B-2 Stealth Bomber Gets Upgrade, Joins the '90s

WmHBlair writes "Flightglobal has a report about the upgrades being made to the B-2A Stealth Bomber, which include Pentium class processors, JOVIAL code rewritten in C, and fibre channel hard drives. The Register, as usual, makes light of this event with a tongue-in-cheek news item noting that the upgrade drags Stealth Bomber IT systems into the '90s."

Comments

Bitchin'

[Etrias]

Can't wait to see it fire up and have the screen print out: It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Re:Bitchin'

[Atario]

More likely "It is pitch black, which is correct for a Stealth Bomber.".

Re:Bitchin'

[mangastudent]

Nah, even more likely:

It is pitch black. You are the grue.

Don't you mean?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

...upgrades ... include Pentium class processors ... "drags Stealth Bomber IT systems into the 90s"

89.999997612?

Re:Don't you mean?

[chrispatch]

I am Pentium of Borg. Division is futile! You will be approximated.

Re:Don't you mean?

[nmb3000]

Haha.

I swear, if I ever work at Intel I'll be digging up the PaintShop Pro file for the Intel poster I made a while back and printing it full size.

Although I imagine it's something of a sore subject, so maybe not a good idea :)

Re:Don't you mean?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

That's wicked funny. How long have you been saving that?

Re:Better functionally quaint than gee-whiz and oo

[SomeJoel]

It's true, if some guy's carrying around a large handgun on his hip, you're less likely to comment on his mullet.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[ArsonSmith]

"Ultimate reliability" and "Pentium class from the 90s" just doesn't really go well together.

Pentiums are well suited to a stealth craft

[Anonymous Coward]

Pentium 4 chips and Athlons just get shot out of the sky by heat seeking missiles.

Re:Not surprised, even if I am amused

[ArsonSmith]

Yea, at least dealing with the private sector and private contracts you don't have to worry about any of those issues.

Re:Security by oldness

[TeknoHog]

This is an interesting approach to security, use machines so old that no one can crack. Maybe that's why the Russians still use vacuum tubes in MiGs.

When the only tool you have is a hammer, every cracking problem looks like a vacuum tube.

Exactly right. It's obsolete

[heroine]

They should have written all the flight control in Ruby & made it an AJAX web application that runs on Firefox on an iPhone. That would make it zillions of times faster than that old C code & Pentiums, right?

Re:There's a Reason for That

[xSauronx]

Fix it? The parts were bought from random people on craigslist ;)

Re:Better functionally quaint than gee-whiz and oo

[nine-times]

Well, yeah, it's fine for them to be using old hardware. It seems like it's an embedded system that probably has lots of specific requirements, and they can't afford for there to be a BSOD. So it's only smart to use stuff that has been around for a long time and is known to work without any delays or bugs.

Still, it'd be awesome if you could fly one of these things with a Wiimote while rendering the the outside world with a modern game engine. I bet you're going to ask "What's wrong with the '3D graphics' of real life?" Well, the textures are nice and high-res, but dammit, there aren't enough lens flares.

Regarding that Mars lander...

[jd]

How are you expecting to Martians to communicate with it, if it doesn't have Bluetooth support, eh? Hadn't thought of that, had you?

Re:Regarding that Mars lander...

[gbjbaanb]

Dude, its on Mars. Everythings infrared.

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[Fear the Clam]

If JOVIAL is anything like ALGOL 60, it's arguably a better programming language than C.

It's HAPPIER.

well it's not as if they want Vista on it

[advocate_one]

You wish to drop the bomb: Cancel or Allow?

Re:There's a Reason for That

[fyoder]

Oughta run the latest version of Ubuntu on the latest processor from AMD. Going with OSS, if there's a bug which causes a nuclear disaster, the open source community will have a patch out within 24 hours.

Re:Exactly right. It's obsolete

[smoker2]

Well if it's running on an iphone, at least it'll know which way up it is !

Re:cue the fpu jokes

[Dogtanian]

Anyone have an over/under on how many Pentium FPU jokes there will be?

Exactly 24.9999998999997...

Sorry, but you walked into that one :-P

yeah but this is more fun

[SEAL]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F00f

Watch the whole plane crash as its pilots desperately try to reboot the fly-by-wire system.

Re:yeah but this is more fun

[totally bogus dude]

I couldn't for the life of me get NT working on that box ;)

Undoubtedly, but that has nothing to do with processor bugs.

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[Profane MuthaFucka]

>South Park Lemmiwinks game.

The B-2 is operated by the Air Force. Surely you must have been thinking of the Navy when you wrote that comment.

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[Nethemas the Great]

They were playing "Global Thermonuclear War" back in the early 80's on much less than Pentiums...

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

they're niggers!

Re:There's a Reason for That

[hardburn]

Oh, god, I can just see Clippy trying to help out:

"It looks like you're trying to barrage the enemy line. Would you like to read historical documentation on battles involving barrages?"

Or maybe UAC will kick in:

"Howitzer is trying to launch a shell. Allow or Deny?"

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

You were, before the reset.

Re:element of surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting this from my B-2, you insensitive clod.

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[Shakrai]

Port-a-potty: check
Cot from Wally World: check
One .45 caliber automatic: check
Two boxes of ammunition: check
Four days' concentrated emergency rations: check
Antibiotics: check
Morphine: check
Vitamin pills: check
Pip pills: check
Sleeping pills: check
Tranquilizer pills: check
Miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible: check
$100 in rubles: check
$100 on gold: check
Nine packs of chewing gum: check
One issue of prophylactics: check
Three lipsticks: check
Three pairs of nylon stockings: check

Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.