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Air Force Orders Up A Custom Windows Monoculture
Soulfader writes "It seems that the Air Force has not learned from the Navy's folly in single-source mammoth contracts and their attendant problems, and is now working on something similar with Dell and Microsoft. Particularly interesting is the article's assertion that the Air Force is 'fed up' with Microsoft OS problems--but not enough to switch to something else. Instead, they're going to be getting a custom 'solution' of Windows products specially configured for their use. Is this the ever-hoped-for 'good' version of Windows, or more along the line of the sucks-in-new-and-interesting-ways version of Highlander II?"
I've had to put my 6 year old on her own machine because her kiddy games makes Windows unstable, but my wife and myself both run tons of "mainstream" software, ranging from Doom to UT to banking software to Eclipse to video editing software.
My machine doesn't lock up and it doesn't crash and neither does hers.
If the Navy gets a cut of Windows with all the games cut out and they remove the ability for the field user to install the junk apps, they might have something very useful (in a work environment... not for home users)
Agile Artisans
It's worth noting that massive amount of Air Force computing needs are not "critical shit". There are an awful lot of desktop machines running basic office apps to fill in reports in triplicate, make requisititons, do accounting, and all the other "needs" of any bureaucratic system.
Of course there are a lot of desktop apps too, but the Air Force does run a lot of critical shit. However, most of those servers run some form of Unix or a mainframe OS. Some run Windows, but those are not the big ones that need lots of speed and runs millions of database transactions per day.
The Air Force is Microsoft's single largest customer, according to the speech Ballmer gave to us about a year ago. It is no wonder that the only way not to have a Windows desktop is to be a developer for a Unix system. As a whole, the Air Force is dead set on having a single sign-on web-based portal system (ASP), using Active Directory to run all the communications.
Not only are they moving toward locking the whole Air Force into proprietary Microsoft technology, they are consolidating services into a single point of failure. If a terrorist could take out a single data center, they could essentially take out the whole Air Force. Yeah, the planes might be able to fly, but where would the generals get their information? How would mechanics keep track of what needs to be done to the thousands of fighter jets, making sure that routine maintenance is done on time? Military hardware takes a beating, and computers track all that stuff. One dirty bomb. One pickup truck full of fertilizer. It could disable "the greatest air force on earth."
No, I will not say which datacenter I am talking about, I do not want Ashcroft's goons to drag me away to Guantanamo ;-)
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Blah, blah, blah. You talk a good line of shit, but, alas, that's all it is: shit. You have no idea how the military's tactical computer systems work or you wouldn't have spewed that odiferous blather. Give your anti-Microsoft zealotry a break and quit making up stuff in order to sound like you know what you're talking about. I know that you don't and you know that you don't.
You may be a troll, but I'll bite. First of all, I am not anti-Microsoft, I am anti-monoculture. If the Air Force picked Red Hat as the desktop OS of choice, I would object. Same with MacOS, FreeBSD, Solaris, whatever. Diversity is key.
"The military" is a broad term. I have been working in Air Force IT for over four years now, developing database applications deployed world-wide for a variety of tasks from maintenance to intelligence. Notice I make no claims about the Army, Marines or Navy. Only the Air Force, where I know first hand how things work. I know how the pieces of the IT puzzle fit together, and I am upset by what I see. All of these critical database systems that handle the Air Force's data are consolidated in a few locations. Yes, a single truck bomb could severely cripple the Air Force. If you are so smart, you tell me where to detonate it.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
The military plans so that there is no single point of failure.
Yes, in some ways, but in others they do not. I don't know about the other branches, but the Air Force is pushing for consolidated IT. For example, the application I currently work on runs on a server in a building with about 500 other applications. Not all are critical to day to day or combat operations, but enough are that a single terrorist incident could cause catastrophic loss of mission capability. Sure, we would be able to fix it, but it would take long enough that terrorists or foreign governments could attack in the window of opportunity and have better chances of succeeding.
Couple that with the fact that countries such as China are training teams of hackers to wage computer warfare, and maybe terrorists don't even need to detonate a car bomb to take our systems out.
The military have a joke that if someone took out the Pentagon they would be doing them a failure by eliminating a lot of red tape. They won't relly completely on anything. Datacenter get destroyed and they will work around it.
That is a different thing altogether. If the command and control was taken out, we have backup plans (e.g. NORAD) to take command. Besides, most mission critical systems are not located in Washington, D.C. There are a few data centers scattered around the nation, and any backup command center would still use the same data centers. That was my point, although I agree with what you said.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Well, where I have worked had several hundred Linux desktops rolled out to several hundred engineers (and not the kind that know how to use computers, only custom applications) and it was support by just a few people with no problems. OpenLDAP, Samba, NFS, NIS, etc, etc, are all free, open, configurable, and time tested approaches to managing large numbers of files/computers/users. Have I personally done this? No, but I talked with the guys that did and they had more problems from all the Windows boxes on the network spewing viruses than they ever had with the Linux boxes (the Windows boxes were managed by the Windows guys, different group). Oh, and they managed over 3,000 Linux servers with very little effert. They could drop a new rack of 40 in place and have it running in a day (usually before lunch). The biggest problems with running Linux in large numbers is that you need to know what you are doing (and not try to integrate with an existing Windows network/server design. Windows doesn't play well with others).
Space for rent, inquire within
I have had some experience with military procurement. It is scary and has nothing to do with logic. The people who do the purchasing are not in the military. They are career civilians. The military officers who oversee them only spend a few years in that capacity before moving on to other posts. They have no real opportunity to institute reforms even they are the ones affected by the purchases. The civilian purchasers develop (I believe) unethical reletionships certain prefered vendors. I've also seen a tendency for government emplyees to avoid taking responsibility for anything. I assume that this has something to do with the way blame is passed around. Furthermore (and possibly due to responsibility avoidance) the military generates a huge amount of rules that must be followed to the letter. This is done mindlessly. If at some point there was an incident involving a Delrin part, then Delrin might be banned from all future milspec parts. The amount of money that an item costs means nothing compared to the need to satisfy paperwork. And speaking of paperwork I doubt that and Linux distributor can hold a candle to Microsoft when it comes to filling out the endless reams of paperwork required to contract with the military. It's just insane. And you have to know all of the bizzare customs they have. So, in short, don't expect military procurement to make any sort of sense until such time as the entire system is overhauled.