[lug] Linux mentioned in CrossTalk

[Timothy C. Klein]

This reminds me of a short piece I saw on TechTV once.  They were doing
their 'Battlefields of Tomorrow' or whatever it is called show.  The
episode was on the new "Smart Soldier" technology that each GI would
have.  HUD, GPS, monitor on the wrist, gun hooked into computer laser
sight, electronic access to command and control and tactical data, etc.

Towards the end, the TechTV guy says: 'And the great part is that it is
built from off-the-shelf-components, and runs a version of Windows to
control it all.'

I nearly choked on my soda!  Literally life-or-death software, and some
bonehead at the Pentagon decided to control it with Windows?  Can you
imagine?  The enemy is about to kill you, unless you kill him first,
and your gun fails to fire, with your on-wrist computer telling you
'Press Ctl-Alt-Del to reboot -- there has been a system error.'

Yikes.

Tim

* Andrew Diederich (diederic at boulder.net) wrote:
> CrossTalk is the Journal of Defense Software Engineering.  Last month
> there was an article about the Fire Support Software Engineering folks
> gaining level 5 in their maturity model.
> 
> Anyway, the important bit was at the end of the article -- they've moved
> all the tactical fire support systems to linux.
> <quote>
> Open Systems Operating System. The FSSE is one of the first to move all
> tactical systems from vendor-specific operating system solutions to a
> solution based on a free and open system operating system kernel (i.e.
> Linux). This has relieved the FSSE from being held hostage to external
> vendors and their market-driven desires, and provided uniform processes,
> tools, and engineering methodologies to be applied across the multiple
> systems that the FSSE is responsible for maintaining and enhancing for the
> Army and Marine Corps. 
> </quote>
> 
> We're fielding the new AFATDS system in my MLRS (rocket) battery next
> month, so I'll be able to tell you firsthand how true this is.
> 
> You can read the whole article at
> http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/CrossTalk/2004/01/0401Smith.html.  The
> magazine just lost its funding, so no idea how long the link will be up.
> 
> FSSE's web site is at http://sill-www.army.mil/fsse/index.htm.
> 
> -- 
> Andrew R. Diederich
> Captain, Field Artillery
> Commanding
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
> Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug
> Join us on IRC: lug.boulder.co.us port=6667 channel=#colug
--
==============================================
== Timothy Klein || teece at silverklein.net   ==
==  Vanity Page: http://tinyurl.com/vkhp    ==
== ---------------------------------------- ==
== Hello_World.c: 17 Errors, 31 Warnings... ==
==============================================