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US Army Spent $2.7 Billion On Crashing Computer
An anonymous reader writes "According to two former US Army intelligence officers, the multi-billion-dollar DCGS-A military computer system that was designed to help the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan simply doesn't work. DCGS-A is meant to accrue intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and provide real-time battlefield analysis and the current location of high-value targets — but instead, it has hindered the war effort rather than helped. Major General Michael Flynn, the top intelligence officer in Afghanistan, says that DCGS-A's faults have even resulted in a loss of lives (PDF)."
Does it run software so complex that modern-day servers can't handle?
Power cycle the beast
Yet more colossal irresponsibility and corruption at the Pentagon in the War on Terror scam. Their needs on the last page seem modest. It's hard to believe how they could not have been served by a few tens of millions of dollars in off-the-shelf equipment and manpower over a few years.
T.E. Lawrence and the Mind of an Insurgent
"Lawrence distilled six fundamental principles of insurgency that even today have remarkable relevance.
First, a successful guerrilla movement must have an unassailable base - a base secure not only from direct physical assault, but from attack in other forms as well, including psychological attack.
Second, the guerrilla must have a technologically sophisticated enemy. The greater this sophistication, the greater this alien force would rely on forms of communications and logistics that must necessarily present vulnerabilities to the irregular.
Third, the enemy must be sufficiently weak in numbers so as to be unable to occupy the disputed territory in depth with a system of interlocking fortified posts.
Fourth, the guerrilla must have at least the passive support of the populace, if not its full involvement. By Lawrence's calculation, 'Rebellions can be made by 2 percent active in striking force and 98 percent passively sympathetic.'
Fifth, the irregular force must have the fundamental qualities of speed, endurance, presence and logistical independence.
Sixth, the irregular must be sufficiently advanced in weaponry to strike at the enemy's logistics and signals vulnerabilities."
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3723/is_200507/ai_n14685818
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In the words of Scotty, Star Trek III: "The more you overtake the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the drain."
The complexity of modern armies is their Achilles heel.
I pictured platoons of soldiers doing crazy things with Internet Explorer in a vain attempt to crash this super-hardened machine.
We all know what the problem is. The system was made by ***** and it gives a **** ***** ** *** every time they ******. If **** made a decent system there would not be an issue but *** could not make a stable system if their life depended on it.
IMHO They should ditch **** **** and use **** instead. It is more stable and reliable than *******.
( This information has been scrubbed by the Department of Homeland Security and is deemed as acceptable for public release. Redacted sections are available with Top Secret clearance only.)
Meantime, the Republicans want to cut *every* social service, but won't cut a single dollar of "defense" spending, which is how the US Army spends more per year ($20 billion) providing Air Conditioning in Afghanistan, than NASA's entire budget.
We cannot sustain fighting three or more Wars (I've lost count), without new taxes. And since nobody wants more taxes, the wars must end. What happened to Rumsfeld promising that we'd get Iraq's Oil, and it would pay for the war???
Cripes we're in a bad situation.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Unfortunately, it's a sad fact that the US military often does not have the option of choosing the best tool for the job: rather, politicians budget for them ridiculous pet projects (from the politician's own home turf, naturally) that is orders of magnitude more expensive than it has any right to be. The military industrial complex is crony capitalism at its worst: buying solutions in search of a problem, and hobbling military expediency in favor of political back-scratching.
As an aside, crony capitalism is not capitalism. It's closer to corrupt autocratic government monopolies. There is no free market involved. It's about which lobbyist can promise the most campaign funds.
I'm not apologizing for what is a 3 billion dollar boondoggle, matched only by the Canadian gun registry (which cost half of your computer system).
However, it is important to not that "off the shelf" aside from toughbooks, is not an option for the military. Clearly they screwed up royally here, but it is reasonable to expect the military's desire to work with proprietary technologies.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Woah! I knew MS was expensive, but didn't know it was THAT expensive... /should have used "M$" // wait.. this is not fark /// slahies!
That $2.7 billion is just what it cost to buy a copy of Windows Vista and put Adobe Flash on it.
Can't wait until the second spin!
RTFA and comments on it. Apparently, the linked article is a pro-Palantir marketing gimmick.
It's terrible that people actually died as a result of shoddy programming but I am not surprised. Having programmed professionally for 30 years now, I can honestly say; management should NOT be running engineering because their priorities are only to get the software shipped on time, whatever the cost while typically, software developers want to get software 'right'
So sad it's come to this
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
It's really easy to produce a system that meets the easy 80% of requirements. It's A LOT harder to complete the job. The 'lives lost' statement is a consequence of 'missed operational opportunities', where the computer is only an enabler. It still takes a human to decide to act on information (in a timely fashion.) I've met very few people who are both trained intel analysts and experienced/competent programmers or system engineers and therefore competent to pass judgement on the implementation of a large complex distributed (and hopefully fault-tolerant) system that must deal with incomplete/inconsistent information and communications problems. (But I've met a lot of military/government people writing requirements who are happy to specify things that are theoretically impossible...)
This reads like someone trying to do 'procurement via public relations,' something that was particularly blatant during the USAF Tanker recompete.
And of course the Slashdot postings are full of posturing based on political persuasion and no knowledge of the actual system or its requirements or implementation.
I'm not defending DCGS-A, I'm just pointing out observations from a career spent doing these kinds of systems in both military and non-military government contexts. I do not have any knowledge of DGCS-A requirements or implementation nor do I speak for anyone besides myself. If caught or captured, my secretary will disavow any knowledge of my actions.
If you RTFA, this appears to be guerilla marketing on part of a certain company that rhymes with schmalantir...
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Every time a Democrat tries to do something about the corruption and fraud committed by military contractors, they get accused of treason loudly by our "liberal media" and the usual right wing blowhards until they get run out of office. What did you think would be the net result of making military contractors immune to oversight? Was the Magic of the Free Market supposed to fix this on its own?
Never mind, you can add the cost to the $14Trillion you already owe the rest of the world
Take Nobody's Word For It.
The cost of the software/hardware is only 10% maybe 15% of the total cost. The rest is the integration cost that the system integrator charges. Booz Allen, Lockheed Martin, Northrup, General Dynamics are famous for front loading a contracts with big name resumes with high salaries, then have in-experienced college graduates do the actual work, but still having the big names charge to the contract, while they travel around giving speeches during conferences at fancy resorts all at government expense.
And the guys who are suppose to review designs and costs are idiots...All they need to do is pass a CBT to get a piece a paper and they are considered Security and Systems Engineering experts.
The biggest problem with Government contracting is they rely to heavily on what paper you have and not looking at years of experience or following up that the big names are the ones doing the work. Just read mandate DoD 8570-1 for proof.
Good Heavens...
https://l3com.taleo.net/careersection/l3_ext_us/jobdetail.ftl?job=208541&src=JB-10095
Windows OS server. Now, given the experience I have running WIndows, there is no way in _HELL_ I would use it in life or death situations.
I mean the largest application domain for windows is playing GAMES, not business and certainly not for combat operations.
These people must be complete idiots.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I used to work for one of the suppliers (the one most "at fault" according to the article, with the shitty code and shitty UI we provided).
Here are some things to consider:
The company's business model was to procure IDIQ contracts...they succeeded for several years by purposefully providing broken bits and pieces, in order to assure that more fixes would be purchased later. It finally caught up to them because you can only pile so much crap on existing crap before the whole thing breaks.
Palantir is great software, but people in the Army don't like it. They think it's pretty with no functionality. They are wrong. It's awesome. There are two problems with Palantir, in that you have to store your data on THEIR servers, and the owner of the company is not a US Citizen. They have some inroads, like the links suggest, but they'll never be able to get the most sensitive contracts because of the US Persons requirement.
DCGS-A sucks because it is closed-source garbage that runs only on Microsoft components, and relies heavily on SQL-server. Plus all the people I used to work with are overpaid self-taught jackasses who got the job because they could code in visual basic and they had a clearance.
In all, I'm glad to see the Army and military in general understand and accept that they are suckers and slaves to politicians and "the free market" mentality of PACs and lobbyists. Too bad this garbage (and even bigger garbage FCS/BCTM that finally got axed last month) wasted so much money in the meantime.
Screw the free market. Time to put all this money into government R&D and churn out some decent software for the investment. The NSA alone has enough talented programmers to make this happen.
Nowhere in the PDF does it claim the DCGS-A's computer faults have resulted in lives lost. The PDF is a request from MG Flynn for more advanced analytic tools because they don't have all the software they need to sort through the enormous amounts of information and make the connections they need to. That's not a fault of DCGS-A, that just means they want more functionality integrated into DCGS-A. Trying to claim he's saying DCGS-A is resulting in lives lost is like claiming someone said Windows is failing because they asked for some custom graphing programs to be procured. The only time he even mentions DCGS-A in his need statement is when he says he wants the new software to run on it. Not exactly something you'd request if you were of the opinion it was costing the lives of your men.
That doesn't speak to whether DCGS-A is a great system or not, but neither does the PDF they're claiming as evidence which is why I'm calling bullshit.
Isn't that what happened in South Park the Movie?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ntr-pw_6C0
Look, I understand it looks like wasteful spending - it probably is more expensive than necessary and a royal pain in the butt to use.
The question is do you want to OUTSOURCE this software to a firm in... say... China, Russia? A breach/takedown of this system would be a total disaster. Even domestic (socialists, please read: "evil") corporations could have a mole or sell out to the highest bidder. And if a firm is marketing itself this way through stories like TFA, we... would you trust them with your military secrets?
Likewise open source, while a nice idea, is totally out of place here. Security through obscurity may not be effective, but it certainly doesn't make things any easier for the attacker. Simply put, the military needs their own system. So while it may be overpriced and often broken, there really is no other alternative.
Everyone knows that computers that are supposed to make war decisions don't work... they can't even play Tic-Tac-Toe
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
For that pitiful sum all you're going to get is a lame version of Skynet. Suspected loss of lives? Phfft! Let me know when the human race is 50% gone.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
They can ask for impossible and contradictory things. Or cooked things. They want things like a secure operating system that can run all their favorite Windows apps. Some SBIRs I've seen are good examples of what I mean. One wanted a working implementation of quantum data compression. A moment's thought was enough to realize that if I could whip up a quantum computer, data compression would be the least of what I could do. Another SBIR wasn't honest. It wanted image recognition, but had so many extra conditions and unnecessary stipulations that only one particular vendor's software could meet the requirements. Of course that software was much inferior to the state of the art. They do this because they lack expertise, and don't know what is unreasonable and what isn't. They tend towards the unreasonable because they know some vendors are trying to rip them off. They also have to deal with blatant favoritism. You wonder who writes some of the crap you see in SBIRs.
The end result is invariably disappointment. The vendor cheats them. Or it doesn't matter if the vendor cheated or not, because their expectations were insane and couldn't be satisfied. Or the whole thing is one big con from beginning to end, with requirements purposely made impossible so the guys with the inside track don't have to worry about any competition, and some sort of acceptance process that will rubber stamp their fakery. All they have to do is generate enough bull to baffle anyone who isn't an expert.
Boondoggle is the word. Despite the cheating and corruption, they have enough successes to keep it all going. But many people prefer to steer clear of the military and their particular brand of insanity. Hard to get any work done when suspicious and demanding military bureaucrats insist on micromanaging you and twisting your work and time towards useless ends they think will make them look better.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I know how the Army writes software, no surprises here.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
if this system resulted in American Soldiers getting killed seems like a no brainer to put a CEO in jail. Lots of theses systems appear to be money making scams, but if there were actual consequences to their failure I bet these companies screaming to waste US Taxpayer money on them would dry up fast.
What is a Knowledge Management SNAFU?
A Knowledge Management SNAFU is when marketing hype sells a bill-of-goods, and "caveat emptor" is a management decision with piss-poor or no technologist review and practical risk assessment (i.e. FBI...). Technology hype always swipes money, but marketing/brokering is often guiltless, because "caveat emptor".
Anyway, there ain't no such thing as "Knowledge Management" as defined by any marketing force in any business.
Where are we in "Knowledge Management" when most have no organizational and operational structure defined? Totally lost....
Without organizational-processes, relationships, and information structure defined, "Knowledge Management" is yet to run to first-plate. The "Knowledge Management" home-run is decades off. Syntax is a swing and a hit. Semantics is a fast ball in flight about to cross home base. The "Knowledge Management" home-run ain't gonna happen with more money attempting to purchase another professionally marketed strike-out queen.
The money is better spent on building the solid foundation for "Knowledge Management."
Anyway, !HAVEFUN!
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
All they need to do is pass a CBT to get a piece a paper and they are considered Security and Systems Engineering experts.
I'm sure I would never agree to pass a Cock and Ball Torture to be considered an expert
Espionage is a capital crime, but one that very rarely involves an actual death sentence.
Not due to any sense of leniency, its due to the practical ability to trade their captured spies for our captured spies.
OK: Microsoft has* spent MUCH more than that on Windows for Workgroups and it's upgrades: NT3.1, NT4, NT2K, NT2K3, NT2K8. (I'll be charitable and not count SPs or the R2's, never mind the desktops.) It took 6 releases to finally get that right. DCGS-A has only been thru 2 -- only 4 more to go, if it's of the same complexity.
....
On a side note, does this not provide aid (if not comfort) to the enemy? If so, isn't that literally treasonous**?
I'm sure it was just a miscommunications in the specs somewhere, though. Those guys that actually died -- I'm sure they wouldn't have minded.
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* And by Microsoft, I mean we the public, since we literally paid for it over time. Where do you think Microsoft's profits come from, the casinos?
** I'm a programmer too. My, talk about bad reviews on your resume^W tombstone
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
I just can't take it. I have to say it. Troll me if you must but all of you "typical Republican" or "Leave it to the Democrats" people are just that. Idiots. You look at the opposing party and shake your head and condemn them for mindless, greedy, morally bankrupt actions as if your party would do any better. They won't. I've sat in Senate Arms committee meetings and heard both parties pander to their own constituencies. They will spend every dime we have buying votes from their own state. There is no long term vision among them.
You blame the republicans because they won't cut defense spending. Well, at least providing for the common defense is a part of the governments clear responsibility. It's only 25% of the budget . Healthcare and pensions make up a whopping 46% of the budget. I'm not sure the Constitution supports that. In fact, the 10th amendment would seem to support the contrary. In fact, for every $1 we spend on the military we spend 50 on welfare (another 12% on top of the aforementioned 46%). Why is the federal government spending money on welfare (see 10th amendment)? So screw you Democrats.
But wait, G.W. Bush and the Republicans had 6 years controlling every aspect of government, didn't they? How much streamlining did they do? Did they cut the budget? No. Screw you Republicans.
In fact, did Reagan get rid of the then recently formed Department of Education? My best friend works for the Dept. of Ed. I can't believe the horrible waste going on there. And what the hell is the federal government doing getting involved in education? That's a state matter if not a county matter. Refrain (screw you republicans and democrats)
But wait, the Democrats (and some of you sub-geniuses on slashdot) want to fix the deficit by increasing taxes. In fact, some have criticized republicans for funding wars without tax increases. But, in 2011 the federal budget was ~3.8 trillion dollars while the income was less than 2.2 trillion dollars. That means we would need to increase our income (READ TAXES) by ~73% in order to balance the budget. THAT's a 73% tax increase children!!! If the average American is taxed ~18%, their new tax rate would become ~31%. Do you have any idea what would happen to the American economy? Worse, we don't get any new benefits from this tax increase and we don't even pay off the debt, we just keep it from getting worse. Oh and those of you who want to tax the wealthy consider that their tax rate would be over 60%. How many wealthy people would simply take their money and go elsewhere at that rate? Remember, that's just federal income tax. Add state income tax, sales tax, property tax. How close to 100% can you get before even the wealthy become poor?
Now some brilliant people like to say "tax the corporations." Well guess what. Corporations aren't people. They are entities. If Exxon makes 100B profit and you tax 50% of it, that's a free 50B in taxes, right? Wrong! Where do you think that money was going to go? Some was going to R&D. You know research and technology advancements. Something slashdotters seem to love and something that benefits pretty much everyone as advancing technology eventually tends to do. Well the rest goes into the pockets of the employees in the form of bonuses and is paid out to shareholders in the form of dividends or price increases. No fair, the government doesn't get that oh wait they all get taxed and what is left tends to stimulate the economy. If you don't believe that last part then you MUST be dead set against any form of government stimulus so you are already saying screw you democrats. In other words, taxing corporations takes the money out of the hands of people who would have paid taxes on the additional income so there is little or nothing or less than nothing to be gained there.
I'm sorry to be such a jerk about this but you slashdotters forgot a very simple saying: "The more you learn, the less you know." Hopefully a few facts, a few calculation
Th army is using this to show where supposed wasted spending went to, as they can not come up with proper paperwork to show where all the expenditures went to, of course backpockets of certain military consultants never show up on the books, but funny enough, if anyone thought in advance that a computer system would end up costing the army this much, even over the course of all these years, they never would have approved it, and would have pulled the plug long ago....the fact is, I am certain the claim is falsified in order to balance out other "missing" records in the books....
So take this headline with a grain of salt.....and for those that doubt me, never doubt someone who has an accountant brother working for the army.....
some of the stories I hear are just mind blowing....!