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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?"
US Navy develops new Sasser Torpedo to protect us from Swedish terrorists. Bush feels they are hiding WMD's. Swedish Chef is quoted as saying "We no heeden dur Weaponden den Massen destructnueden. bork! bork! bork!".
I realize you were being cutesy, but making a USB ships wheel sounds about like a one-weekend take-it-apart-and-put-it-together project, starting with a shaft-encoded driving-game controller.
The hardest part would surely be building the binnacle.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Where can I get a USB-compatible wooden ship's wheel for my computer
I doubt it's USB since NT4 doesn't support USB.. :P Probably PS2 or a Serial connector :)
Simon
THe bluescreen sunk my battleship!
Not very stealthy.. all those loud bleeps every time they reboot each hour.
This gives me a great idea for a movie: "Speed 3: Dead in the water".
I think you'll find that the next M$ version of the wooden ship steering wheel will actually require FireWire bandwidth to run...
The stealth effect is kind of ruined, however, when this Swedish ship tries to sneak through the fog at night, but the cook is happily cooking tomorrow's pastries exclaiming "Bork Bork Bork!", which echoes over the waves.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Who knew--a ship that could crash twice.
Corvette: A small, fast warship with light armament often used for anti-submarine warfare.
You're old school? I beta tested the motherf***ing abacus!
IIRC, Microsoft was bound to stop support on windows NT 4. Are there any kind of provisions for systems such as this, which is going to be in service for quite some time? Or will the Swedish Navy be on its own if some glitch appears ?
I know that using an old an proven operation system is better because all major bugs have been either wiped out or referenced, still I'm not sure that using a closed source unsupported OS is the smartest way. But maybe they know better ?
Was probably to be done by a wheel anyway. That it's made out of wood at the request of the officers is probably a nod to tradition.
I'm not a materials scientist, but I would imagine that carbon fibre can burn. A huge advantage of steel is that it may weaken under heat stress, but it will never contribute to a fire, which is one of the gravest threats to a warship in combat.
The British learned this lesson the hard way in the Falklands. In that case the new building material was aluminum, which can actually burn when it gets hot enough. This contributed to the loss of several ships which suffered massive fires after being hit by Argentinian aircraft. As a result, not only in the UK but in navies around the world, new naval ships are built entirely out of steel.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
"Captain, everything is in order; the heads-up display shows nothing but blue seas ahead."
Nope, it'll be bluetooth. Which means it won't work, and people will be able to steal its address book entries... ;-)
"Ah'm sorry, Cap'n, for some reason the ship's wheel has paired itself with my mobile phone instead of the ship."
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
Funky lookin' ship pics
Taipei Times Picture of the Visby.
Detailed Article including Construction Information and many pictures.
Shortly after they installed nt, all the rats on the ship disappeared.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
The boat is named Visby and pics of it can be found here and here /Björn
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"
Excuse my lack of Nautical Terms, but you get the idea.
Navigator: Captain, radar is picking up an iceberg 2 Nautical miles ahead, just off the port bow.
Captain: No problem, that's plenty of time to steer clear.
Captain clicks the navigation display on NT
Clippy: It seems you are trying to steer, what would you like to do?
Navigator: Captain, Icberg 1 mile ahead
Captain: (showing frustration) clicks Steer Starboard
Captain: This should handle it!
Clippy: How many degrees starboard would you liek to steer?
Captain uttering swedish curse words, clicks 10 degrees
Navigator Captain, Iceberg at 400 meters
Clippy: You clicked Turn Starboard and 15 degrees, it seems you are trying to evade an Iceberg. Windows NE (Nautical Edition) has several new features, just for this.
Clippy: Would you like to enable the "Evade Iceburg" Wizard?
Captain: $^@#$#%*, runs up to the wooden ships wheel
Captain: See, this is why the tried and true method works! turns the wheel
Windows NE has detected a new device and is unable to find a driver for it.
Captain: Aha! my son warned me about this, I have the driver right here!
Windows NE: Windows NE has finished installing drivers for the device "Ships Wheel", in order to use this device you must restart windows. Click here to restart, or if you wish to restart later click cancel.
Sharks: Break out the hotsauce fellas, here comes dinner
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.
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
Captain: Fire control, engage hostile target 1004 range 2000 yds with 5 inch main battery.
Fire Control: Sir, unable to engage target 1004 the system has encountered a VB runtime error 91 object variable not set.
Captain: Engine room ahead all full make turns for
30 knots.
Engine Room: Sir we keep getting a RPC failure in the gas turbine controller.
Captain: All hands abandon ship!
Got Code?
During combat it becomes necessary to increase your rate of fire to ensure the destruction of enemy vessels. Microsoft does not endorse the use of this software on fishing boats, pleasure craft, or walruses.
From the Control Panel select "Forward Cannon." Right click on the cannon and select "Properties." From the "Firing Rate" tab make sure the "Fire at will" option, and click the apply button. If the ship does not begin firing type "Regedit" at the command prompt. Under "HKEY_CLASSES_LOCAL_MACHINE" search for "Fire Control" and make sure the is a "Fire Control" entry in the registry. If necessary, load the Forward Cannon 1.3 install CD and double click the fcannon.reg file.
Once the cannon is installed, you may choose to test-fire a round. You will be prompted with a dialog asking if the target was hit. Clicking on No will take you to a web page with possible reasons (non of which will actually apply) as to why the target was missed. Some targets are not compatible with Windows and cannot be hit with the forward Gun.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
From the article:
And if it is detected, the Visby should be quick enough to escape as it is only half as light as a conventional corvette.
In other words, its great weight makes it _more_ likely to avoid attacks -- perhaps by escaping downhill.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
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)
does it have minesweeper?
It's a mine sweeper. I'm sure there's a joke here somewhere..
I know I'm going to karma hell for this joke, but....
In Soviet Russia(socialist Sweden?), Minesweeper runs Windows!
-1, "1337" speak
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
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
Apparently the Swedes did not learn from the US Navy's experience of using NT to run the ship. Not a good thing to be dead in the water because a computer crashed. IIRC, in Microsoft's EULA it specifically says not for use in critical systems.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Stealth is a waste of money for the Swedish Navy anyhow; it seems this ship's mission, like all other seagoing Swedish vessels, is to sail back and forth between Stockholm and Helsinki in order to give Swedish people a place to buy cheaper booze than System Bolaget.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Part of it is the relative quiet in that part of the world. It's one of the reasons that, since 1991, there has been political pressure in the US to move forces from Germany to somewhere else where they'd be more useful. Any power there willing to try to build up forces for offensive operations would likely be unable to hide significant portions of it, and would thus provide time and reason for surrounding nations to match a buildup. Everyone knows it, and Europe is mostly united in its desire to aquire more money instead of more bullets, so there's little reason for anyone to go on the offensive.
:)
Barring a revival of the Russian bear, there's really not a lot to worry about, and besides, you've got the Finns there to sacrifice themselves for your safety (as has happened on several occasions in the past, IIRC).
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
NT is known for freezing for periods of up to 10 seconds (maybe more?) at random intervals, quite probably while it defrags the mess it has got its memory into. The same problem happens with Win2000 and I have also seen longish freezes in XP. Controlling a ship, or anything lese for that matter, needs hard real time.
Not only that, in most countries, evidently not Sweden, the software would have to be capable of validation and verification to a suitable standard, that can of course only be accomplished if you have source. The currently fashionable standard assigns criticality levels Sil1 to SIL4, now NT can't even meet SIL1 (SIL4 is the highest, mandatory in life-threatening situations). Previously, lots of people followed the aircraft industry in assigning levels 1,2,3,4 or A,B,C and D (in these cases 1 or A was required in potentially life-threatening cases). An extra level, Z, was introduced, guess why?
I once upon a time thought that the Swedes were generally competent, however with the JAS39 Grippen, and now this, I think that their defence industry has become a complete joke. I could tell you about their SAAB civil aircraft, fortunately they are out of production now.....
NT is one of the only operating systems the FDA approves for class 2 (and higher, I think) medical devices. It's funny to say Windows NT bombs out all the time, but that's mostly because of driver issues. The fact remains that for embedded/turnkey applications, NT is about as stable an OS as you can get. It got that job by replacing OS/2 (in ATM software, etc) not by replacing a UNIX platform.
Mod me down if you want, but you know it'd be abusive, and this is totally on-topic.