The Navy’s newest warship is powered by Linux
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
"As the coffin passed each SEAL, they slapped down the gold Trident each had removed from his own uniform and deeply embedded it into the wooden coffin. For nearly 30 minutes the slaps were audible from across the cemetery as nearly every SEAL on the West Coast repeated the act.[8]"
[1] http://storiesofusa.com/images/us-navy-seal-michael-monsoor-...
It was a fun project; since we were able to use the real-time Linux code base which Ingo Molnar and Stephen Rostedt worked on upstream, we spent most of our time stablizing the patches, and fed quite a few patches back upstream to get it into a production-ready state. Anyway, we had 50 microsecond interrupt and scheduler latency using real-time Linux, which allowed millisecond level real-time guarantees using garbage collected java threads.
an anti-ship missile at 2 Mach would move 0.7m during an ms and it wouldn't be a lateral move - sounds like Java has reached the level of getting into fire control systems :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_%28CG-48%29#Smart...
In 3 August 1998 issue of Government Computer News, a retraction by DiGiorgio was published. He claims the reporter altered his statements, and insists that he did not claim the Yorktown was towed into Norfolk. GCN stands by its story.[7]
Atlantic Fleet officials also denied the towing, reporting that Yorktown was "dead in the water" for just 2 hours and 45 minutes.[6] Captain Richard Rushton, commanding officer of Yorktown at the time of the incident, also denied that the ship had to be towed back to port, stating that the ship returned under its own power.[8]
Even though the problem was caused by programming error in the Remote Data Base Manager application and not by problems with the operating system itself, criticism of operating system choice ensued. Ron Redman, deputy technical director of the Fleet Introduction Division of the Aegis Program Executive Office, said there have been numerous software failures associated with NT aboard the Yorktown.
apocryphal: of doubtful authenticity
This bug took down air traffic control computers: http://news.techworld.com/operating-systems/2275/microsoft-s...
That's not so bad. So long as they have the option to skip this week's reboot, this shouldn't be a problem in combat. (They should've randomized the reboot schedule so that an enemy couldn't exploit it.)
It seems you could get close to ensuring such a time would exist by creating constant emergencies for the crew to deal with such that rebooting would be hazardous, and waiting for the reboot-or-crash date to launch the major attack.
Sun Microsystems Inc. SunOS 5.8 Generic February 2000
DST Patches Applied Tue Mar 6 17:16:02 CST 2007
# uname -a
SunOS 5.8 Generic_108528-09 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-60
# uptime
3:36pm up 811 day(s), 17 min(s), 3 users, load average: 0.63, 0.79, 0.74
It's happened to me before.
Go reboot that damn thing!
He's saying, how do you know that the system hasn't acquired some sort of configuration/software/hardware degradation in the meantime that only manifests on boot?
If you don't regularly exercise/test a critical function, then you substantially increase your risk that the critical function will fail when you really do need it.
Q: What's the worst time to find out your system won't boot? A: Right after it crashed.
You are better off with scheduled maintenance periods where you can reboot the server and it isn't critical if it fails. That gives you a chance to correct anything on your terms rather than fire-fighting.
Interesting, I'd never heard of sound-powered phones before:
However many sound-powered telephones are portable (as in, headphones and a microphone set with a long cord that you could walk around in). These portable sets would be quite unwieldy with a growler-style set attached, you'd have to crank throughout the conversation to achieve amplification, and you'd also make each sound-powered telephone set that much more complicated and expensive.
But the reality is that usually volume isn't that bad of a problem. If the circuit is quiet the solution is always the same: SPEAK LOUDER. Eventually you get used to being loud when needed.
I mean, if we're getting into a semantic argument.
"Linux is playing a role of some significance in the latest
ship for the US Navy."I can say this though, I'd love to see the insides of one of these ships.
[1] The top bubble dual 50 cal from a B25 Mitchell showed up once (demilitarized) and I could not convince my Dad to loan me the money to install it in my 1970 Pontiac Bonneville :-(
The long-term ethics of producing open source are fascinating -- you know we're all pretty gross if the NRA is wrong, don't you? About X not killing people, people killing people. 'Cause we brought a whole lot of X, and gave it away, puffed with pride, to people who can name something a 'dreadnought' without it being weird.
If we live in a society where any measure of cooperation with others is subject to such a high level of scrutiny, we are all guilty of every moral indiscretion committed by anyone. Individual responsibility is almost a requirement for the complex and interdependent world in which we exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airst...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deh_Bala_wedding_party_airstrik...
These days, I'm fortunate enough to work on training sims for demining. I'd have to recommend that if you are really concerned about being a potential party to killing, don't worry about it - until you vote. Or maybe even write a letter or do some activism. But the last thing you should do is cripple the tools you make for others to use in some sort of ignoble bid to be moral. That's not moral, it's unprofessional.
[1] The study of history is, to a first approximation, the study of war. I am not conceited enough to believe that my generation is the first one that is living outside of history.
We need a strong military - we just need to stop going to war at the drop of a hat.
I could just stop making tools.
I don't think I'm okay with making wars a clean, professional thing. It should be brutal and bloody and messy at every stage, so we can't isolate ourselves from what we're doing.
If you're making weapon systems and going "Well, I'm not responsible, I just helped make a technology" and the guy firing them is saying "Well, I'm just following orders and pressing some buttons, I'm not really killing them" and the guy in charge is saying "I'm just implementing what the politicians/people want" (depending on how high up the command), who exactly is left actually carrying the price of it?
No, I think I should do everything I can to make sure that we are forced to viscerally feel the terribleness of war when we decide to wage it - not pretend it's a video game.
If you believe that carnality would put a stop to warfare, I think the last couple thousand years of it might disagree with you.
Granted, the sight of carnage can turn the tide of public opinion against a war... that's been the case since World War 1 put an end to the idea of war as a noble game where boys became men. But it's not going to stop wars from being waged, just make the politics of managing them more difficult, and make it more torturous for the soldiers doing the killing. The generals probably aren't going to lose a night of sleep even if people have to hack away at each other with machetes.
My goal it's to End All Wars Forever! (TM), it's to raise the cost of waging wars for a society, so it's something we do less casually.
Do the containers shield against strong EM fields? Otherwise an enemy could detonate a mini em-/atom-bomb close to the target, in order to destroy their operative computer systems. Is that the reason for the heavy metal casing? In that case they probably also used Fiber cables with the lastest known modulation techniques to get (n-)Terabit/s per container. Maybe they even have radiation shielding [1] to protect from inner and outer radiation. This beast doesn't look like it solely runs on diesel, but on an atom-reactor.
from article: Each EME has its own shock and vibration damping, power protection, water cooling systems, and electromagnetic shielding to prevent interference from the ship's radar and other big radio frequency emitters.
I would imagine that would include EMP given the modern threats and US Navy's general understatement of capabilities.
You don't get to avoid the whole balance of power/MAD card because your nukes were used for EMP only.
[citation needed]
"Each EME has its own shock and vibration damping, power protection, water cooling systems, and electromagnetic shielding to prevent interference from the ship's radar and other big radio frequency emitters."
The military is no stranger to EM hardening their systems. They've been doing it since the cold war after all.
[1] https://www.navalengineers.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/2010%...
shitty citation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer
In much the same way that the food one grew might make one party to killing, should it nourish a killer, sure. But that's a bit of a dorm-room realisation: nothing any of us does can be wholly good or wholly evil; rather, we must each strive to do the most good and the least evil within our ability.
> you know we're all pretty gross if the NRA is wrong, don't you?
And elephants are spherical if ducks are constructed of silicon and finely-shredded buts of the Rubaiyat. Fortunately, the NRA's not wrong: it's not the technology, but the people who wield it, which can be a problem.
More realistically, I wonder what the attack surface of a highly computerized, networked ship like this is? What kind of separation can you achieve between the layered networks - would there be systems that are essentially air gapped from one another?
As for the attack surface incoming communication is encrypted a lot these days which severely limits an attackers ability to even get a hook in the system to start with. They also probably isolate the communication systems from an other systems requiring users to input any order, eg vm000123 is running on the gun controllers station relaying firing authorization and targeting which is entered into vm0002020 which manages the gun systems.
I imagine that would take a bit. I also imagine there is a LOT of redundancy.
I wonder what they're doing that needs that much processing power? Or is it that every part of every subsystem has a dedicated server assigned to it no matter how little power it needs, just to stop the possibility of interference?
Java EE?
I asked him how he dealt with failover/etc, and said they used master election, and that it was guaranteed to work, and then proceeded to describe exactly a system guaranteed to fail. He had never heard of paxos, and when i described it to him, he was sure it wouldn't work.
EDIT: Actually, the Zumwalt looks promising this way. Just add two nacelles and a saucer section.
EDIT: The Zumwalt bridge looks promising in another way. (Leiji Matsumoto) But instead of the 3 smaller screens, have a single 30x30 foot screen leaning forward at a 45 degree angle.
So I’d say the question whether the USG will honour such licenses is somewhat moot, as there is plenty of software around without such restrictions.
Jokes apart, almost any organization or commercial project out there which requires a new OS to be built from scratch prefer to use the Linux kernel.
This could open up some interesting potential vulnerabilities, but I'm assuming/hoping that they've thought of that.
Why exactly do we need so many warships and aircraft carriers?
I mean what exactly are we doing with thirteen aircraft carriers that cost a small fortune to run?
The reason extends from matters of strategic planning though. Carriers provide "power projection" capabilities to about 90% of the populated earth.
Power projection is inherently needed for the DoD planning assumptions (which are now, IIRC, to be able to fight and win 1 major conflict while responding to at least one other military contigency). The expected military requirements for those worst-case plans probably involve having at least 3-4 carriers.
However, this is a worst case plan, which means those 3-4 carriers must be available, and on station (or nearby to respond), at all times.
When you include the requirement to maintain/repair/overhaul the vessels, handle training periods for embarked aircrew, training and certification workup periods for the embarked ship's crew, you quickly end up multiplying the ship count you need by at least 3-4.
In this case when they crunched the number I believe that they came to 9-10 to handle defense requirements. And then Congress told them to keep an 11th carrier anyways...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/07/17/why-does-the-un...
What a shame. GPL should have a clause "do no evil".
For example, the JSON license is deemed to be non-Free by the FSF because "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."
I've served on a ship where we had to keep a "fake" target entered into the fire control system at all times, since it would crash if the last target was dropped. That system was our only interface to the torpedoes, so in that scenario we'd be left in the situation of having to wait minutes for the system to reboot before we could launch weapons again. Peacetime or not, it's not a good feeling.
Top all of that with the fact that we have to survive damage from accidents and casualties and not just battle damage. E.g. what happens if a fire breaks out in the port turbine generator and fries the connector wires to the solenoid for an important valve needed to control ship's list and trim? Without the possibility of manual backups we'd possibly be in for a very bad time.
The Navy has a lot of experience with how the oceans and the enemy will conspire against a ship. However well you design your circuits, it's still better to have something available which always Just Works.
Or they needed very heavy shielding, for whatever reason? I'm curious why that is too, does someone know it?
Either that, or we'd need a GPL 4 with an anti-warship clause.
Warships are pretty clearly in the non-consumer market that is expressly excepted from the GPL v3 anti-tivoization clause.
EDIT: In the competition between EMP nuclear weapons and Faraday cages, Faraday cages win. They're fundamentally cheaper tech.