Land Warrior Army Suits Simplified, Linux-ized

Dosco Jones writes 'The Army is drastically simplifying the makeup of its high-tech soldier ensemble, the Land Warrior, in an effort to make the system less prone to failures and easier to use,' National Defense reports. Defense Tech continues: 'After the last version of Land Warrior failed reliability tests earlier this year, the Army switched gears and decided to make the system less complex and modify the hardware to make it compatible with the new [and controversial] Stryker infantry vehicle. Changes include a more simplified data bus and a Linux-based operating system, as opposed to Windows. 'Evidence shows that Linux is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to Linux-based OS', says the program's manager, Lt. Col. Dave Gallop."

Comments

You know what they say about army equipment...

[Dr. Bent]

...it's all made by the lowest bidder. And by that criterion, Linux is the clear choice.

Land Warrior

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that nobody's managed to explain to me is how your average 11 Bravo is expected to carry an extra fifty-odd pounds of electronics.

Land Warrior? I'd settle for a fucking infantry boot that wasn't the height of 1950's technology.

Re:Is this really *that* good?

[Voivod]

Parent is dumb. Embedded systems are not designed like that system on your desktop. Typically in embedded applications you have a watchdog timer which will reboot the system within ms of the system locking up. With Linux this will take just a few seconds, and the system was running in RAM so no need to worry about disk corruption.

Re:Scary,,,

[3Suns]

The rigors of combat? Hell, it doesn't even survive the rigors of internet browsing or playing DVDs. Forget active combat!