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Comment by mkhalil | Hacker News Reader

I also am one to agree that I think this is a great step forward with maybe trimming off our huge military expenditures, particularly ones that come out as "leaks" because they are so embarrassed of them.

I'm sure the U.S. navy will be taking a look at the hardware and maybe even flashing their own firmware on them, lest we open ourselves up for a catastrophic backdoor.

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> I'm sure the U.S. navy will be taking a look at the hardware and maybe even flashing their own firmware on them...

Doubt it. If Lockheed properly addressed IA during design review, focus will be on the host, not the controller.

In the overall cost of the periscope, I'd be surprised if the original $30K controller was even 1% of the total. It's still $30,000 saved, but in the scheme of things this sort of economizing is not going to have any impact.

What's more important is they found a more familiar, intuitive, hence better controller device. That it was also much cheaper was just a little bonus. If the savings in training hours are to be believed, that will be a much greater savings than the cost of the hardware.

It is not about the 30k$, I guess (around 10 subs, so circa 300k$ savings is not a bug thin for the army), but the spirit is the key, as the mindset will spread, and can potentially lead to huge savings.

It also makes maintenance cheaper over time, that $30K controller is going to cost a lot more to fix should it malfunction or get damaged than replacing a $20 game controller.

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