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Navy Plans To Use Xbox 360 Controllers For New Periscope Systems Aboard Its Submarines (go.com)
According to ABC News, the U.S. Navy is planning to use Xbox 360 controllers to operate periscopes aboard its most advanced submarines. High-resolution cameras and large monitors are replacing the traditional rotating periscope in the Navy's Virginia-class subs. While they can be controlled by a helicopter-style stick, the Navy plans to integrate an Xbox controller into the system because they're more familiar to younger sailors and require less training. They are also considerably cheaper. The controller typically costs less than $30 compared to the $38,000 cost of a photonic mast handgrip and imaging control panel. The Xbox controller will be included as part of the integrated imaging system for Virginia-class subs beginning with the future USS Colorado. It is supposed to be commissioned by November.
You're laughing, but that 25k (nominally) pays for the following to not happen:
I have a 25 dollar Logitech joystick. For reasons I'll not go into, it's plugged into something that displays the nominal joystick position on a screen. Once every week or three, I come in to see the joystick sitting dead center but the position display showing it's full-tilt back and to the left because their the joystick, the USB controller it's plugged into, or the kernel module that talks to it hickuped. I nudge the stick with my carefully calibrated index finger and it rehomes itself and the display goes back to normal.
For what I'm doing, it's a nuisance that's to be expected with cheapo toys that use a plastic comb to interrupt an LED and two photodiodes to make an incremental encoder in the two axes. If it's got a million-dollar photonics mast plugged into it, I might spend some time and use multiply-redundant potentiometers with noise-immune readout circuits to give absolute positions. And I'd spend some time and energy doing all the engineering design, and testing, and etc etc to prove that the finished article won't hickup like that for the life of the device. It might cost my customer about 25k per unit to have that level of assurance.
I've never served aboard a US submarine, but I'm guessing that if seawater is splashing around in the bridge enough to cause corrosion problems in an Xbox controller, they're going to have worse problems to deal with.