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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."
So we like big arms companies now?
M M M M M MULTI-KILL!
I wonder if the selected distro includes tic-tac-toe ?
liqbase
Red Hat Linux, then Red Flag Linux, and now RedHawk Linux. What next, Red Light Linux bundling a GPL alternative to Leisure Suit Larry?
hmm, Linus Thorvalds to the rescue! No killing people with the Linux kernel, please!
--- Eat my sig.
I hadn't heard of RedHawk Linux until this news blurb, so at first I thought I had read it as "RedHat" and just about choked on my coffee!
It looks like the military gets better frame rates running Doom 3 under Linux also. :)
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
Now managing, configuring and upgrading missile system will be so complicated and time-consuming that missile-based wars will become essentially impossible ! Three cheers for Lockheed-Martin and Linus !
Linux will be used to *test* the system not run it.
"Lockheed Martin will use RedHawk real-time Linux in hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation testing of strategic missile defense subsystems. HIL simulation is a critical product development process that provides for thorough testing of components in a virtual environment in which other subsystems are replaced by mathematical models."Well, Linux can now really start targeting Redmond...
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.
liqbase
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:
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.
Right... but somehow, I'm afraid of hippies shouting "make bzImage not war".
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
You are entitled to the source code to the missiles that just landed on your head under the terms of the GPL?
Hardware In the Loop testing is where a missile is put basically in a 3 axis gyroscope mount so it is able to maneuver freely. In front of it is put a projection screen where RADAR images are being projected. The seeker on the missile then sends a signal to the fins to move but instead of moving fins that signal is hijacked and an algorithm figures out how the missile would have rotated in space and instead rotates the gimbal (the gyro mount) instead. A computer program tracks how the missile would have really moved in space. A RTOS comes in handy for these kinds of simulations. HWIL testing is an important step between pure software simulation and firing the actual beast because you can start to see lags in the system and test indvidual subsystems non-destructively without ever firing a missile.
-everphilski-
And the tree-huggers reminding us to all "make clean"...
sig?
That would not be a good thing. Let's see where it would lead...
#1 : All military contractors and personnel would suddenly stop contributing to any OSS efforts.
#2 : Any non-popular group would then be given a "free for non-(non-popular group) use" statement / clause.
Fundamentalist Christians could be placing a "free for non-gay use" clause in their releases. African Americans could place a "free for non-white use", Lesbian Americans a "free for non-straight use," and Left-Handed-Americans a "free for non-right-hand use" clause.
Slippery slope, my friends. Free is free.
Oh, and wouldn't you prefer the finite number of tax dollars available to be spent as wisely as possible? Sorry... I forgot that Anonymous Cowards typically don't pay taxes.
> 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.
First point. THAAD is actually "Terminal High Altitude Area Defense" and is being developed concurrently between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
I worked on the THAAD project for Raytheon from 1999-2000. Here is the unclassified description of how it functions:
Upon radar detection of an incoming missile (such as a SCUD) the THAAD missile is launched against it. Unlike earlier technologies for missile defense (such as the PATRIOT*), the THAAD missile does not contain any explosive warhead, instead using the available space and weight for a more sophisticated guidance system. The THAAD warhead contains an active guidance system that will seek the incoming missile and collide with it, destroying the incoming missile with its own warhead.
Earlier technologies relied on a wide-area warhead that would be detonated once the missile was within a certain diameter about the target, relying on the concussion wave and shrapnel to destroy the missile. This was unsatisfactory as in some circumstances the missile would destroy only the target's propulsion system and allow the undamaged warhead to fall to the ground, resulting in collateral damage.
*The PATRIOT missile was not designed as an anti-missile weapon, it was in fact designed as an anti-aircraft weapon, but was retasked during Operation: Desert Storm to shoot down SCUD missiles. It was considered very impressive that it worked at all, considering it was designed for use against much slower-moving targets.
You may treat all information submitted above as wild speculation.
Strawman argument. Missile defense is not protecting us against any of those things in a realistic sense.
Missile defense has not proved anything near the ability to prevent an attack by multiple advanced missiles, particularly those which would use even relatively simple anti-simulation decoy techniques.
For the newbies to missile defense, "decoys" are typically large mylar balloons which inflate in space to create radar targets as large or larger than a warhead. They are extremely cheap and light, so anybody able to make an ICBM can afford to put many decoys in their missiles. "Anti-simulation" means you put the warhead in a balloon, or in some other way make it look very similar to the cheap, plentiful decoys.
Now your putative missile defense system has to somehow deal with dozens of things that all look like cheap decoys, but only a handful are actually warheads.
The missile defense folks will hem and haw about how their system is not meant to deal with a sophisticated enemy, which is code for "we think North Korea can't really make fancy warheads that maneuver like we think Soviet warheads can" but ignoring the fact that mylar balloons are not sophisticated. Or that it is only meant to handle single isolated launches, like might occur by "accident." Or they'll say they are only deploying the system to provide the opportunity for more realistic testing. Or that they really need a launch-phase system (before the decoys get a chance to deploy), which needs to be very near the launch site, so you need to post sailors or soldiers very near North Korea (because you can't get close enough to China or Russia's launch sites without invading their territory) whenever you think a launch is probable, and keep them ready enough to respond in minutes.
As opposed to sitting around in Alaska waiting for a single warhead, with at most a few decoys, to come sailing up from North Korea, and hoping that North Korean missile designers never heard of mylar balloons. Then you get to see if the *many* billions of dollars we've spent on this system pay off or not.
The guy I reported to was one of the smartest people I've ever met and fortunately for the project, he was responsible for the software. He'd come into our offices (the only people that worked in cubicles back then were HP employees) and see how we were doing. He'd frequently find us waiting on a compile as the machine was hard pressed to have 30 or so developers using a single computer to compile with. It began to bother him quite a bit because he'd read the design spec which called for the system to handle a couple of 1000 radar returns each minute. As he was technically capable, he sat down one day and wrote a radar simulator that fed radar packets to a "processor." All the processor did was count the number of packets it received and all the radar simulator did was send empty packets. Not a very complicated piece of software but it was enough to show the hardware wasn't going to meet the spec. It couldn't do that simple task, let alone process the packets, draw positions on the controller screens etc.
He wrote a memo and sent it up the chain. A week passed and no response so he wrote another memo saying the same thing but he changed the memo title. The new title was "I know you're out there - I can hear you breathing." That got his bosses moving and the problem was addressed.
I agree that point (3) is a problem. Points (1) and (2) are technological issues that can be solved with time.
I think the "cruise missiles and container bombs" argument makes no sense, because these two delivery systems do not have the same potential as ICBMs. A cruise missile is basically a jet aircraft, and we already know how to shoot those down. They also take a relatively long time (i.e., hours) to arrive at their target, giving plenty of warning. As for container bombs, you could use them to attack a city, but you could never get one close enough to a hardened military installation to do significant damage. It would be an effective tool for terrorists, but totally worthless as a military strike. And it would be almost impossible to co-ordinate more than a few simultaneous container-bomb attacks.
By contrast, ICBMs can be used to attack any target in the world, take around 45 minutes from launch to impact, can be used in co-ordinated attacks of unlimited size, and cannot be stopped with existing technology.
The promise of missile defence is to make massive nuclear attack obsolete as a weapon of war. I think that is a worthwhile goal.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Gyroscopic mount: typically, the seeker for the missile (radar, ir, video, whatever) in question is mounted on the gimbals. The rest of the guidance section is in a nearby rack. The reactions of the rest of the missile (fins, motor, body) is simulated in the kinematic codes running on the HWIL simulation computer(s).
Projection screen: a jargon problem. For Radar: an array of radio frequency feed horns are mounted on a wide hemispheric frame about 50 to 100 feet in front of the seeker, which is at the focal point of their output. By varying the frequency, power, and polarity of the energy from each feed horn, one or more targets can be represented. The simulation computer usually takes care of the radar pulse delay to represent range. Simulated changes in target angle are handled by moving the seeker on it's gimbals.
IR projection: a "hot" video display, to my experience using an led array no bigger than a laptop display a few feet in front of the seeker. Video: to my experience, either a large front or rear video projection system, or a tv display a few feet in front of the seeker.
Fins/vectored thrust: in a HWIL system, the aerodynamic controls are usually simulated. The control computer intercepts the commands from the guidance section, and feeds them into the kinematic software for use in the virtual environment.
Movement in 3D space: Why move the seeker at all? Because it's cheaper than moving the display mechanism (whether radar, ir, or video). The seeker is built to withstand intense shock and vibration, small, and usually weighs anywhere from a few tens to hundreds of pounds. The display system is usually custom built, touchy, and too unwieldy to move in angle or rate in degrees per second needed to represent how a target might present itself. Depending on the scenario, the simulated target may well start 'waaaaaaay off to the side of the seeker's POV. So, throw the seeker on gimbals and move it.
Before moving into an expensive HWIL lab, the guidance software, or guidance computer and s/w, will have been put thru it's paces on a computer-in-the-loop simulation, where nothing moves except logic states. HWIL is the final stage of integration testing before trying the whole missile out on a test range.
Just between you, me, and the lamp post, I believe Lockeed won the THAAD contract on price, and the Army has been paying the price for what, twelve years? If (my previous employer) had won this, I assert we'd have a deployable system by now.
Luke, help me take this mask off