Windows For Warships Nearly Ready

mattaw writes "The Register is carrying the sanest and balanced article on Windows deployment in UK warships that I have read to date in the public domain. As an ex-naval bod myself we have long considered that this is potentially a REAL problem. The main issues are the huge amount of unrelated code that is imported with the kernel and the need for incredibly fast response times."

Comments

Re:Sortof a Microsoft fanboy, but...

[tomknight]

Well, it looked like you read the article - until you stated that "As the article shows, their main connection is a unidirectional 300 baud ship-to-shore link." The artcle did not state that this is the case for the type 45 destroyers, merely for the Vanguard class subs. It *did* say that the destroyers had many network links and that RN base security can be rubbish (and gave a link to a BBC article on a Sun reporter gaining access to an aircraft carrier - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/5032516.s tm). While I agree that W2k can be hardened when used properly, I have doubts that it's necessarily the best option.

Trident FUD

[DerekLyons]

I cannot speak to the rest of the article; but I will say that most of what it says in relation to the HMS Vanguard and Trident (-II) missiles is nothing but pure FUD (those parts that aren't utter nonsense). The missiles and guidance systems are controlled by a variant of the MK98/1 FCS used by the US for the same purpose - and the only significant difference between the two variants is that the UK version is 'cut down' to handle 16 missiles vice the 24 missile version used by the US.
 
And the 98/1 is incapable of running Windows without a ground up rewrite - it's a (IIRC) 24 bit machine with an architecture that is (to put it mildly) wildly different from a PC.
 
The line "We're starting to search really hard for things to panic about here." from TFA could more accurately be written "We're writing nonsense here without actually having a clue" - which makes one wonder about the veracity of the remainder of the article. Especially since on a mailing list for sailors and naval professionals (of many nations) I am on, many things about US and UK kit are discussed - but the massive reliability issues TFA brings up (handwaves) are notable by their absence.
 
The bit in TFA about paper charts is especially telling - because any experienced and knowledgable sailor knows those charts have been retained on purpose. Charts don't crash - and the vast majority of the time they are more than sufficient to the task.
 
From TFA:

To this very day, RN navigators typically have to track the ship's position in pencil on a paper chart. There is normally no moving-map display of the sort found in every merchant ship - or even minicab. The results of this luddism are often expensive and embarrassing.

More pure FUD - because having a high tech navigation system is no proof against crashing into things. Witness the recent grounding of USS San Francisco - caused by a combination of operator error and a bit of seafloor being less than accurately mapped. (Much of the Earth's water is poorly mapped by modern standards - including harbors!) Equally, consider the hundreds of times a year the RN *does* move in and out of harbor without crashing into things.
 
I could go on - but I can summarize fairly succinctly; The author of the Register article not only appears to know very little about Naval matters, but he appears to have learned what he does know from USENET trolls and Slashdot. The biography appended to the article indicates he spent his time in EOD - not someone I would expect to be knowledgeable about ship operations. It also reveals he wrote a book detailing the problems with the procurement system - whose Amazon reviews show to contain a systemic bias againt BAE.
 
My qualifications? (Since the question will come up.) 10 years in the USN Submarine Service working with the MK88 and MK 98 Trident Fire Control Systems, as well as 30 odd years of studying naval technology and issues.

to be fair to the Navy...

[markandrew]

I used to work in this field (supplying software to the Navy, for use onboard warships), and the one thing I can state from my time working with people in the Navy is that they're definitely more interested in things working than in things looking good. I don't know the background to Windows being chosen, but if it was a decision made by the type of people I used to work with/for (I worked for a Navy supplier, so HM Royal Navy was in effect our client), having fancy popup messages and nice-looking GUIs won't have been anywhere near their top priority. This isn't the sort of thing that gets rushed - it's likely to have taken months if not years to come to this decision. The article's mention of outdated technology is pretty accurate - and it is because that technology has a history of doing the job well. Of course, if the decision to use Windows was made by politicians or economists...

Having said that, while I worked on these projects, at the same agency the FIST project was getting under way (a project to equip infantry with personal computer/weapons systems, with HUD in-helmet). At least in our part of the business, it was a standing joke because it ran on windows (95, I think) and kept crashing (our team was using Solaris at the time).