US Military Drones Migrating To Linux

DeviceGuru (1136715) writes "Raytheon is switching its UAV control system from Solaris to Linux for U.S. military drones, starting with a Northrop Grumman MQ-8C Fire Scout helicopter. Earlier this month Raytheon entered into a $15.8 million contract with the U.S. Navy to upgrade Raytheon's control systems for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), according to a recent Avionics Intelligence report. The overhaul is designed to implement more modern controls to help ground-based personnel control UAVs. Raytheon's tuxified version of its Vertical Takeoff and Landing Unmanned Air Vehicle Tactical Control System (TCS) will also implement universal UAV control qualities. As a result the TCS can be used in in all U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps UAVs that weigh at least 20 pounds. By providing an open standard, the common Linux-based platform is expected to reduce costs by limiting the types of UAV control systems that need to be built and maintained for each craft."

Comments

time for a new public licence

[cleveralias]

free to use unless you intend to kill people.

Re:time for a new public licence

[aliquis]

Obama wanted to be able to claim his drones help spread freedom.

What distro?

[MAXOMENOS]

Red Hat Military Edition? Killbuntu? Debian For Drones?

Re:What distro?

[CanHasDIY]

BSD - Blowing Shit up with Drones

Re:.... on their own volition

[pushing-robot]

It's been my experience that drones usually migrate to Microsoft products.

Finally

[gmuslera]

The killer app for linux has been finally released. This will be the year of the linux desktop, or at least the one when it will take off.

Linux is not controlling the drones

[Missing.Matter]

As far as I can tell from reading the report, Linux is not installed on the drones themselves, but is running under the operations control suite. They would be absolutely insane not to be running an RTOS on the avionics of the drones. I do research on drones (no, not the $100 quadcopters you can buy from Toys R' Us) and autopilots, and wouldn't let Linux anywhere near the avionics.

Re:Linux is not controlling the drones

[Charliemopps]

Funny! While growing up my father was in charge of a team of guys that designed and built GMs first electronic speed sensor. Well, I'm not sure if it was their first but it was the first one to go into wide production and was also not-mechanical. He was working so much I ended up in the lab with him a lot. Watching those guys solve those problems is one of my most vivid memories from childhood. They had to babysit me while I played with all their test equipment and answer my silly questions about their project. Later my dad told me that was good for them. If they couldn't explain it to me, they wouldn't be able to explain it to GMs executives. lol

Re:Killer question

[bobbied]

Just init.tab entries.. RunLevel 1 = take off, 2 is cruse, 3 is crash (not that kind...)

Re:free software can be used for evil?!

[CODiNE]

Nonono, Mac OS X is NeXT.

Finally, "kill" or "killall" really work!

[whoever57]

killall -9 "myenemies"

Re:2014 year of the linux des!!!!##^^!@#!@#$

[K. S. Kyosuke]

...the year of Linux approaching your desktop at Mach 4 with all the precision of terminal laser guidance?