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More on the Swedish Stealth Ship
Dr.Knackerator writes "The BBC is running a story on Sweden's new carbon fibre stealth ship, the Visby. As well as being the first stealth ship, it is controlled by 'state-of-the-art computers using a Windows NT operating system'. 'But Kockums and the Swedish Navy deny it could be sabotaged by hackers and say that even if it did they could fall back to traditional steering and navigation'." We had a previous story about this as well.
Sea Shadow
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Actually, cryptic paint schemes go back as far as the early 1900's in war ships designed to conceal edges and make it difficult to determine which direction a ship may be traveling in. They have been used on and off for years, but most commonly on smaller littoral combat platforms rather than larger ships.
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As well as being the first stealth ship,
No, I'm afraid that that honor goes to Sea Shadow. True, it was only a technology demonstrator, but it WAS the first stealth ship. This Swedish upstart may be the first PRODUCTION stealth ship, but it certainly ain't the first.
That said, lessons from Sea Shadow were incorporated into the Burke class Destroyers. So this isn't even the first 'stealthy' ship out here.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Finnish Hamina-class. Maybe not as radical as this ship, but stealth-ship regardless. And packed with high technology.
So what makes this Swedish ship "first stealth-ship", when there are already stealth-ships in use in Finland? And they have been in use for quite some time already.
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The headline is not quite right. First off, the first stealth ship was the U.S. Navy's Sea Shadow, but it is only a technology testbed and demonstrator. This is the first stealth ship to see operational service.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
You're probably thinking of the Lockheed Martin "Sea Shadow" which was a stealth ship built by the same group that built the F-117 stealth fighter and the SR-71. It was built by Skunk Works in the mid 80's as a test ship to test stealth technology on ships. If you google for skunkworks sea shadow, you should be able to find a picture of it.
No, NT is the most likely OS. Military hardware takes years of design and testing to be put into service. If you look at the computer specs for the newest USAF fighter prototypes, you'll see they have about the computing power of a 486. Once things are certified and stress tested, you don't go changing the design on something that works.
Visby is the capital of Gotland, which is an island off the east coast of Sweden where the (historic) Goths lived. In case you wondered.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
The sea shadow was publically revealed in 1993...the prototype for Visby, the "Smyge", was uncovered in 1991...
Actually, having been in the defense industry, I can say with the timeline this warship was developed that it's entirely probable that it does run Windows NT 4.0. You dont change specs like that on a project of this scope lightly. NT also has been rated C2, in certain specific configurations.
Good? Bad? Evil? Not my argument.
meh.
Hopefully this is the writers silly notion rather than something he was told. A stealth ship 100km away from any navy ship, but running its radar, is just broadcasting its position. (Naval vessels do have radar receivers you know).
Kind of like making a perfectly light absorbing black truck for night usage, then looking around with a giant searchlight!
Actually, you have two planes of angles to work with from the top, and two from the side.
The stealth aircraft have little odd angled "mirror rooms" (for lack of a better words - think a house of horrors hall of mirrors) that temporarily absorb signals, bounce them around a bit and let them out at various angles at various times, which is why they have a signature, but it is a lot like a flock of birds, not an airplane. A ship would probably reflect radar coming from the side into nearby waves and use them for the scattering effect and try to redirect deck waves in a direction other than straight back (thus the non-90 degree angle).
You have to remember that the M16 was a weapon made by a private concern looking to sell it to the military. It was a weapon looking for a problem. Vietnam provided that problem. Then the M16 provided a whole boatload of problems all by it's own, when the Army made it out to be less maintenance than a rock. A lot of early M16 adopters are dead because the damn thing wouldn't serve it's primary purpose, discharge bullets at the enemy.
The M16 was not a government project. Political concerns delayed getting the weapon fielded for at least 5 years, IIRC. Which I think was your point.
HAND.
-Chris