How To Make 96,000lbs of WWII Machinery Into High-Tech Research Platform

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 15, 2014 @10:38PM from the what's-old-is-new dept.

coondoggie writes "The US Naval Research Laboratory is taking a 96,000-pound piece of World War II-era machinery and turning it into a test-bed for leading edge communications and radar applications. The equipment was originally known as a three-axis tilting platform designed to simulate the movements of a large ship at sea. It was built by Westinghouse in 1943 as a gun platform requiring only primitive motion in roll, pitch and yaw, according to the Navy Lab. Specifically it was used as a mechanically operated deck with a heavy machine gun director and a machine gun mount installed. Gun crews and director operators could be trained on the platform under conditions that approximated the movements of a vessel at sea."

1 of 150 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

I'll bet... by Cornwallis · 2014-01-15 22:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

In 1943 it probably cost a few hundred thousand $ to build - if that.
Today's "updates" will cost $4.3 billion, be obsolete 6 months before completed, take 6 years, be the subject of multiple disciplinary hearings, congressional investigations and DOJ corruption probes, won't work, then ultimately will be outsourced to China for completion prior to being abandoned for a new technology.