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Insider's Look at High-Tech High-Speed Navy Vessel
Xidus writes "Computerworld is running an article on the technology behind the US Navy's newest HSV (High Speed Vessel), focusing on interfaces designed to reduce the number of personnel needed on the bridge. Lots of pretty pictures. No word on OSes, although Mozilla is mentioned, and UNIX-ish desktops are visible, along with some nifty virtual-reality tactical displays. Would you like to play a game?"
"Nearly every function of the ship, from navigation and steering to engine and damage control, is conducted and monitored using commercial, off-the-shelf hardware and software."
hmm I guess I've been shopping on the wrong shelves
Does it know how to play tic tac toe?
Here's a close-up look at the ship's cutting-edge IT ...followed by a picture of a strange-looking bald man. At first I thought he was the IT.
Some impressive IT, that, if that's the state of the AI / cyborgs on board.
I bet SCO aren't going to turn up and demand money.
Mod parent up!
The Fire Scout will be flown by a computer operator using a joystick controller in the Combat Information Center
Finally!!!!! A military carreer for the overweight masses of X-box, Nintendo and PlayStation owning couch-potatos.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
["Currently, the USS La Salle has a 3Mbit connection. We think we can get a 6Mbit connection and up to 24Mbit using accelerators," said Dick Pearson, a systems engineering consultant at Dataline Inc.] :p
Yea, i think netzero tried to sell me on that crap about six months ago
You can see the ship from the outside here and here
The ~HSV portage tree!
Hope they have lots of armor around the servers, and a backup bridge.
"uses paperless charts"
It worries me that China is working on an anti-satellite warfare, and the military keeps marching down the GPS for everything road. WWIII could see a lot of pretty hardware sitting at the docks while the navigator runs down to supply to see if they have any "old fashioned" compasses and charts.
Oh well. The military knows what they are doing, right?
I'm sorry Dave I cannot do that...
Given the previous story on increasing virus/worm activity, whether the DOD has any rules concerning the use of Windows in military settings.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Where?
this looks liks windows to me. This even has the windows default titlebar fade action going on.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The Navy is renting this vessel for 11.4 million dollars a year (including operating costs).
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
I'm sure they have old-school backup plans and navigational equipment. The option not to would be total stupidity in an age of electronic warfare.
Also, I hope these servers are protected against EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) bombs.
Life is not for the lazy.
But see, the idea is that (hopefully) other countries will follow suit and build automated, unmanned, killing machines too. Then if war ever breaks out, it'll be our machines against their machines with a bunch of 14- to 35-year-old guys controlling the action from an RTS-style interface. We'll televise the results and both countries will make a fortune in advertising revenue. Boom-pow, everybody's happy!
Reducing the number of people required to man the ship is great and all, but, if memory serves, one of the debates about reducing the number of people required to man the ship is the subsequent reduction in number of people available for damage control. If the ship takes damage and there aren't enough (remaining) people able to control the damage, the ship is even more likely to be out of the fight or even lost completely.
So your argument is what? -- That defenselessness will always lead to peace and never function (as it has historically) as a magnet for risk-free aggression? "Those that will not bear swords can still die on them" (Tolkien)
I am a Nigerian Colonel,... just kidding. I am writing this in the hopes that I might spare you the horror of your own hypocrisy.
Please cease the use of any of the following: Computers, all frequency hopping radios such as a cellphone, any device making use of transistors of any sort, aluminum cans, modern four wheel drive vehicals, any civil project which might have involved explosives (most roads, power generated by dams, and possibly drinking water), weather forecasts produced with aid of any satellites/computers/radar (ie all of them), trauma medicine, some insecticides, nuclear medicine, nuclear power (which provides a major fraction of the worlds power needs), underwater and space exploration, and, of course, any political system that doesn't involve you being the wholly owned an insignificant subject of someone else.
If those pump parts were badly needed in a village important to the people outside of it, they'd have the resources to buy them. And since I don't see you putting your money where your mouth is, feel free to start leading by example we'll follow along at our earliest convienence. It says something that a 9 year old in the US has a great enough availability of resources that he can get a well built in Africa where the native africans can't.
FYI War pre-dates weapons. Weapons were invented to settle wars quicker. It turns out that while a person can beat another to death with their bare hands, it's exhausting, and time consuming.
Maybe the problem is there just aren't enough american nine yearolds. That must be it.
And so concludes this episode of Oversimplification Theater.
The advantages of a dual hull in a ship of this size outweigh the disadvantages. A multihull rocks less in rough seas, giving it a more stable platform for operating helicopters, maintaining satellite links, launching weapons, etc.
It's also more maneuverable due to having its twin screws so widely separated. Forward on one screw and reverse on the other and the ship comes about in its own length (pretty much).
The ship also doesn't need to be ballasted in the same manner as a monohull, because of the inherent stability of its broad beam.
The disadvantages include the inability to right itself if capsized and a more complex compartment layout.
If you check the manufacturer's (Incat) website, they are pretty actively pushing off-the-shelf passenger/freight catamarans to militaries. Only minor modifications (apart from the IT) were necessary to turn a perfectly normal ro-pax cat into the "Swift".
For sure the cheapest way to obtain a new fast vessel class for a navy! Common sense, really: use commodity hardware.
US Navys's HSV 1 "Joint Venture" is a similar arrangement (it's actually Incat's first 96-metre ship, in previous civil life served as "Devil Cat"). Compare to Royal Australian Navy's "Jervis Bay".
Also, I hope these servers are protected against EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) bomb
With everything being "off the shelf" hardware, how much emp it can take is a good question. There are test facilities.
I can understand mil-rad hardened transistors surviving, but all that stuff clearly has to use low voltage CMOS that can be blown if there is a nearby lightning strike.
I think most worrisome is a computer glitch (not to mention a bullet) hitting the right server at the right place to cause the ship to be dead in the water because engine/navigation controls don't work.
If it could bring down an Osprey helicopter, one has to wonder about ships also.
Being the military, they probably (or should) have taken such things into account when deploying the systems.
You also have to wonder how much time they spend patching all the software.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I can tell you from personal experience that they are pretty damned unpleasant in even 3m swells... At least half of the passengers (including myself) quite sick.
This boat is an Incat fast ferry, built in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. Incat have made about 40% of the large fast catermaran ferries around the world.
They used to run an Incat ferry across Bass Strait from Tasmania to mainland Australia. It would get from Devonport (Tasmania) to Melbourne in about 6 hours - the traditional ferries took 14 hours. Quite a difference, and it's really neat being on a boat that size when it starts moving. However, Bass Strait has some pretty impressively bad weather (try looking for Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race to get an idea)... The Incat ferries were just not suited to it (for the general public, anyway).
They can still move quickly if you don't mind lots of extremely sick people on board (soldiers are supposed to be tough, right?). Incat have won (and currently hold) the trans-Atlantic Blue Riband (Hales Trophy) (and have actually won it three times - usually while delivering their ferries!) - with an average speed of 38.8 knots (about 72km/h)
You can see the AOL "Accelerator" in one of the screen shots I think.
I was on it for some experiments in 02 and it was a real impressive boat. The vessel is a proof of concept for what a future command and control ship would be like. Basically the budget is large and they throw everything they can on it to see what good solutions come out.
Not to be outdone the Army also has it's on vessel aptly called the TSV (Theater Support Vessel).
On the HSV the exercise servers/work stations run Windows, if there were "UNIX-ish" systems there they must have been hiding.
The boat itself is sweet, actually very similar to the "Cat" in Maine. That's the ferry from Nova Scotia to Bar Harbor with a top speed of 55(?) knots or so.
The primary role of the US Navy in peacetime is to keep the sealanes open. The only reason you can get those Reeboks for $30 is because the US ensures safe shipping throught the world. Even so, piracy is on the rise since most European nations have killed their navies and the availability of small watercraft in third word countries is greater.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I used to work in military research here in the UK, and worked on a project not *too* dissimilar to the COMBATSS/InfoScene bit mentioned in this article (I probably shouldn't divulge exactly how similar or not, for obvious reasons :) ). At least, from the brief mention in the article, it seems to be a similar kind of system, in principle at least.
Our stuff was written as a kind of proof of concept, with a fairly basic GUI (x/motif iirc), and most of the work being done on the data processing to ensure it was an accurate representation of reality.
we once had a meeting with a team from the US who were working on a similar system to our own, the plan being to see if we could benefit from each other's work. they gave us a demonstration of their product, which initially seemed much closer to completion than our own. it had a beautiful 3D interface (much like the screen shot in the article) and they demonstrated how a user could easily pan round in real time and see what was happening with a simple drag-and-click of the mouse.
then we asked them about how they actually processed the data, as this was the most important part of the system (obviously, no matter how good the interface it's a bit pointless if the stuff you're looking at is just plain wrong), which is where things fell apart a little. the actual backend of their system had hardly been started - the stuff we were seeing was all manufactured data created for demos, which kind of negated the entire point of the exercise from our point of view. they had a much larger team working with a much bigger budget than we did, but had effectively just come up with a nice GUI - and it didn't actually do anything that our basic motif GUI didn't, it just had more colours and more 3D stuff. we weren't really interested after that...
the point being that even in the military, even if something looks great on screen is no indication of whether it's actually any use or not. our system was actually deployed and used (on a testing basis) by the UK armed forces - what became of it since then i couldn't say as i got another job soon after, but it was clear that the US system was many months behind our own in terms of usefulness.
and on a slight tangent...
the whole thing reminds me of the well publicised FIST system that was featured on UK TV a few years back - basically trying to bring the infantry soldier into the 21st century using in-helmet HUDs and super smart targeting/comms systems etc... it was developed at the same place I worked but had so many problems i think it was shelved - after huge spending. but then, it did use windows as the underlying OS (don't ask me why), which for a mission-critical system always seemed a bit... stupid.
I often wonder for some of these things whether they were instigated by military ppl out of necessity or genuine improvement, or by politicians who just want things to look good
All of that technology, to serve what end? Killing people.......As long as there are men making weapons, there will be war.
No military weapons were involved when some islamic terrorists drove airplanes into the World Trade Centers and Pentagon killing 3000 people.
In fact, they didn't even use guns, but "box cutters".
Perhaps a more accurate statement would be "as long as there are men, there will be war".
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Hmmm...but in a world where everyone hates you, and some countries hate each other, what stops (for example) China from making it look like North Korea did it? Or is it just that if someone does it, the bombs that will be dropped will end the world anyway? Is it a good idea to end the world, even if there may be some nuclear missles coming for you?
In a bid to clear to my mind of the cobwebs, I took ~1 year off, and worked as a deck hand aboard a 656 foot shipping vessel (as a merchant marine).
At the time, I was mid-way through completion of a computer science degree, which I am currently finishing. I was completely shocked by the lack of pervasive computing on board the ship - a complex environment, where any and all silicon help could prove to be highly advantageous.
Two newly acquired computers, running NaviSailor were onboard, and provided (what most of my fellow mates/luddites took as) advanced information in a no-hassel manner.
There is a great deal of money to be made in the shipping business. It is a complex and intricate profession, and most of the people onboard shipping vessels exhibit a great degree of perfectionism. Afterall, wrecking a multi-million dollar ship with hundreds of thousands of dollars of onboard cargo would be quite disasterous to one's career.
The long and the short is that these people need attention. Here is a niche market ripe for the taking. Custom software geared towards making watches, navigation, and docking less error prone has yet to be made. All you who complain of a lack of work -- that fattest worms are found only by lifting the heavier stones.
-pararox-
As I understand it, these ships are basically a Faraday Cage to start with. Because of the possibility of NBC warfare, the ships are basically competely sealed. Note that the steering picture only shows computer screens, not windows. There are no portholes, and donly the minimum number of external walkways for mooring etc. All doors are RFI tight. So all you need to do is make all the (many) cable ports EMP proof (not easy, but feasible) asnd the ship is EMP tolerant. You need spares for all the bits outside the shell (CCTV cameras, Antenna amplifiers), but inside the shell, lofe (and war) continues as usual.
EMP is not now a new threat. You can bet the Navy have thought of it.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
You don't have to shoot down a GPS satellite to confuse a GPS receiver. All you need are a couple well-synchronized transmitters with some forged signals. The algorithm used by xntpd/tickadj is sufficient for *introducing* imperceptible drift into the timecode.
Of course, you might have a problem deploying your transmitters near enough to a Navy vessel to be effective, unless you happen to have your own LEO satellites, carrying otherwise legitimate earthbound communication/TV/etc....
-- *My* journal is more interesting than *yours*...
Looks cool. I always wondered why navies never seemed to use multi-hulled ships, given their speed and handling characteristics. I guess in the days when all that mattered was the size of your gun and the thickness of your armour, it was a bit irrelevent.
If the rules are changing and speed/tactical operations are the New Way, I wonder whether high manoeuvrability "tanks" will be back on the agenda as well, then? They were never much good in the old days, when the accuracy of your opponent's gun was so bad that even if you dodged you might take an unlucky hit anyway (when armour would still protect you, of course) but if we're all about agile units able to get in and out quickly and stealthily now...?
Incidentally, am I the only one who spotted loads of cool things about the ship in the original article... except for any offensive capability (other than via aircraft)? If it's a multi-role vessel, you'd have thought it would carry some sort of firepower, even if only for self-defence!
If you'd have to kill me, don't tell me. :o)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
but it loses its high-security status if you install any recent patches.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Would read the article if I could, evidentally slashdotted to heck and back...
... is not a US ship! In fact, it's leased from the Australian navy. Go figure. Of course, this could be covered in the article but see above disclaimer.
As a squid who has actually been on board...and whose command was thinking about claiming the ship as our flagship to replace our old one(Gogo Second Fleet!) One interesting fact: The HSV Swift
Between that, and the fact that there's essentially no armor or weapons, I'd personally prefer not to serve on that ship, but then again the final designs that the Navy would have built would presumably be able to take some kind of beating and dish a bit back out.
The U.S. Navy has a new ship in its fleet that officers say may be the most technologically advanced vessel produced to date, with IT capabilities that are revolutionizing naval warfare and may play a vital role in responding to potential terrorist attacks in the U.S.
Officers would say anything to promote their plans. But how such a fine military vessel can play a vital role in responding to potential terrorist attacks, is beyond me. Terrorists most usually attack by carrying explosives with them, into crouded places, or drive ground and air vehicles into their targets. The one exception of sea terrorism that comes to mind is USS Cole, but the vessel described above would be incapable of preventing the USS Cole bombing the way it happened.
When the military talks about terrorism, I run away. They usually talk in order to keep the money coming in. Otherwise, terrorism is something that secret and intelligent services deal with, not the military. The military is unable to defend against terrorism; it can only defend against visible enemies. Terrorism is invisible, especially if t is low tech.
By the way, does the new vessel use Microsoft Windows ? There was an incident, back then, about a US military ship that went dead because of a Windows network bug that propagated itself to all the ship's servers, causing the ship to be dead for over two hours.
There was a time when knowing how to read charts, use a sextant, and basicly know where the hell you are at in the world with the use of some very low tech tools was required serve onboard a ship but it seems even in the 1990s this true and proven system started to phase out in the civilian circut. I'm not familiar with the current military stance on the subject.
I percieve this technology as being really damned useful. Even back in 1983... I was the only person who could figure out how to use the LOMAR(sp) system to gadge our posisition, but never the less took readings with a sextant. For 10 days our readings were within minutes of each other, the new system proved it self, but was still a good practice in the event the electronics failed.
I'm all for technology. GPS is a wonderful thing! Digitaly displayed charts are much easier to deal with then protractor and compass. Electronic and remote controls I can see as being useful. But all these wonderful tools are dependent on electricity to operate. It's my hope they would see the wisdom of using humans, paper charts, compass and sextant in the event of a catastrophic failure. After all, being military and sea salt water and technology don't mix. When push comes to shove, you gotta fight for flee... not continue pushing the crosswalk button in the hopes it does something.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
a new ship that can take out the swift by the press of a button.... a canoe with an EMP :D
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
In any case, the problem with aluminium is that it is softer and melts more easily, which is also part of what happened to Columbia. There's more on aluminium in ships here.
If you have powdered alumimium (or indeed most metals, including iron) and preferably a strong oxidiser mixed with it, then you can get aluminium to burn. In a thermite reaction, powdered aluminium reacts directly with powdered iron oxide in an extremely exothermic reaction which is self-sustaining. But these aren't the conditions you'd get on a ship under attack.
Realistically, the missile and or explosion would just rip more easily through the softer metal, and any resulting fire would weaken the structure. In a vessel of that size and with the thinner dual hulls, that would be fatal enough even with a steel hull. A ship like this really has to rely on stealth or countermeasures to survive.
The Navy's track trecord with skelton crews and automation is not flawless.
The Yorktown didn't survive a divide by zero calculation.
I like automation and I love computers, but are they really going to have a technically savvy crew? A crew that could fix the onboard systems if they break, not just utilize them while they are working?
I like the idea of some manual controls to get them out of a pinch.
From the article (talking about the unmanned "Fire Scout"):
Here is one hoping, their encryption is up for it, and their SSL implementation is reliable. Otherwise, "man in the middle attack" may get a new meaning and that "another aircraft" may not be a friendly one...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Oh well. The military knows what they are doing, right?
Actually, in many cases they do.
Speaking as an ex-tanker, tank gunnery qualification involves numerous "degraded mode" exercises. Some engagements you have everything- computer, thermal sight, rangefinder, healthy gunner, etc. For others you only have parts of that, or perhaps just the backup optical telescope with an aiming reticule (M105D for my tank).
Very very smart. Then again, I knew a fair number of gunners who *only* used the M105D in every daylight exercise, no matter what they were allowed to use. (It's obviously useless at night) They generally got good scores- you can guesstimate the target distance pretty well and with a bit of windage correction you can get shots off a lot faster than with all the bells and whistles.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
If the rules are changing and speed/tactical operations are the New Way, I wonder whether high manoeuvrability "tanks" will be back on the agenda as well, then?
Okay, so I watch the History Channel and I love Mail Call with R. Lee Ermey. The fact is that there ARE high speed "tanks" of a sort. The army and marines both have light attack vehicles which are fasted and armored, but not nearly as well fortified as a M1A1. The Marine's main assault vehicle is in fact amphibious, useful for beach landings and fording rivers. The Marine's vehicle is also wheeled and mounts a 30 mm gun, much smaller than the devastating gun mounted on the M1A1.
I wish I had links for you, but those types of tanks have been in existence for years. The navy may be behind a bit because with the size and cost of the craft, the development cycle of new naval tech is often a little longer.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
You have no understanding of human pscyhology,
... all i said is, "Americans, use your Technological Prowess to MAKE PEACE, not WAR!" ... but its interesting how so few people actually understand that this is possible in light of the mob rule of 'guns make good' ...
It is precisely this arrogant view, that some people do have an understanding of 'human psychology' and some people do not, which gives us the bigots in command who are writing the purchase orders for more, bigger, massive weapons.
a tremendous ignorance of the world outisde the United States
I actually have lived all over the world, including America, and including places that most Americans would not dare to go. I dare say I'm more aware of the situation than most Americans...
but hey thanks for the free psychological evaluation. i'll be sure to note that you are an expert.
and, for the rcord, i never made that conclusion
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I think most worrisome is a computer glitch (not to mention a bullet) hitting the right server at the right place to cause the ship to be dead in the water because engine/navigation controls don't work.
You mean like the USS Yorktown in 1998?
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
In WW II, several U.S submarines are believed to have torpedoed themselves. One known to have had this happen was the Tang (there were some survivors).
The torepedoes were defective.
Modern torpedoes have interlocks to prevent circular runs; if the torpedo turns through too large an angle (say 300 degrees), the torpedo either shuts down or at least dis-arms itself.
Al Bonnyman
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