest of the kernel developers?

Good - now other services take notice!

[Hao Wu]

This is great for the army, but as we consolidate overlap between services, I would like to see all branches adopt similar platforms (Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard, Reserve Force, CIA, and Secret Service). It would save moneys for the purpose of cross-training and upgrading in the-long-run.

It is the embedded systems

[einhverfr]

If you have ever worked with Platform Builder or Embedded NT (or XP) and compared that to building an embedded system on Linux, you will see that the Microsoft products are targetted at a very narrow market and are not really all that well suited for many things that Linux is in the embedded world.

Windows is currently better than Linux in a few (unfortunatly critical areas), but even that is changing quickly. And in the embedded market, Microsoft's products really are niche products, while it is Linux, DOS, and a few other products that are the best products for most projects.

Of course in general server software, I have to say I *much* prefer Linux. For client programs I use Linux mostly (as well as XP occasionally) but even over the last six months, there have been incredible improvements made in many critical areas. Give it another couple years, and I suspect that Linux will be *the* corporate desktop of choice.

Re:Know thy enemy?

[gmuslera]

Linux is GPL, modifications that they do to specifically linux or other GPL app should be GPL also (at this only means that the source must be distributed like the binaries, no more, no less), but applications that run over all of this don't need to be.

Don't be silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only restriction here is that Boeing should disclose the source to it's client - the US Army. So the Army (as an entity) would have the code. The grunts are going to be the "users" of this system, not the "purchasers". Access rights to the code would be determined within the body that has access to the code - ie: who in the Army sees the code is an internal issue.

If the US army tried to sell this system to it's allies - yes, they probably would strictly be required to pass along the source code.

But then again - they're likely in a position to ignore the GPL if they want given that the code would now be a matter of national security. It would only take a small legal bill to be pushed into law stating that GPL does not apply to military applications - which would probably be easy for them to push through.

Re:It's the end for America

[VistaBoy]

As opposed to the Capitalist Microsoft, who won't give sourcecode to their OS to the US Government claiming it would threaten national security, but will gladly hand the entire codebase to COMMUNIST CHINA. Real all-American apple pie goodness there.

Untrue + Uninfomed

[Nazmun]

Before the economic sanctions + war vs. the USA, Iraq was doing excellently economically and it's people were thriving. They were probably one of the best off countries in the Middle East under Saddam.

I don't like Saddarm but let's criticize him on more valid points. If you want cruelty you can attack him on his tyrannical rule and his version of the Gestapo.

Re:Untrue + Uninfomed

[mpe]

Iraq's economy has been crappy since Saddam came around. When Saddam took office in 1979, Iraq had a good economy and a bright future, but the Iran/Iraq war starting in 1980 pretty much ruined them.

When he came to power he was supported by the US. The US government was hardly unhappy with Iraq attacking Iran. Remember that Iran had just booted out a US backed Tyrant. (Which the US and Britain had installed in the 1950's because they didn't want to deal with a nationalist democratic Iranian government.)

Wonderful news...

[garf]

As someone who works on a large comms/IT based MoD project and who has been pushing linux and open source within the project (watch out a very large Open Source project), this just adds more fuel to the fire.