Work Progressing on Army's Future Combat Systems

El_Oscuro brings us a Washington Post update on the progress of Future Combat Systems, the U.S. Army's Linux-based operating environment that has been under development for several years. The project, which currently surpasses 63 million lines of code, has received criticism for having a scope greater than that which the Army can manage. Since the program's inception, integration of commercial applications has increased the amount of code, but has also saved the developers time and money. "Boeing and the Army said they chose not to use Microsoft's proprietary software because they didn't want to be beholden to the company. Instead, they chose to develop a Linux-based operating system based on publicly available code. Boeing's Schoen said that it is designing software so that if soldiers lose their connection, the software will automatically "heal itself," retrieving the information within seconds without rebooting."

Comments

And Appropriately

[AndGodSed]

Yes. It does run Linux.

Re:And Appropriately

[dave1791]

The job of the army is not to "prevent" future combat, but to prepare for it and execute if if needed. The diplomatic job of preventing it falls to... well, diplomats and politicians.

And I hate to say it, but we do live in a Bismarkian world where military strength, like economic clout, is an asset on the scorecard of diplomatic maneuver. If you are poor and weak, nobody will listen to you. If you are rich and weak or poor and strong, people might listen. If you are rich and strong, your diplomats carry the most clout.

Re:And Appropriately

[casi0qv]

I'm not worried about our diplomats carrying insufficient clout. I am worried about the victims of our numerous pointless wars in the past and present. I do not see the world as a giant game of monopoly where we are endlessly seeking to increase our power and wealth. The world is full of people who all share a common desire to live a happy and fulfilling life, yet millions die for the pointless greedy ambitions of a few powerful men. As people gifted with technical skills we cannot let ourselves be blinded to what is going on in the world, for an opportunity to play with expensive toys and use our skills to develop weapons that kill innocent people. We cannot afford to have a frail grasp on how our actions fit into the bigger picture when a few lines of code can be part of a machine used to murder for political ambition.

Re:And Appropriately

[casi0qv]

The United States has a corrupt government, where people are lied to and brainwashed into supporting wars for the personal ambitions of a few wealthy men, not the benefit or defense of the nation. We are ALL responsible for letting this happen, and have a responsibility to stop it. Not just the corrupt diplomats and politicians, as we are electing them and allowing them to do this.

Re:And Appropriately

[kong74]

Money is not a physical thing, it's a political, or a social thing. And that's why physical thoughts on growth don't help with your question. Second: money was not "invented", and it doesn't serve the humans. How comes the money when it was not invented? I try a very short explanation: Money is the inevitable result of a special social relation, the private property. How that comes to be the basis of every social relation, the dominant thing in what humans have to do with each other, is a question far beyond the scope of an internet-forum, it's the whole history. But the important thing to understand is that private property is not the thing that you own, but the relation to others enclosed in that you own the thing: the thing is exclusively under your command, what you want rules the thing, and that you own it excludes everybody else from using it without your accordance. Where everything is the property of someone, the individuals walk around and behave like their volitions living in the things, it's their relation to exclude each other that appears to be the things attribute to be the property of someone else. But that's not the end of the story, because humans need to exchange things, they are not stand-alone systems. And it's not at the beginning of the history, that they begin to compare different amounts of different things under one aspect: what is their value? In other words: what, of the same, are these different things? or: how much property of mine is the same as how much property of yours? Value is the extent of property, regardless of what one ones: shoes, computers, tables, etc. And these things are really the same only in one respect, and that respect becomes effective behind the consciousness of the humans: they are an amount of averaged social, abstract work (or do you say labor? - I'm not native English-speaking). This extend emerges as a result of competition, everything gets compared to everything, always interested to give as few as possible and get as much as possible. But nobody can see any amount of averaged social, abstract work, it's a social amplitude, not a physical thing. Nobody is conscious of that amplitude but everybody is interested in things owned by someone else and has only the means of what he owns himself to get these things. Everybody is interested in setting some things he owns the same as some things someone else owns. So they compare it to a third thing: weed for example. Mine is 2 weed, yours is 4 weed, I give mine for half of yours. That's the beginning of money, in very short terms. And money doesn't serve the humans, most humans know it the other way round: as prices they can't pay

Re:And Appropriately

[vbraga]

When the only thing you have is an army, all problems looks like wars.

Call me utopian, but if you - and the biggest player of our democracy game - keeps acting in a Machiavellian (or Bismarkian, as you say) our future has no space for peace. If you don't keep your ideals in sight, the only thing you're left is the (international) politics game.

Yes, I understand your pragmatism and having people like you is an asset at any negotiation. But, please, just remember that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is an unalienable rights of man, as your Declaration of Independence states, not a right of the americans, but of man. So, let the other countries do it too.

The only winning move is not to play. Not to play the Bismarkian game.

Re:And Appropriately

[c6gunner]

The United States has a corrupt government

As opposed to what nation? North Korea? China?

This "corrupt government" nonsense really gets to me. The US government is quite possibly one of the least corrupt governments on the planet, yet you act as if you're currently under the boot of the Fourth Reich. Give your head a shake!

Re:And Appropriately

[c6gunner]

I do not see the world as a giant game of monopoly where we are endlessly seeking to increase our power and wealth.

That's your own problem. Why should the government let your naiveté influence policy? If you want to stick your head in the dirt and ignore the rest of the world, fine, but the rest of us will go on seeking to constantly increase our knowledge, wealth, productivity, and power. Maybe you've got some metaphysical touchy-feely answer as to what the purpose of life is, but for me, and billions like me, it's achieving as much as I possibly can today, and improving as much as I possibly can tomorrow.

The world is full of people who all share a common desire to live a happy and fulfilling life, yet millions die for the pointless greedy ambitions of a few powerful men.

That's because the world is also full of people who all share a common desire to be the alpha-male, and control what everyone else does, says, reads, eats, fucks, and even thinks. And those people would put a serious hurtin' on sheep like you if you didn't have a military and police force to protect you. Whether you like it or not, it IS a dog-eat-dog world out there. Playing ostrich isn't going to change that fact.

Lines of Code?

[PinkyDead]

Now there's a useful metric. It says so much about quality and reliability.

Re:Licensed to kill

[Gilesx]

So what are you saying here? That violence was "pointless" and "ineffective" when dealing with Hitler?

Re:Insightful?

[AciDLnx]

>> The software in question will never see the public Internet because it's all classified Secret and above.

This is incorrect. I've worked on FCS / SOSCOE. Specifically, integrating the current FBCB2 systems into FCS. Nothing was classified Secret. It was all just FOUO.

FCS Should be Cancelled

[tjstork]

The thing about FCS is that, when early versions of it have been tried in our present war, soldiers have found that the extra computerization is often not worth the weight of the computer. It seems to me that if the Army is going to be spending billions of dollars developing anything, they ought to be looking for a way to detect hidden explosives. FCS doesn't do a damn thing to aid against insurgencies whose primary weapon is the booby trap.