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More on the Swedish Stealth Ship 532

Posted by michael from the fnord-in-the-fjord dept.
Dr.Knackerator writes "The BBC is running a story on Sweden's new carbon fibre stealth ship, the Visby. As well as being the first stealth ship, it is controlled by 'state-of-the-art computers using a Windows NT operating system'. 'But Kockums and the Swedish Navy deny it could be sabotaged by hackers and say that even if it did they could fall back to traditional steering and navigation'." We had a previous story about this as well.
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More on the Swedish Stealth Ship More

More on the Swedish Stealth Ship

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  • And now... In Swedish. (Score:5, Funny)

    by lewko ( 195646 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:27AM (#9386132) Homepage
    Zee BBC is roonneeng a stury oon Sveden's noo cerbun feebre-a steelt sheep, zee Feesby. Bork bork bork! Es vell es beeeng zee furst steelt sheep, it is cuntrulled by 'stete-a-ooff-zee-ert cumpooters useeng a Veendoos NT oopereteeng system'. 'Boot Kuckooms und zee Svedeesh Nefy deny it cuoold be-a sebuteged by heckers und sey thet ifee iff it deed zeey cuoold fell beck tu tredeeshunel steereeng und nefeegeshun'." Ve-a hed a prefeeuoos stury ebuoot thees es vell.

  • You mean "when we are hacked we can fall back..."? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:27AM (#9386135)
    And the Swede's are using traditional stearing in 5...4...3...

  • Why stealth? (Score:5, Funny)

    by aixou ( 756713 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:27AM (#9386138)
    Is everyone all of a sudden gunning at the Swedish ships?

    Maybe the powers that be saw Tomorrow Never Dies one too many times.
    • If it's an intelligence gathering vessel, hiding from rader could be a very useful thing.

      -Erwos

    • re: why stealth? (Score:2, Informative)

      by ed.han ( 444783 )
      if you can see it, you can sink it. radar is how a lot of guided weapon systems (missiles primarily) acquire a target lock. smaller signature = longer ship life. however, some military scientist or sailor will probably weigh in (weigh anchor?) to explain in greater detail just how important this really is on the modern battlefield.

      ed

    • Re:Why stealth? (Score:4, Funny)

      by mgs1000 ( 583340 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:53AM (#9386387) Journal
      They don't want the Finns or the Norwegians to get any ideas. :)

  • Why???? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:28AM (#9386140) Homepage Journal
    it is controlled by 'state-of-the-art computers using a Windows NT operating system'. '

    First off, I am not sure I would call an NT system "state of the art". Next, I have to wonder just why folks are using a commodity platform to perform literally "mission critical" operations in a combat environment. Particularly one whose history of security is dubious at best.

    • Hmmm. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:31AM (#9386178) Homepage
      First off, I am not sure I would call an NT system "state of the art".

      Well, the article says the computers are state-of-the-sart, not the operating system.
      However, I doubt they're running NT 4.0 in any case. Windows 2000 or Server 2003, most likely, and those are simply not operating systems to be laughed at.

      • Re:Hmmm. (Score:4, Funny)

        by Flounder ( 42112 ) * on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:32AM (#9386201)
        Windows 2000 or Server 2003, most likely, and those are simply not operating systems to be laughed at. No laughing at Windows 2k or 2k3?? You do realize this is /. we're talking about, remember?

      • Re:Hmmm. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by SlamMan ( 221834 )
        No chance they're running 2003. Its been out how long?

        MIlitary development testing takes so long, I'm vaguely surprised if its not running Windows for Workgroups.

        As an example, look how long it took to get the m-16 into production.
      • those are simply not operating systems to be laughed at.


        Especially not when you're running state of the art military hardware... putting Windows in something like that is no laughing matter [gcn.com].

        -- james

      • Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Geekenstein ( 199041 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:58AM (#9386434)
        No, NT is the most likely OS. Military hardware takes years of design and testing to be put into service. If you look at the computer specs for the newest USAF fighter prototypes, you'll see they have about the computing power of a 486. Once things are certified and stress tested, you don't go changing the design on something that works.

      • Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Informative)

        by borgboy ( 218060 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:24AM (#9386804)
        Actually, having been in the defense industry, I can say with the timeline this warship was developed that it's entirely probable that it does run Windows NT 4.0. You dont change specs like that on a project of this scope lightly. NT also has been rated C2, in certain specific configurations.
        Good? Bad? Evil? Not my argument.

    • Re:Why???? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by shnarez ( 541132 )
      controlled by 'state-of-the-art computers using a Windows NT operating system'
      First off, I am not sure I would call an NT system "state of the art".
      I read it as saying the COMPUTERS are top-notch state-of-the-art, but they are running some crappy OS...

      • Re:Why???? (Score:3, Funny)

        by SnapShot ( 171582 )
        In fact, though the OS is NT, the language used to program the ship was state-of-the-art Java. It was very simple to create the stealth ship; they just used the method call:

        this.setVisby(false);

    • Re:Why???? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by AtomicBomb ( 173897 )
      In most cases, the reporters are refering to the monitoring/ high level control software (SCADA). It should not be that bad as long as NT is not controlling anything lower level and not connected anyhow to the outside...

      If they really use windows for this kind of operation, I am not that surprise they are using NT rather than win2k/xp. The reason is simple. The ship was commissioned a while ago... At that time, winxp may not even come out, and win2k was not that stable. They need something that have a

    • Re:Why???? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dasmegabyte ( 267018 ) <das@OHNOWHATSTHISdasmegabyte.org> on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:58AM (#9386428) Homepage Journal
      Well, the security of poorly administrated Windows systems is dubious. But none of the 25 Windows 2000 machines in this office has ever gotten a virus in the past three years...basically, since I took over as administrator.

      Why? First thing I did was install a firewall. Second thing I did was disable unneccessary services. Third thing I did was patch them regularly.

      And that's it. I am the only admin for the company and I spend maybe two hours a month working on Windows (most of which is spent convincing the Exchange server to run a little bit longer). Why is Windows security so bad? Because most Windows administrators are lazy and would prefer to let things go for a few weeks than test the effects of the patch themselves.

      And as for Windows systems NOT being state-of-the-art...would you like a list of hardware that had Windows support YEARS before Linux got it? You probably don't, it's quite long and includes such obscure technologies as "USB." Not dissing on Linux overall (and I realize support for new tech has gotten MUCH better), but if you're a company that needs support for cutting edge technology and you don't want to write your own drivers, sometimes Windows is the only option. All that bloat? Yeah, some of it is Minesweeper and that retarded dog, but some of it is also features.
    • Compared to some/most of the computers controlling ships in the US Navy, It's state of the art. Now, some of the supporting computers on Navy ships are most certainly state of the art, but not in terms of running common OSes. It works, and do you really want to be testing new guidance systems every year or few on a ship whose maneuverability will not improve with new computers (.00001 sec faster responses don't matter or .1 sec for that matter)

      Also, to point out: Fly-by-wire fighters started being in prod

  • Coolest part... (Score:4, Funny)

    by mobiux ( 118006 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:28AM (#9386143)
    The m.c. ecsher paint job.
  • I remember seeing a US stealth ship in Wired I think, it's black and it floats on two pontoons, so that it's sonar signature is reduced... ANyone else know what I'm talking about?

  • Not so worried about it being hacked... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Trogdorsey ( 739381 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:29AM (#9386157)
    I'd be more worried about it crashing

  • The US has had a stealth ship since the mid-80's (Score:5, Informative)

    by Flounder ( 42112 ) * on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:29AM (#9386162)
    but if I told you about it, I'd have to kill you.

    Sea Shadow [navy.mil]

  • Couldn't you find and 'invisible' ship by the hole it makes in the water when it displaces water by floating?

    Oh, by the way, the secret angle is 30.56 degrees. :-)

  • This is not the first stealth ship., this is.
    http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/ ships /ship-sea.html

  • James Bond (Score:5, Funny)

    by Claire-plus-plus ( 786407 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:31AM (#9386174) Journal
    Well at least James Bond will find that one easier to destroy than the last stealth ship he dealt with, all he would have to do is give it's IP to some script kiddies.

  • Sea Shadow (Score:3, Informative)

    by Genady ( 27988 ) <gary DOT rogers AT mac DOT com> on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:31AM (#9386184)
    As well as being the first stealth ship,

    No, I'm afraid that that honor goes to Sea Shadow [navy.mil]. True, it was only a technology demonstrator, but it WAS the first stealth ship. This Swedish upstart may be the first PRODUCTION stealth ship, but it certainly ain't the first.

    That said, lessons from Sea Shadow were incorporated into the Burke class Destroyers. So this isn't even the first 'stealthy' ship out here.

    • Re:Sea Shadow (Score:2, Redundant)

      by zazas_mmmm ( 585262 )
      Actually, my guess is that this [wikipedia.org] was the first stealth ship.

      Just because we eventually came to know how to detect it, doesn't mean it was any less stealthy in its time.

    • Re:Sea Shadow (Score:3, Informative)

      by Seehund ( 86897 )
      "Background: The Sea Shadow program was begun in the mid-1980s."

      The Swedish stealth ship program (which includes previous results such as HMS Smyge and this latest YS2000 Series 1 (Visby corvette)) was launched in 1986 [www.fmv.se].

  • Been there done that! (Score:5, Informative)

    by 10Ghz ( 453478 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:32AM (#9386198)
    Finnish Hamina-class [www.mil.fi]. Maybe not as radical as this ship, but stealth-ship regardless. And packed with high technology.

    So what makes this Swedish ship "first stealth-ship", when there are already stealth-ships in use in Finland? And they have been in use for quite some time already.

  • Probably OK (Score:5, Insightful)

    by W2k ( 540424 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:33AM (#9386206) Journal
    If this boat is running anything like the NT systems I used when I was in the army (the Swedish army that is) I'd say it's pretty stable and secure. Windows NT has had quite some time to mature as an operating system and has had most of its bugs fixed by now. Obviously, they won't be connecting these things to the Internet, so no need to worry about hax0rz.

    I, for one, welcome our new Swedish Navy Stealth Ship overlords.
    • You're probably right, but here I was looking forward to articles about the world's first warship capable of delivering 50 57mm shells and 10,000 penis enlargment e-mails per minute.
  • > As well as being the first stealth ship,

    The Lockheed Skunk Works built a stealth ship for the US Navy back in the early 1980s. For various political and technical reasons the design was never accepted for production, but most "navy of the future" articles you see in both the popular and trade press use that design as the basis for their concept art.

    sPh

  • the neXt big ship (Score:2, Interesting)

    by phauxfinnish ( 698087 )
    American designers are working on the US Navy's own fleet of stealth ships, the DD(X) destroyer, which is due to enter service in 2011.

    Why does every new thing have to have a X in the name? Being in parenthesis, its almost like an after thought.

    Maybe it signifies that this ship will also be run by Microsoft software... A Beowulf cluster of X-Boxen!!!

    • X has generally stood for eXperimental. For example the X-15 rocket plane. This is still often used in the millitary.
      Only since many of the more famous experimental craft did some really impressive/exciting things that captured public attention, comercial concerns began to use the x lable to indicate somthing new! exiting! fast! and so on ad nauseum.

      Mycroft

  • It may be invisible to radar... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:36AM (#9386239) Homepage
    ...but it'll be easily spotted by all the outgoing packets coming from the spyware, troyans and virusses "installed" on WinNT!

  • Not the first (Score:4, Informative)

    by still cynical ( 17020 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:39AM (#9386260) Homepage
    The headline is not quite right. First off, the first stealth ship was the U.S. Navy's Sea Shadow, but it is only a technology testbed and demonstrator. This is the first stealth ship to see operational service.

    • Re:Not the first (Score:3, Informative)

      by Carewolf ( 581105 )
      Not even that: Most militaries have stealth ships and have had for some time. I would make a joke about swedish military being hopelessly behind, if it wasnt for the fact that they _also_ already operates a few stealth ship.

      I other words, it is not the first, not even the first swedish one.
  • The phrase "Where would you like to go today ?" could not be more fitting in this case.. question is, where do you actually end up ?
  • If I'm not mistaken, the U.S. Navy once built a hydroplane vessel using the same sort of technology that is used on the F117 stealth fighter. The ship even had the characteristic radar-mangling facets.

    I could be wrong.

  • Stealth cars (Score:5, Funny)

    by DataCannibal ( 181369 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:43AM (#9386303) Journal
    I was at a job interview recently and those of us who were there being interviewed were chatting about fun jobs we'd like to have.

    One of the guys there told us that a friend of his, who had previously worked for an arms company, was being recentltly interviewed for a job at a Formula 1 racing team. When asked what he could tell them about his previous job and how he could use that experience in the job he was interviewing for he repliad that, because of the classified nature of his work he couldn't tell them much about what he had been doing. He could, however, help them to make their racing cars invisible to radar.

  • Clippy (Score:5, Funny)

    by merky1 ( 83978 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:47AM (#9386325) Journal
    I see that you are attacking a lesser third world country. Would you like to

    0 - Launch Missiles
    0 - Fire Cannons
    0 - Hide
    • I see that you are attacking a lesser third world country.

      That's just a feature in the model we ship to the U.S. ;)

  • Windows NT at the helm (Score:4, Funny)

    by LabRat007 ( 765435 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @08:47AM (#9386327) Homepage
    So the crew would look something like...

    1 Captin

    1 First Mate

    50 Enlisted To Man Stations

    103 System Admins to keep NT's "blue screen of death" from sinking the ship

  • ...sailing will be truly user friendly!
  • Sea-search radar satellites generally locate ships by the radar reflections of their wakes. Even if all these stealth ships are radar-invisible, they'll generate wakes whenever they're underweigh. How does anyone think they won't be detectable? Maybe not to small countries without satellite resources, but I don't think the US Navy will have any trouble with them.
  • OK, so It's a dupe, but this time you know it's a dupe.

    I forsee a story bounce situation arising in the future. Someone sees a cool story, posts it on /., someone in a large news organisation sees story and files it for future research/publication. When it's published, someone reads it and posts it on /.

    Repeat.

  • In other news, after returning to dock from it's maiden voyage and unloading the crew, Sweden has apparently misplaced its new stealth ship.

    The Captain of the ship was quoted as saying, "I know we brought it back... after all we were on it." He remains adament it will turn up somewhere, he just can't remember where he parked it.

  • Sarcasm? (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 )
    "state-of-the-art computers using a Windows NT operating system"

    Are they trying to be sarcastic or something ?

    Ultimately this has a "Titanic" ring to it.
  • so like when war breaks out and the allies all go like man, where's the swedish navy, the other guys can go like man they're all around us, i bet

  • Exactly what USE would these people get out of building such a ship? This seems to me like a completely waste of money. Can you name any recent naval battles in the past 20 years or so that warranted having a stealthed ship that would not be picked up on radar?

    And please, i'm not talking about deploying troops or anything like that. This serves basically one purpose for the swedish navy R&D guys = We're bored, look what we did with your money!

    Carbon fiber too.. all they need now are some vinyl

  • NT is a good choice... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rick.C ( 626083 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:01AM (#9386462)
    ... if all you want to do is steer. Oh, and control engine speed. No problem. And maybe integrate the radar. Still no problem. And run LSASS to make sure that there are no NT license violations. And RPC to check if anyone wants to use the C$ share. And SVCHOST and SPOOLSV and WINLOGON. And CSRSS and SMSS and maybe WOW. And IE4 for the user interface. And MSTASK to monitor it all...

    Captain to Engine Room (through the low-tech voice tube): Switch to manual control IMMEDIATELY!

  • Correction: Moron the Swedish Stealth Ship (Score:3, Funny)

    by tbase ( 666607 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:01AM (#9386465)
    Named after the person who decided to use NT for the "State of the art" computers.
  • "A lot of modern submarines are extremely hard to detect, but that is always going to be difficult for a surface ship to match."

    howabout ?

    ping visby.somewhereintheatlantic.gov
  • Mmmmm. Swedish Stealth Fish.
  • ...on this. The US Navy did experiments with the Sea Shadow in the 80's (see previous posts), but it was determined that too much everyday utility would have to be sacrificed to acheive true stealthiness. However, some of the features of the Sea Shadow were integrated into new convential ships-of-the-line (like the Arleigh Burke-class guided missle destroyers) such as "secret angles" (LOL) that reduce radar signatures. This Swedish ship isn't much more than a large patrol boat. That's not to say that it
    • OK, tell me how Sea Sparrows and CIWS will help you sneak up onto a suspected smuggling vessel?

      This ship isn't built for offense. Heck, with a fibre glass hull it's not even built for defence. It's a large patrol boat, just like you've theorised. When you're a politically neutral country, with nothing but peaceful nations around you, why would you need anything more?

  • Dept correction (Score:3, Funny)

    by nmnilsson ( 549442 ) <(gro.llehseerf) (ta) (sungam)> on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:08AM (#9386553) Homepage
    Most scandinavian fjords [wikipedia.org] are actually found in Norway.
    Never heard of a swedish parrot pining for the fjords, have you? ;-)
  • Isnt it funny how geeky we all are ? I mean heavens above! they develop some "really cool" technology to create this uber-stealth ship using fancy carbon fibre techniques etc. And the first thing we do (myself included) is pick up on the use of an aging, buggy and unsupported operating system (Win NT). I just think its amusing ; someone ought to do a study on our behavior here at slashdot. They cant get everything right!

    What about the cool things in the story?

  • First stealth ship? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Squapper ( 787068 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:15AM (#9386665)
    The sea shadow was publically revealed in 1993...the prototype for Visby, the "Smyge", was uncovered in 1991...

  • Steathy and Obvious all at once (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jonathan_S ( 25407 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:35AM (#9386951)
    From the article:
    In a nutshell, if the Visby was 100km from an enemy vessel it could see the enemy on its radar but not vice versa.
    Hopefully this is the writers silly notion rather than something he was told. A stealth ship 100km away from any navy ship, but running its radar, is just broadcasting its position. (Naval vessels do have radar receivers you know).

    Kind of like making a perfectly light absorbing black truck for night usage, then looking around with a giant searchlight!

  • It's a brilliant bluff (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nevrar ( 65761 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @10:00AM (#9387290)
    Excellent idea...

    Bluff the world... Say you have an invisible navy - no one will be able to disprove it! Everyone will think Sweden is the next superpower...

    The fastrack to world peace.

  • Not very original (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jade E. 2 ( 313290 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMperlstorm.net> on Thursday June 10, 2004 @10:34AM (#9387756) Homepage
    Not only is the predated (by a long shot) by the US Navy Sea Shadow [navy.mil] program in the mid-80s (as pointed out by another poster), but also by the French 'La Fayette' stealth frigates [naval-technology.com] (circa 1988). Modified versions of that ship are also in use by both Saudi Arabia and Taiwan [globalsecurity.org].

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