Work Progressing on Army's Future Combat Systems

El_Oscuro brings us a Washington Post update on the progress of Future Combat Systems, the U.S. Army's Linux-based operating environment that has been under development for several years. The project, which currently surpasses 63 million lines of code, has received criticism for having a scope greater than that which the Army can manage. Since the program's inception, integration of commercial applications has increased the amount of code, but has also saved the developers time and money. "Boeing and the Army said they chose not to use Microsoft's proprietary software because they didn't want to be beholden to the company. Instead, they chose to develop a Linux-based operating system based on publicly available code. Boeing's Schoen said that it is designing software so that if soldiers lose their connection, the software will automatically "heal itself," retrieving the information within seconds without rebooting."

Zombie

[Krneki]

Damn, I was looking forward to zombie soldiers.

OR

[AndGodSed]

General: "Where are my tanks!?"
Tech Officer: "Coming sir, we're having some dependency problems..."

Re:OR

[XnPlater]

Tech Officer: "Anyway, now that we're compiling them with -O3, the enemy won't stand a chance, sir!"

And Appropriately

[AndGodSed]

Yes. It does run Linux.

Re:And Appropriately

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys would be appalled at the bad software that's in this thing. From a bizarrely dysfunctional display system to a completely unstable and ever changing target OS. Yes, it runs linux but Boeing has decided that linux isn't good enough and is rolling out their own operating environment that we're all forced to use.

Blecch. Blecch. Blechh.

Oh, and the whole thing hinges on futuristic radios that don't work.

Yeah, I think I've been working FCS for too long. Sigh...

Re:And Appropriately

[cshotton]

Be VERY afraid. FCS/SoSCOE (System of Systems Common Operating Environment) is your worst, worst nightmare. It all squats upon an antiquated CORBA infrastructure and is the most bloated, incredibly poorly engineered PoS that has ever been birthed by an aerospace contractor. And I should know. As chief architect for the Common Operating System component of DARPA's J-UCAS program, we fought Boeing long and hard over their insistence that this architecture form the basis of the J-UCAS software infrastructure. While the idea stems from the long-running quest within the DoD to develop a true cross-service network-centric software architecture, it was built by people who completely ignored the last 15 years of lessons learned about large scale distributed systems from the Internet. It has multiple single points of failure baked into the architecture, requires outrageous amounts of RAM and CPU power to run (making it incredibly unsuitable for embedded systems use), and is licensed in such a way as to make it virtually impossible to obtain and modify without Boeing's involvement.

Furthermore, Boeing has expressed in public on several occasions that they intend for SoSCOE to make them the "Microsoft" of military systems. They are purposefully engineering a system designed to cement their position as a sole provider of OS components for network centric platforms. Nice bastardization of the open source components they are using to say the least.

Having tried repeatedly to get 2 SoSCOE nodes to communicate, we subsequently replicated 100% of the functionality that J-UCAS required using less than 150,000 lines of code and $2M of budget. Makes you wonder how long we need to support the programmer welfare for Boeing's "software engineers" and their 60 million line monstrosity if it can all be done with 400 times less code than that?

Re:

[Lord Lemur]

You make a great set of points.
I would like to ask a question or two that you might have an answer for, and that is pretty f'ing relevant. Didn't anyone stop to think, that maybe it's not the best approach to allow our military logistical communications to be built on an infrastructure of Open-Source parts. Wouldn't that make finding holes much easier for our enemies? How do you classify and protect open-source code, even if you are just using components?

Re:

[powerlord]

Well ... IANAL but ... technically with open source code, you only are expected to provide modifications to source, to your "customers". Correct?

In this case, the customers would probably be "the military" from Boeing's perspective.

The individual soldiers are not the customer, so they don't get the source, just pre-compiled binaries installed on the systems they are using. The military itself can then decide that its employees should respect that code as Trade Secret (perhaps, although things like "Nation

Re:

[cshotton]

I dunno the genesis of the "open source" meme with this FCS story. The SoSCOE code I worked with wasn't made of very much open source stuff. In fact, the initial versions weren't even aimed at Linux. The crap all ran on SGI boxes. So to the extent that they have aimed the code base at Posix compliant operating systems, I guess Linux can play now.

In any case, open or closed source doesn't matter much these days when you have countries like China willing to pay 1000's of hackers to reverse engineer all sorts

Why military computer projects turn to crap

[Whatsmynickname]

For anyone who wonders why a lot of military software projects (but not all) turn to crap, as the parent posters allude to, read War Upon The Map [mit.edu].

IMHO, This is the most insightful paper into the deep interworkings of DoD politics and how it influences software design. I've experienced this myself and what the parent posters say does not surprise me in the least.

We have a right to know.

[quanticle]

Why not? If a major multi-billion dollar military system is turning into a Charlie-Foxtrot, I'd damn well like to know, before it fails in combat, preferably.

Re:

[dkleinsc]

So how is this different than your typical government contract work?

Re:

[TapeCutter]

"Oh, and the whole thing hinges on futuristic radios that don't work."

The radios are healing themselves! Try dimming the lights and rubbing some lavender oil on their antennas you insesitive clod!

Re:

[VON-MAN]

Damn right, and just as my linux computer here it can heal its connection withing seconds without booting! Anybody here use Windows? Loosers!!!

Now, let's read the article.

Humanity's epitath

[elrous0]

"All that open source, free-wheeling development was great until the poor developer control and coordination allowed the program became self-aware, with no single off switch."

Re:And Appropriately

[dave1791]

The job of the army is not to "prevent" future combat, but to prepare for it and execute if if needed. The diplomatic job of preventing it falls to... well, diplomats and politicians.

And I hate to say it, but we do live in a Bismarkian world where military strength, like economic clout, is an asset on the scorecard of diplomatic maneuver. If you are poor and weak, nobody will listen to you. If you are rich and weak or poor and strong, people might listen. If you are rich and strong, your diplomats carry the most clout.

Re:And Appropriately

[casi0qv]

I'm not worried about our diplomats carrying insufficient clout. I am worried about the victims of our numerous pointless wars in the past and present. I do not see the world as a giant game of monopoly where we are endlessly seeking to increase our power and wealth. The world is full of people who all share a common desire to live a happy and fulfilling life, yet millions die for the pointless greedy ambitions of a few powerful men. As people gifted with technical skills we cannot let ourselves be blinded to what is going on in the world, for an opportunity to play with expensive toys and use our skills to develop weapons that kill innocent people. We cannot afford to have a frail grasp on how our actions fit into the bigger picture when a few lines of code can be part of a machine used to murder for political ambition.

Re:And Appropriately

[c6gunner]

I do not see the world as a giant game of monopoly where we are endlessly seeking to increase our power and wealth.

That's your own problem. Why should the government let your naiveté influence policy? If you want to stick your head in the dirt and ignore the rest of the world, fine, but the rest of us will go on seeking to constantly increase our knowledge, wealth, productivity, and power. Maybe you've got some metaphysical touchy-feely answer as to what the purpose of life is, but for me, and billions like me, it's achieving as much as I possibly can today, and improving as much as I possibly can tomorrow.

The world is full of people who all share a common desire to live a happy and fulfilling life, yet millions die for the pointless greedy ambitions of a few powerful men.

That's because the world is also full of people who all share a common desire to be the alpha-male, and control what everyone else does, says, reads, eats, fucks, and even thinks. And those people would put a serious hurtin' on sheep like you if you didn't have a military and police force to protect you. Whether you like it or not, it IS a dog-eat-dog world out there. Playing ostrich isn't going to change that fact.

Re:

[Hal_Porter]

Whether you like it or not, it IS a dog-eat-dog world out there. Playing ostrich isn't going to change that fact.

M-M-Metaphor police!

Dogs are actually afraid of ostriches.

Re:

[JohnFluxx]

source?

Re:

[JohnFluxx]

Say the US had no military at all, but just the minimum required to maintain its nuclear arsenal, plus the various groups for protecting against the odd suicide bomber etc.

In this situation, would the US be protected any less compared to having a mighty army?

Re:

[ultranova]

Say the US had no military at all, but just the minimum required to maintain its nuclear arsenal, plus the various groups for protecting against the odd suicide bomber etc.

In this situation, would the US be protected any less compared to having a mighty army?

Actually, yes. If Joe Tyrant hires a group of mercenaries and takes over New York, what are you going to do ? Nuke it ?

Military exists to back the authority of the government with force if needs be. When it is needed, it is usually desirable to u

Re:

[sgtrock]

When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.

...

And if it be urged that whoever is armed will act in the same way, whether mercenary or not, I reply that when arms have to be resorted to, either by a prince or a republic, then the prince ought to go in person and perform the duty of captain; the republic has to send its citizens, and when one is sent who does not turn out

Re:

[dave1791]

You are asking for a simple yes or no answer to a complex question. America's worldwide military presence has a complex history. Historically (prior to the second world war), the US had a weak, minimalistic military; essentially just a middleweight navy with hardly much of an army. An enormous driving factor in America's busybody, self-appointed world-police role is the second world war; namely the runup and things like Czechoslovakia being sold out by Western European countries. The conventional wisdom

Re:

[JohnFluxx]

I was mostly responding to my parent post, stating that the military is there to protect you and that without the military 'bad guys would be hurting you'. Particularly in the context of this article, which is about more advanced military capabilities etc.

My argument is that with only a skeleton military force, the US would be pretty much just as protected as it would be with one.

I'm not however making any moral argument or judgement about protecting others. A military force is required if you want to pro

Re:

[TapeCutter]

"Maybe you've got some metaphysical touchy-feely answer as to what the purpose of life is"

Can't speak for the GP but I do, and coincidently it's the same as yours...

"...it's achieving as much as I possibly can today, and improving as much as I possibly can tomorrow."

Not surprising since most people like apple pie, but before I subscribe to your newsletter could you please tell me more about what you want to "achive" and "improve".

Whether you like it or not, it IS a dog-eat-dog world out there.

Re:

[casi0qv]

The United States has a corrupt government, where people are lied to and brainwashed into supporting wars for the personal ambitions of a few wealthy men, not the benefit or defense of the nation. We are ALL responsible for letting this happen, and have a responsibility to stop it. Not just the corrupt diplomats and politicians, as we are electing them and allowing them to do this.

Re:

[somersault]

Pretty much all politicians are only in it for their personal gain, so how is voting differently going to solve anything there? It's an illusion of choice.. I hear a lot of 'republican' this, 'democrat' that, how is a choice between 2 political groups going to give you a say on specific subjects? Writing and protesting would accomplish more than voting in this situation (IMO of course)..

Re:

[c6gunner]

The United States has a corrupt government

As opposed to what nation? North Korea? China?

This "corrupt government" nonsense really gets to me. The US government is quite possibly one of the least corrupt governments on the planet, yet you act as if you're currently under the boot of the Fourth Reich. Give your head a shake!

Number 17, actually

[Foerstner]

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/gov_cor-government-corruption [nationmaster.com]

A notch behind most of Europe & Oceania, but slightly ahead of France and Spain.

Re:

[kidgenius]

Actually, it's in reverse order. Least corrupt at the top, most corrupt at the bottom. Those third world countries are far more corrupt than the US. Also, at the top it says to pay a parking ticket in Finland because it's the least corrupt government, though they have them at #3. So we are the 17th LEAST corrupt government around. Out of ~160, I like where we stand.

Re:

[rtb61]

So what you are saying is you should not complain unless you country is the very worst or perhaps to save the country any embarrassment corrupt politicians should not be pursued or investigated, or a military that makes a mockery of law and justice should be ignored. It would appear people are already shaking and more the just their heads, they are shaking their fists, placards and banners.

Any and all corruption in government, should be highlighted pointed out and ruthlessly pursued, and those politicians

Re:

[stewbacca]

No. What I think he is saying is everything is relative, and he (like I am) is sick of the hyperbole.

Re:

[WindBourne]

Exactly WHAT do you base your OPINION on? Or did you just pull it out of someplace? Others who STUDY this, say that we are not so clean anymore. [wikipedia.org] We are certainly not China, NK, Iraq, Iran, or even Russia, but we are certainly not one of the least.

Re:

[renoX]

>This "corrupt government" nonsense really gets to me. The US government is quite possibly one of the least corrupt governments on the planet

Well this depends on your definition of 'corrupt' but starting a war under false pretext is being very corrupted in my book (corrupted by Oil's greed).

Re:

[Brandybuck]

It's not the Foruth Reich, but it certainly isn't the bright shining light of liberty and democracy it once was. But the corruption is incidental. Corruption isn't the problem, it's a symptom. The corruption occurs because government is selling privilege. Scoundrels run for office to get a piece of it, corporations set up lobbying divisions to get a piece of it, and voters form blocs trying to get a piece as well. It's human nature, and once government gets too big you cannot stop it. We need to get governm

Re:

[kong74]

I agree with the first, that it's simply not the job of the army to prevent combat. But if "military strength, like economic clout, is an asset on the scorecard of diplomatic maneuver" maybe it's got something to do with what diplomacy is about? I mean the world is not "Bismarkian" by itself and it simply can't be true that every state is just concerned that people are listening to him. They have their causes for war and they are always prepared, because it's the same causes they have in peace, the only dif

Re:

[kong74]

Money is not a physical thing, it's a political, or a social thing. And that's why physical thoughts on growth don't help with your question. Second: money was not "invented", and it doesn't serve the humans. How comes the money when it was not invented? I try a very short explanation: Money is the inevitable result of a special social relation, the private property. How that comes to be the basis of every social relation, the dominant thing in what humans have to do with each other, is a question far beyon

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[dave1791]

I'm not advocating having only one tool in the box. A strong military is simply part of the spectrum of tools.

I do agree that Machiavellian moves are counterproductive in the long run.

Re:

[quanticle]

The only winning move is not to play. Not to play the Bismarkian game.

Funny. I was under the impression that not playing was the guaranteed losing move. If you "don't play", and withdraw from the world, you leave yourself at the mercy of other countries. I'd rather have military power and be able to negotiate on an equal (or even superior footing).

In fact that's actually my criticism against the Iraq war. Militaries should not be committed for long-term nation building projects, because that saps your saps your strength, and you've no guarantee that they country you bu

Re:

[WindBourne]

And of course, the real issue for the West is that China is perparing for War. They show a budget that would BARELY pay for their troops. It does not begin to cover any of the advanced weapons that they have acquired and/or built of late. In light of how they are acquiring resources and playing with economics combined with a sudden massive build up in their military, I would say that it will be sooner, not later that another world war will come.

And yes, I know the argument that they have a trillion dollars

Re:

[starsky51]

By the sounds of it, i'd say this was written by someone who sat in on a "Future Combat Systems for Dummies" presentation. I'd imagine the "healing" process is equivalent to services restarting themselves when they fail.

Re:

[Jonner]

I think it's more likely the "healing" refers to reconnecting to the main network when a connection is lost.

Re:

[samkass]

We're not talking about being able to save a word document here. In order for the soldiers on the ground to have full situational awareness and ability to command, there is a lot of data that has to get from here to there. If you have a direct link from here to there, great. If that link goes down, but the software detects that sending it over this packet radio, then that fiber, bouncing it off the other satellite and downlinking it to the stryker will get it there, it should auto-reroute it that way. I

Oh please...

[drDugan]

software will automatically "heal itself," retrieving the information

Anthropomorphizing technology is rather misleading... especially in this case, "when death is on the line!"

Re:Oh please...

[Anonymous Coward]

To top it off, this news comes from a group who actually DID start a land war in Asia.

BSOD tradeoff.

[bobdotorg]

So by avoiding Windows, no BSOD on the battlefield. But instead we risk a Colonel Panic? (sorry)

Re:

[Chris Mattern]

At least we might avoid General Failure reading our hard drive.

Re:

[SgtChaireBourne]

Somewhat alarming is the implicit assumtion that computer systems "go down" (and not in the yummy sensual sense" many times per week, per day. That does seem to be the common perception, no doubt rooted in the lamentably widespread useage of Microsofft.

If history recognizes Gates for anything, it will be for making bad engineering acceptable.

However, the problem has an impact far outside of engineering circles. Pretty much everyone uses desktop computers and have been worn down into not just accepting but even expecting that tasks and tools do not work efficiently or even properly. Often that ends up causing a crisis-management state where everything is left until it becomes a crisis and crises pre-empt each other. Another way it ends up is in com

Game

[Traa]

Would you like to play a game of Global Thermonuclear War?

Re:Game

[drDugan]

As I recall, the computer very much wanted to play chess, not war. In a beautiful commentary on human stupidity and aggression it was the person who forced the computer to play war. It was the point of the movie.

Re:

[Marcion]

Did not it actually want to play tic-tac-toe?

Re:

[Traa]

You are absolutely right. The phrase that I used doesn't actually exist in the movie. But it wasn't just that the computer wanted to play chess rather then war, the movie goes one step further and the person guides the computer first through a tic-tac-toe game and then through the war scenarios showing that that kind of war can't be won.

At least that is how I remember it....but it has been a while.

Born to Kill

[clarkn0va]

So are we going to see an official logo featuring Tux with "Born to Kill" scratched on his helmet?

db

Mandriva and the PLF to the rescue

[flyingfsck]

Mandriva is in the trenches already. See the Penguin Liberation Front: http://plf.zarb.org/ [zarb.org]

This is great!

[Alexx K]

Now the troops can compile Gentoo while on duty. Hopefully, it'll be finished when they get home.

Re:

[MrMr]

No worries, it will be finished sooner, January's Gentoo will definitely be compiled before christmas.

Re:

[thatskinnyguy]

A watched "emerge" seldom does.

Licensed to kill

[drDugan]

I'd love to see a software license that says something to the effect of "This software will not be used to wage war or to kill any humans".

Re:

[unbug]

I'd love to see a software license that says something to the effect of "This software will not be used to wage war or to kill any humans".

It wouldn't be an open-source license, though. From the Open Source Definition [opensource.org]: The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor.

But killing puppies with linux is okay?

[SmallFurryCreature]

How about fluffy kittens? Aliens? Dolphins? How about the biosphere?

What about the use of linux in a somekind of euthanasia device or do you get to dictate how other people should life and die their own lives?

Offcourse your suggestion is silly and goes against the very spirit of opensource.

Re:Licensed to kill

[donscarletti]

I'd love to see a software license that says something to the effect of "This software will not be used to wage war or to kill any humans".

Why?

Take WWII as an example, you've got a whole bunch of Japanese moving east killing 3M Chinese soldiers defending their homeland, murdering 17M unarmed Chinese civilians mainly with swords and small arms. Germans get in on the action, invading Czechoslovakia and Poland. They get bored and ramp up action invading Scandinavia, France and the Soviet Union killing 23M soviets (half civilian) while they were at it. Jews of course were shot on site or sent to an automated death factory, 3M all up. The Germans start bombing the crap out of the UK and the Japanese exploit the distraction and invade Singapore, capturing the defenders then starve or torture them to death in prison camps. This was the bad kind of killing, because they were killing because they desired more power.

But we all know this story and what happened next. The British Commonwealth, U.S. and Soviet Union killed a truly amazing amount of people and fixed the problem. It is completely thanks to violence that German and Japanese people are now nice rather than nasty. The US military helped get the Japanese out of China / South East Asia and the Germans out of the bulk of Europe and thus prevented them from killing any more people while they were there. This was the good kind of killing because they only started killing when they had killers to kill and they always aimed to make peace when the killers were killed. I bet you can't think of any non-violent organisation that cut short such an evil set of events.

This is why violence is only bad if you're violent to the wrong people and why I wholly endorse any of my works to be used for violence against the right people. It's not as if the Third Reich or Japanese empire would have cared about your stipulations. If someone did honour it, they must be the sort of people who care about individual freedoms and intellectual property and thus those who you'd probably want to win the conflict anyway.

Of course the problem is that the military forces of the US and my native Australia spends most of its time invading irrelevant countries to look like it is dealing with terrorists, but that does not mean that its role in the world is wholly a negative one, they beat up a lot of bad people too, like the Taliban who had it coming to them long before they helped hide Osama bin Laden. Our Aussie guys went over and kept away a bunch of armed militia that was trying to stop East Timor from regaining its independence, NATO did some bombing to stop the Serbs from killing the Muslims in Kosovo. When the military isn't killing people you get things like the Rwandan genocide in the mid 90s when nobody got around to killing the aggressors so they were able to kill whomever the hell they wanted.

Thus, killing in general is a completely morally neutral action.

Re:Licensed to kill

[Gilesx]

So what are you saying here? That violence was "pointless" and "ineffective" when dealing with Hitler?

Re:

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The fact that violence is sometimes necessary does not mean that it is always, or even usually, a useful solution. Little kids run around hitting people they don't like. Adults understand that violence is a last resort.

Re:

[AngelofDeath-02]

You might first consider that Hitler's violence brought down violence upon himself.

While you imply that violence was effective and valid against him, I say that it never would have been necessary in the first place, were he not out for genocide. Also, a lot of his inspiration was WWI, and Germany's spectacular defeat.

It's kind of a silly argument, but perhaps the pacifist's realize that while they cannot control other's actions, they can control their own and NOT be Hitler. Not everything is about some evil

Re:

[mwlewis]

If they want to be pacifists, fine. But stop pretending that it's a luxury that we can afford. You're never going to convince the Hitler's of the world to just be nice. Sometimes, you just have to shoot them. So you'd better be ready to shoot or be shot.

Welcome to the real world.

Re:

[stubob]

You're still missing the point. During study of a martial art (warfare on a personal level), you quickly learn that the objective is not to go looking for fights, but to be able to save your life should you (as a last resort) be in a situation where the only option is to fight (aka, the other guy is looking for a fight and won't take No for an answer).

Pacifism isn't about not fighting, it's just not going looking for a fight.

Re:

[mwlewis]

That's not a definition of pacifism that I've heard before. Nor does it appear to agree with the pacifists in this thread. Your definition fits perfectly well with developing a strong military.

Mod parent down...

[thrill12]

...ofcourse parent is right, but this type of argument is usually spoken when the discussion is not nearly at that level.
It quenches any discussion , because no one dares to disagree.
If parent want's to partake in a discussion, try to counter the argument with something more sensible and wise - on the same level as the argument-giver.

Good for them!

[Vskye]

NOT using anything related to MS is a good thing.

"How many times does your computer system go down in a week?" said Jim Currie, a retired Army reserve colonel, military historian and professor at the National Defense University.

Mine, personally not at all. Although this is not really related to Windows vs Linux, since both can have fubar programming on apps. Question is, if they do enough testing to get the bugs out?

Re:

[cornjones]

Question is, if they do enough testing to get the bugs out?

If by they you mean Linux, then the answer is yes, if Windows then no.

i know i will be modded down for seeming to defend ms but...

90% of the software you run on windows is not written by MS. Most of the windows crashes are not really caused by windows. I run multiple windows machines that very rarely crash (1-2 times a year?) and my purpose built ones _never_ crash (well, does a power outage count?).

If you believe the stats from the windows crash analysis, a very large percentage come down to 3rd party device drivers. That these drivers have the ability to bring down the

Re:

[dreamchaser]

If an application can crash it then it's the fault of the OS, not the application. That includes device drivers from 3rd parties. It's still the responsibility of the OS to be fault tolerant, resilient, and secure.

Blame game

[Wowsers]

If anything goes wrong with the project, they could always say it's General Protection's Fault.

hey!

[Anonymous Coward]

torrent plz

Several years of development...

[secretwhistle]

Perhaps it's time for them to upgrade to Reason 2.0.

Re:

[StarfishOne]

I'm afraid that that has a dependency on Common Sense 1.0

Re:

[Jester998]

Hmmmm? Are you proposing that US troops use bad, home-mix techno [propellerheads.se] to vanquish their enemies (using software 2 major versions out of date, no less!)

Lines of Code?

[PinkyDead]

Now there's a useful metric. It says so much about quality and reliability.

Imagine?

[dreamchaser]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of soldiers???

Meh, ok. I had karma to burn on a tired meme.

FCS Should be Cancelled

[tjstork]

The thing about FCS is that, when early versions of it have been tried in our present war, soldiers have found that the extra computerization is often not worth the weight of the computer. It seems to me that if the Army is going to be spending billions of dollars developing anything, they ought to be looking for a way to detect hidden explosives. FCS doesn't do a damn thing to aid against insurgencies whose primary weapon is the booby trap.

Re:

[SuiteSisterMary]

soldiers have found that the extra computerization is often not worth the weight of the computer.

And back when semi-auto rifles were introduced, soliders didn't think it was worth the extra weight and hassle over their good old bolt-action rifles.

And back when muskets were introduced, soldiers didn't think it was worth the extra weight and hassle over their good old lances and calvary sabres.

And back when long swords were introduced, soldiers didn't think it was worth the extra weight and hassle over

Re:

[DerekLyons]

FCS doesn't do a damn thing to aid against insurgencies whose primary weapon is the booby trap.

So what? Do you think that insurgencies will be our only target always and forevers?

The thing about FCS is that, when early versions of it have been tried in our present war, soldiers have found that the extra computerization is often not worth the weight of the computer.

First generation systems typically have problems like that. The solution is to continue to evolve the system, not to throw th

The G.I. Tux

[towsonu2003]

The G.I. Tux, one more thing we did not need in this world...

SAIC = EVIL EVIL EVIL!!! *shudder*

[jamrock]

Did anyone else here feel the alarms going off at the mention of SAIC [wikipedia.org] in the linked article? I read the March 2007 Vanity Fair piece about SAIC [vanityfair.com], and saw the accompanying PBS program about the investigation by the writers of the article, which names many former government officials and military officers who sit on the SAIC board of directors. Among them was David Kay, the former weapons inspector who was instrumental in making the case that Saddam Hussein was in possession of WMD's. SAIC is one of the lead b

Re:

[stuntpope]

SAIC is notable for their failure to deliver on a number of huge contracts, only to be awarded follow-up contracts to fix the problems with the original deliveries.

I would venture that is the case for many of the big name government/military contractors.

Re:

[Brandybuck]

Pffft! SAIC is the little guy. They're basically a bunch of decentralized almost-autonomous offices. Far larger are Raytheon, Boeing, BAE, Lockheed, etc. But the Military Industrial Complex Problem isn't agoing to be solved by focusing on one company. You need to attack the system itself. You used the Microsoft analogy. Do you think proprietary software would disappear if Microsoft were disbanded? Hah!

Now only if they'd bring Americas Army back

[r_jensen11]

I still don't get why they abandoned development for A.A. on both Mac and Linux

Now I get it!

[master_p]

The Army is making Duke Nukem Forever! that's right...63 million lines of code, all dedicated to the best game ever. 3D Realms is simply waiting for the army to finish its code.

The code includes interfacing will all the systems used in the battlefield by a special forces soldier, like mr Duke. This code will be used by 3dRealms to drive the on-screen action, for ultra realistic gameplay!

Re:Uptime?

[ianezz]

I'm just curious how you ran uptime with no users logged in?

Just ssh user@host uptime.

SSH does not perform a real "login" (in the sense of allocating a pty and writing in utmp) when specifying a remote command to execute. Thus, havin zero users loggged in is normal in that case. Try it yourself.

Re:

[neBelcnU]

See www.defensetech.org, search for FCS, and prepare for a long, long read.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Insightful?

[AciDLnx]

>> The software in question will never see the public Internet because it's all classified Secret and above.

This is incorrect. I've worked on FCS / SOSCOE. Specifically, integrating the current FBCB2 systems into FCS. Nothing was classified Secret. It was all just FOUO.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[imtheguru]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOUO

Re:

[cshotton]

SoSCOE is not classified. It can be used (and demonstrated) in unclassified environments without issue. The JTTRS (radio) and crypto components are obviously classified, but the core platform is only controlled now by a bunch of lawyer babble and proprietary rights claims that Boeing inflicts on anyone wanting to use it.

Re:

[stewbacca]

The software in question will never see the public Internet because it's all classified Secret and above.

I work on FCS. Every part I've worked on has been unclassified.

Re:

[stephanruby]

I've been hoping for some insightful comments, not being a Linux geek. Can anyone say anything about the wider implications. I'm not US competent. I guess the US Military is essentially a model of a well run business.

If you're looking for wider implications that you may already have missed, look up the term "second sourcing" -- an invention of the US Department of Defense. The US Department of Defense has had an history of requiring its suppliers to have a "second source" of critical parts should one supplier/manufacturer fail to deliver for some reason. For instance, AMD wouldn't be where it is today if Intel, its competitor and arch enemy, wouldn't have shared so much information and even crucial training to make sur

Re:

[Don_dumb]

I remember seeing a British Army advert where they control a UAV using a 360 controller, is this advertising, truthfully what they use, or trying to make it appeal to gamers? Either way, I was pretty disgusted. My 360 crashes so much, I really don't want to see the Army using them for anything.

I saw similar advertising and think it is only the controller not the entire 360 they are using. UK military spending has to show value for money and not 'redesign the wheel' if unnecessary. If the 360 controller works and is readily available & cheap, why not use the 360 controller?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion