Lockheed Martin Selects Linux for Missile Defense

m3lt writes "Business Wire is reporting that Concurrent announced today that Lockheed Martin Space Systems has selected RedHawk(TM) Linux as the operating system for their United States Army Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program." From the article: "Lockheed Martin selected RedHawk for the THAAD program due to the precision and guaranteed response time of Concurrent's RedHawk Linux real-time operating system. Only RedHawk Linux was able to ensure the high frame rates required in their HIL simulation without frame overruns, thereby ensuring the highest quality of system test."

Comments

Re:Free (not as in free beer) War

[LiquidCoooled]

Unfortunately you cannot have free software if you place arbitary restrictions upon who can use it or what it can be used for.
Its an embedded Operating system for use in a monitor and control system - not unlike the automatic cars we just cheered on around the desert or the bots on mars, just because it may have several tonnes of high explosives taped to its back doesn't make it any different.

Re:Feel any good for building weapons?

[ettlz]

Don't be stupid. The GPL states that Linux may be used for any purpose the user sees fit. That can be good or bad. Things to note:

1. People do bad things using Linux on a daily basis including cracking, handling violent or child pornography, sending spam, and writing unpleasant messages to people.
2. War happens so get over it. Kernels don't make war, human nature and the tendency of agressors to wind up in positions of power do. If Linux provides better accuracy that allows us to moderate destruction and keep it to strategic targets, then that is a good thing.

You really cannot be serious "all the people who ... have taken part in building weapons that kill". They didn't build weapons, they built general purpose software. They can have completely clear consciences about this. Don't let one application of this software politicise Linux or the Free Software movement in this way.

Re:the right tool for the job?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Linux isn't really a realtime OS.

You are wrong. Linux is a hard realtime OS (and you can get soft realtime without making a big effort) when you have the right hardware and the right scheduler. This Linux OS has independent timers and a special scheduling system, which makes it run realtime with granularity of microseconds in the simulation. Now you will ask how I know that... Ill tell ya, I work with this product, as a control engineer, and help desk for this product.

The difference of this version Lockheed purchased is that its not an Operating System, but a full HIL/MIL (hardware in the loop, man in the loop) system, which means the software, the computer, special acquisition I/O cards, the special timer system AND a special set of realtime debugging tools that are the hottest thing available. I could try to explain you what these tools are all about, but i) people would tell Im doin marketing bla bla bla and ii) I doubt you understand industrial simulation, so I must assume you are some student repeating like a parrot that QNX this, vxworks that. But just to prove Im not lying, these tools are able to hot patch a running code without stopping the process (when you have the source available, in C, C++, Fortran and ADA), kernel intrumentation, graphical view from the scheduler taks, execution time of process and syscall, cpu isolation to run a dedicated simulation in a certain cpu, you can monitor critcal vars and setpoints in a GUI, so you can run the simulation and check they are never out of the sweetspot, running distributed simulations in high speed deterministical networks, etc, etc.

But goin back to the topic, these debugging tools are amazing and a great add-on to the package. Im not surprised of the choice, the product is very good. And its something the RTLinux (from FSM Labs) and Wind River versions (of Linux - ya, they are doing linux too, or even its VxWorks doesnt have).

The reason Linux is not so popular is that these guys are really really traditional people, and they dont change very often their tools, its hard to break the stablishment. In the other hand, some simulations users loves using Linux in their simulation systems. Others are using other solutions for years, and dont feel the need of changing them, no matter how painful it is to run old/legacy applications.

So just to finish my point. This is a full simulation system that can do the job even better than other proprietary solutions, and with a better cost-benefit. Its not "clever trick". The people who make this product are not newbies (they are playing this games for decades, check their history), neither their users. They didnt pick up this solution because they are cheap, or they look beautiful, or they like tux. They picked because its the finest one available.

>Something that was...well, designed to do RT, and designed so you can easily take >out all the stuff you're not using (think less room for bugs).

You can do that with Linux OS. FSM Labs has versions that can boot in 300 miliseconds to full operational status and as small as some kbytes. If you use google a little, you will find some harcore realtime systems with linux

> I haven't even thought about mission critical yet!
> I love Linux as much as the next geek, but tools for jobs folks.

You obviously does not work with that.