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Swedish Carbon-Fiber Stealth Ship Runs NT
tiled_rainbows writes "The Guardian has an article today about the Swedish navy's new stealth warship, which they claim is the largest carbon-fiber vessel ever built. Slashdotters will be interested to learn that the ship runs Windows NT. The article says 'While the point-and-click system is popular with conscripts, the ship was fitted with a wooden ship's wheel at the insistence of senior officers. If Windows goes down, they will still be able to steer.' Which raises the question: where can I get a USB-compatible wooden ship's wheel for my computer?"
Tradition. If anything navy's love is tradition. I'm willing to be that had a lot to do with the decition to use a wooden wheel.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
This reminds me of another swedish warship which was said to be "a floating work of art and a weapon of war". It was called Vasa. Quoting the article: "...The Vasa sank within one nautical mile of the start of her maiden voyage in 1628 before she even left the Stockholm archipelago..."
I'd imagine that if yo wave enough money at the right person at Microsoft, you'd buy yourself as much support for whatever product of theirs as you liked.
I can't think of a single company that wouldn't keep a dedicated team employed if paid to do so. All you have to do is cover the costs plus some profit - I can't think of a reason not to.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Like hell, you say. Show me one shaft-encoded driving game controller that comes anywhere near the size or strength this would have to be to support the wheel. I agree with you in that the technical principles would be identical, but the scale here would require things to be built on a much larger (read: heavy duty) scale and out of much stronger materials. (substitute plastic with metals)
can be found here.
Back in May 1997, the US fitted the USS YORKTOWN (http://www.yorktown.navy.mil/ ) with NT and it had disastrous results (http://www.gcn.com/archives/gcn/1998/july13/cov2. htm ) . The ship went DIW (dead in the water) for a few hours. This is the worst case scenario for any ship's captain (and their career)...
Guess it took this long to work out the bugs... Not bad - only 7 years!
"Omnis tuus capsa sunt inesse nos"
I'd worry less about it running NT and more about it's structural integrity. They'll soon learn what many automotive enthusiates have learned. Although Carbon Fiber has it's advantages(light weight, looks cool, non-metal, etc), it also has several disadvantages. Carbon fiber tends to be very tempermental to temperature changes, and will crack easily with severe cold/heat. Also, although carbon fiber is fairly flexable, it's still brittle. It's doesn't crack when impacted, it shatters.
NT isn't a current product, how did they get a copy of it. Instead of 2003, or XP.. ?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article states that they had to create new techniques for cutting the material during construction, but if this gets hit with a mine/torpedo/exocet, will it shatter? If not, how would they fix the leaks w/o being able to weld a new piece of steel over the hole(s) to keep it afloat until it makes it back to the shipyard?
Visualize Whirled Peas
The good: A lightweight, stealth ship. I'd love to have one. I have no need for one, but it would be cool. (I'd rather have a lightweight, stealth car, esp. if it came with a retractable 57mm cannon!) Do we have any idea how well CF will really hold up in this case, though? Both in long term maneuvers and under attack by enemy aircraft? What about barnacles? OK, the good we don't know for sure.
The bad: Let's see, didn't the US Navy already experience a problem with an NT4-based ship being dead in the water? And a dead ship can't maneuver. If there are other ships around, that's not a good time to be invisible. (Captain of aircraft carrier: "What was that crunchy sound?")
The ugly (editing): "And if it is detected, the Visby should be quick enough to escape as it is only half as light as a conventional corvette." Presumably they meant half as heavy!
People have been building boats from fibreglass for a long time. There is no difference between working with CF and working with fibreglass - it's just that CF is stronger and more expensive (and thus more difficult to cut).
Also, if you use the technique the Sweedes used (sandwich expandable foam between two CF layers), the hull is alot more buoyant than a steel hull - which means you can change the shape (within reason) to a more stealthy version.
Modification would be a bitch though! If you want to weld a new bracket to a steel hull it takes 5min from the inside or a few hours to do externally. If you try the same thing on a CF hull, it takes a few hours (12?) for the CF resin to go off. Forget trying to modify the exterior hull without a drydock. Also, in the event of wartime damage repairs you can weld a new plate over the hull and have it watertight and you are good to go. No chance with CF - it needs a completely dry environment (assuming you even have enough raw CF & resin in the first place - you can't just reuse old sections)
According to what little info is avialable from Janes The ship is one of two which were initially ordered in 1995. Military procurement being what it is, no matter where you go, the ships were probably designed with NT in mind, circa '95. However, I doubt NT will last longer than the first refit or post-sea trials.
The US and UK navies are both experimenting with a number of computer-control options ranging from MS solutions, to various *nixen. Of course there is the now aporcyphal story of the NT crash that put the USS Yorktown dead in the water. Short answer, it may have been built on the NT platform, but lots of replacement systems exist now and I doubt NT will survive long enough for the ship to enter the active list.
"Being Irish, he possessed an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through brief episodes of joy." -W. B.
I know it's a joke, so yes, except Sweden doesn't have "nukes".
Actually (I'm Swedish) we don't have much of an army, airforce, or navy, at all anymore..
Not that I personally agree to spending the kind of money you do in the US, but the military situation is pretty pathetic in Sweden (although it's been a few hundred years since we were a military power by any standard).
We can't defend our borders at all, and we probably can't wage an effective (defensive/guerilla) war on Swedish soil either (no militia to speak of, laws against owning weapons other than for hunting, etc.).
The cuts in the military budget has been brutal, to the point I was kind of amazed that they've been able to develop this stealth vessel at all (with what money - the entire navy budget?!?).
Without much debate, politicians have been working overtime to convert (reduce) our own military to a few special units (like this stealth corvette thing) - perhaps to be used in some large EU military force.. (Not that I know enough about it to say whether 'tis a 'Good Thing', but I've always considered self-reliance to be important, so.. I guess I think it sucks bigtime.)
668.5
the HMS bork bork bork is a joke... actually all naval vessles made in the last 60 years are a joke compared to the real battleships of WW-II.
That's because they don't need to go in for close combat. Firing massive shells is a relic of the days when naval wars were fought with cannons. These days a carrier would strike your battleship from over 100 miles out and sink her without a single useful shot fired by the battleship. Not to mention that armor is relatively ineffective against many modern weapons that are designed to pierce armor. Thus naval warfare focuses on a different set of abilities:
1. Ability to launch a strike from great distances.
2. Speed to quickly enter and exit a theater of operations (U.S.S Enterprise [CVN-65] did 32 knots, non-stop, around the world!)
3. Stealth to sneak up on a ship without getting blasted from a hundred miles away. (Subs still rule this area.)
4. Screening ships and weapons to shoot down incoming planes.
5. Survivability via ability to float despite massive internal damage.
6. G.I. proofing so that no one accidentally blows up the ship from the inside. (Don't laugh, this happened several times in WWII.)
The truth however, is that any major conflict would probably see a total loss of all seagoing vessels. They'd simply start lobbing nukes at one another until they are all destroyed or capsized.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Only if they've got wifi receivers.
Any known way of externally communicating with that box is a risk, though. Otherwise it's like an isolated network staffed with trusted personell.
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I remember getting an interesting tech support call back in 1998. A naval officer was attempting to get Windows NT Server running and was wondering if we could help. (We were business support and her husband worked for our business.) Apparently all of her regular outlets for support were shut down for the weekend (or maybe it was a holiday, I don't remember) and she needed to get the computers running on time for the deadline. We didn't support NT Server, so I really couldn't help her.
:-) Too bad the Blueridge didn't fail. It might have given the Admirals the idea that NT computers were a bad idea for naval warfare. Instead they had to go and refit an entire ship (the Yorktown) that later had to be towed back to port.
When I passed the story on to coworkers, they didn't entirely believe me. After all, why would the Military use NT computers for mission critical applications? Then about a month later, the story of the USS Blueridge hit the presses. I was vindicated!
With any luck, they've learned enough that the USS Ronald Regan won't be suffering systems failures anytime soon.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The issue was that they divided by 0, and the resultant crash bubbled up and crashed the os on a network controller, in turn taking a whole group of systems down with it. While the proprietary systems triggered the crash, it should not have gone so far, so the OS does bear some responsibility.
This should never have been run on a non-real-time operating system. So not NT, not Linux, not MacOS, etc...
Norway has also designed a stealth missile torpedo boat Skjold
This is a surface effect ship, and you will have no problems spotting it on IR or seeing its wake. But you will have a *very* hard time seeing it on radar at all.
As for submarine sims, Silent hunter II aws released 2-3 years ago. You can play it in multiplayer with Destroyer Command. Play the hunter or the hunted.
The combat managment system here,9LV Mark3E from celsiustech/saabtech, is already in common use. I think they have sold some 50 systems to like 8 or 9 countries and i haven't heard of bluescreen issues yet. Here's a link (in english) to the product. 9LVMK3E
7. note on java support. the software product may contain support for programs written in java. java technology is not fault tolerant and is not designed, manufactured, or intended for use or resale as on-line control equipment in hazardous environments requiring fail-safe performance, such
as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control, direct life support machines, or weapons systems, in which the failure of java technology could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage.
Interesting that they pawn this all off on Java and not anything having to do with Microsoft.
Ask the CSX Railroad company how smart they think they are for using Windows for their signal system? Yes, the same signal system that was off-line for 1/2 a day because a MS virus/worm took the MS Windows-based system down.
I've not read the full details of the big blackout in the NE a year or two ago but so far, I've not seen anything that says that the MSBlast worm did not bring it's LAN to it's knees and cause this. They do say that the monitoring systems message queues were backing up and caused that software to crash. That looks secondary to me since they've not said why it's messaging queues were backing up...
Microsoft is a marketing company first and foremost and so their OS design is forced to follow that line of thinking. Use of their OS's in mission critical situations is the dumbest thing anybody can do IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I guess rather than welding it they'd be using epoxy to repair? At least that's what we do with R/C planes that use carbon fiber (well, usually you replace the carbon fiber completely when it breaks -- not an option for a ship made of it.)
On the topic of tech support calls, I got a call from a ship in the IT-21 project. While we were going through the standard, "what's the IP address of ..." I got a reply I didn't expect:
Me: Ok, now whats the loopback IP address on the other end?
Navy Dude: Uh, that's classified.
There was one guy in our group that had the proper security clearances to work in both the classified and non classifed networks. I know of at least two multi-week trips he got to take on an aircraft carrier. Talk about actually wanting to go on-site for a change!
And I doubt that the wooden ship wheel is USB, NT doesn't support USB.
The same is true of the American forces in South Korea. There isn't nearly enough to stop the million plus army of North Korea - really, they're there to slow down the assault and die. Their deaths would require the U.S. to enter the conflict.
If Europe is serious about maintaining a force that can ensure the sovereignty of EU nations, what they really need is heavy lift capability. Being able to get the constituent forces large enough to repel an invasion to the battlefield requires them to have an infrastructure and vehicles to move massive amounts of soldiers and equipment. He who gets there first with the most usually wins.
NATO understands this. The major contribution from the U.S. will be heavy lift capability. I remember reading a story of how the allied commanders met with the German commanders after WWII to discuss the various battles and campaigns they were involved with. The Americans looked at the battle plan for Barbarossa, and their first question was, "Where are the trucks?" The American commanders were amazed that the Germans would plan such an attack using horse-drawn carts as a means of moving men and material.
As it is, Europe depends mainly on the U.S. as a guarantor of their sovereignty. (I don't think the Poles will depend on the French as guarantors of their sovereignty ever again!) Aside from the use of nuclear weapons, I don't think any EU nation aside from Great Britain has sufficient armed forces on its own to ensure their own sovereignty. As has been mentioned, the need for this "guarantee" is considerably less nowadays with the dismantling of the Soviet threat.
The article also said this corvette would be used for anti-submarine warfare - last I checked, subs use sonar, and are very rarely on the surface in a position to use radar.
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:-( Hope it helped.
Well I have to admit I didn't read this article so I don't know if the article talks about what kind of stealth technology the ship has, but I did serve as a Sub Sonar Tech in the U.S. Navy in the early 90's so I can answer the part about what good it might do.
As you said, subs use almost exclusively sonar to find and track other ships, surface or otherwise. However what they use is passive sonar meaning there are 2 methods for being stealthy.
1. The best way is not to be heard, usually by being very very quiet, though this is combined with tactical use of so-called 'layers' where there are sharp differences in the speed of sound caused by temperature and pressure differences. This will refract (bend) the sound waves and if the difference is extreme enough it will even reflect them (this is similar to the effect that causes a windows to reflect some of the light). That's what subs attempt to do, and it's not really an option for surface ships since the aforementioned layers tend to bend sound downwards such that it favors the subs:
Your typical graph of speed of sound (SoS) vs. depth looks something like this:
\
\
Sound (or any wave for that matter) will bend 'towards' the slower speed (Sonar Techs say 'sound is lazy'). Initially the temperature gradient causes the SoS to follow a corresponding gradient (colder is slower, IIRC 1.8 feet/sec. per 1 degree F difference), and at some point (depending on the temperature conditions) the temperature gradient levels off and pressure becomes the deciding factor (higher pressure is faster). This can even cause the sound to be 'funneled' over great distances as if it were in a tube.
The other factor favoring subs here is that propeller noise (through cavitation) is much easier to prevent in higher pressure water, i.e. deep water.
2. The second method is to disguise your sound, for example by making the sound coming from the ship sound more like a rain squall. There are many many sounds in the ocean, and rain is a pretty easy sound to emulate. We once almost got run over by a friendly ship because of this. They couldn't hear us and and we thought it was rain!!
Hmmm.... I spent a bit too long on this post, gotta get back to work
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence