USS Zumwalt — a Guided Missile Destroyer Running On Linux 229
New submitter SanDogWeps writes "Sean Gallagher over at Ars Technica reports that when the U.S.S. Zumwalt (DDG 1000) puts to sea later this year, it will be different from any other ship in the Navy's fleet in many ways. The $3.5 billion ship is designed for stealth, survivability, and firepower, and it's packed with advanced technology. And at the heart of its operations is a virtual data center powered by off-the-shelf server hardware, various flavors of Linux, and over 6 million lines of software code. From the article: 'Called the Common Display System, or CDS (pronounced as "keds" by those who work with it), the three-screen workstations in the operations center are powered by a collection of quad-processor Intel motherboards in an armored case, which gives new meaning to the nautical phrase "toe buster." Even the commanding officer's and executive officer's chairs on the bridge have CDS workstations built-in. Each CDS system runs multiple LynxOS-based Linux virtual machines, which can run on various networks partitioned by security level and purpose. '"
Left out the best part (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Left out the best part (Score:5, Informative)
Citation [navy.mil] no longer needed.
That's pretty awesome.
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How does he fight the urge to change his name to one that can be abbreviated James T. Kirk?
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Clearly, the military has beaten all sense out of him.
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Resistant to anti-ship missles? (Score:4, Interesting)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that anti-ship missile technology has been ahead of defence systems now for quite some time, such that basically any ship that gets within range of them is basically always sunk. What's more, Russia, Iran and China all have such missiles. What exactly are these ships being built for, beyond the jobs they produce?
Re:Resistant to anti-ship missles? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, did you just ask what's the purpose of building ships when they can be sunk?
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The arms race changes day-to-day, but AFAIK, the CIWS system, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS [wikipedia.org], when armed, is quite capable of handling current airborne missiles.
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Well, according to that wikipedia page, that weapons system was in service since 1980. The missiles I'm talking about are these ones [nytimes.com] and are much more modern. I have read that Russia got significantly further ahead than the US in the area of anti-ship missiles and as such, the US defences against them have never been tested for real.
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1) low altitude
2) supersonic cruise or a supersonic sprint at the end of their trajectory
3) low radar profile
4) high/random maneuverability during approach
The Russian missle discussed in that article has 2 and 3.
All four features are pretty well known and understood, and have been addressed in the most recent block upgrades of the CIWS, RIM-116 and SM-2. The SM-2 got improved target finding logic (helps with 1 and
Re:Resistant to anti-ship missles? (Score:4, Insightful)
a) I doubt anyone outside of classified weapons research actually knows whether offense or defense currently has the advantage.
b) The Zumwalt is a guided missile destroyer, which means that it will be the thing launching said anti-ship missiles at the other side's ships. It doesn't matter how deadly the enemy is, if you take them out before they take you out.
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What ship has ever been invincible? I think the idea here is that between stealth for defense and enhanced radar and electronics for offense, this ship will shoot first.
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You're wrong.
A quick check shows that only one "modern" warship has been sunk by anti-ship missiles, and that was in the Falklands war 31 years ago.
Note that "modern" label above is NOT intended to imply that Sheffield had any modern defenses or anything.
The only "modern" warship w
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Whether it sinks is largely irrelevant. What matters is whether it can continue as a viable warship for the duration of the conflict.
A Navy is pointless if every ship will be limping back to shore at the end of the first day.
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By this definition, we have TWO warships taken out by anti-shipping missiles. Neither was equipped to modern standards for defense (basically impossible, since both hits happened more than 25 years ago)...
Note, by the way, that USS Yorktown (the WW2 version, not the newer one, or the newest one) was severely damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea, and after quick repairs we
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The modern method of taking down a well defensed naval target is to hide the true number of inbounds and over-saturate the defenses when its beyond the point of making any other defensive efforts. This requires hiding a rather large attack and attacking single targets at a disadvantage to defend themselves.
Doesn't seem terribly practical. So, if your Aegis-equipped destroyer has mechanical problems and has to turn back for Norfolk the bad guys can send a squadron of 100 bombers halfway across the Atlantic (with 50 tankers in support) to launch 300 missiles at it. That seems a bit akin to deploying half the eastern front to go after a single panzer that had a tread break during a retreat.
stealth (Score:2)
one of the features of this ship is stealth. they won't shoot it down if they don't see it.
but it is a scary idea that a $10K missile can take out a $3.5B ship.
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but it is a scary idea that a $10K missile can take out a $3.5B ship.
There isn't an army anywhere in the world that can't be completely annihilated by about $1k worth of bullets. However, it really isn't much of a concern unless the army just lies in its bunks while the bad buys systematically travel from base to base shooting everybody once in the head.
In order for the missile to take out the ship, it has to hit the ship. For that matter, it also needs to be fired on a course where it will encounter the ship, which isn't a small problem either (this requires knowing about
Re:Resistant to anti-ship missles? (Score:4, Informative)
It's primarily fire support for marine assaults. During the Gulf War, the last battleships left in service, the Iowa class, served in a fire support and artillery role for shore based forces. This proved to be very effective, as the Mark 7 16" guns delivered a lot of firepower faster and cheaper than missiles and could do it pretty quickly, and redirect said fire more quickly than it took to program a firing solution into the cruise missiles.
However, we retired the battleships as they were ancient relics. In addition, they had limited range; the Mark 7s could fire about 38 kms. Current naval fire support is done through the 5" Mark 45 guns on the DDG51s, but those have even less range (about 20 or so kms) and deliver smaller payloads.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Gun_System
The Zumwalt is designed around this weapon system. It fires 10 rounds per minute, using a 155mm shell which is the same shell used by land based artillery. It has a range of 100+ kms and is accurate to 50 meters. This would significantly extend the capabilities of shore based operations. The stealth isn't so much for defense as for offense; if the enemy is aware of the ship they'll move out of the area. So effectively this destroyer is a stealthy highly mobile long range artillery platform.
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Your understanding is incorrect. There is nothing particularly special about anti-ship missiles and there are no anti-ship missiles that cannot be intercepted by the myriad active defense systems that currently protect the US Navy. The cost is also asymmetric; intercepting an anti-ship missile is much cheaper than the anti-ship missile, so it is difficult to make it up in volume.
There is nothing that flies through the air that cannot be hit by modern active intercept technologies. The trend away from heavy
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My understanding was based on articles like this one [rense.com]. Can you point me to evidence that the Moskit's can be destroyed by this ships anti-missile defences?
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There I just sank your battleship!
Think systems, not missiles (Score:2)
Even if there's an advantage to the offense once the missile has been launched, in order to get to that point the attacker must
(1) Find the ship (stealthy, under EMCON, and moving)
(2) Get within range
(3) Live long enough to fire the missile.
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1) Carrier group moves in range for fighters and bombers
2) aircraft destroy all missiles capable of destroying a carrier.
3) carrier group moves closer, with smaller ships surrounding the carrier to take damage from any missiles that happened to survive.
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...any ship that gets within range of them [anti-ship missiles] is basically always sunk....What exactly are these ships being built for...?
To answer your explicit question, Zumwalt is being built primarily to attack land targets with cruise missiles. Some people doubt we need a new ship class to do that though. I expect one of the things they hope to achieve is much smaller manpower requirements. According to the Wikipedia (take that as you will) Zumwalt will mount almost as many missile launch cells as the Arleigh Burke class destroyers (80 vs. 90), but require less than half the personnel (140 vs 300) to operate.
As for your implicit ques
Not linux (Score:4, Informative)
LynxOS is a proprietary Unix, compatible with Linux binaries.
It does not contain the Linux kernel and is closed source.
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Yea got to love the media hype. New Flash guys: JavaScript isn't JAVA..
But, I can assure you that Linux is alive and well in the Department of Defense. But so is Windows XP, MP, 98 and beyond...
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RTFA (Score:3)
The design of the Zumwalt solves that problem by using off-the-shelf hardware—mostly IBM blade servers running Red Hat Linux—and putting it in a ruggedized server room.
Many servers are running Linux not Lynx.
Re:Not linux (Score:5, Informative)
LynxOS is a proprietary Unix, compatible with Linux binaries.
It does not contain the Linux kernel and is closed source.
And I didn't see anywhere in the summary or article that said runs Linux exclusively. The component they refer to as running LynxOS is only one part of the whole.
FTA:
mostly IBM blade servers running Red Hat Linux—and putting it in a ruggedized server room. Those ruggedized server rooms are called Electronic Modular Enclosures (EMEs), sixteen self-contained, mini data centers built by Raytheon.
I'm pretty sure anything called Red Hat Linux is going to contain the Linux kernel.
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And your point is? From TFA:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux certainly IS open source.
Perhaps... (Score:2)
Perhaps it's appropriate that the first commanding officer of the Zumwalt will be Captain James Kirk (yes, that's actually his name).
Come on US Navy, you can tell us: you saw the name and went for it :)
As for the article, very nice! I never did get what "DDG-1000" stand for, but I think it's ominous. The T-800 and T-1000 were not the best names for hardware, and anything close to it is suspect by default.
A commenter said: "Also of note: the ship has a totally electric propulsion system, and has an integrated power system that will support future weapons like railguns and laser/RF system" - pretty interesting.
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"DD" = destroyer
"G:" = guided missile
"1000" = Generally warships are numbered sequential but they moved to an easily identifiable number to designate a new generation of ships.
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Perhaps it's appropriate that the first commanding officer of the Zumwalt will be Captain James Kirk (yes, that's actually his name).
Come on US Navy, you can tell us: you saw the name and went for it :)
Why isn't it the DDG-1701?!
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Sorry. Most ships in the water use mechanical power transmission. Electric power transmission has been around since at least the 1920s and is still a small fraction.
The power source for essentially all vessels is still either fossil fuel (huge majority) or nuclear. The electric drive is just a distinction of the power transmission. Direct drive, geared, or electric, it's just a detail of how the engines drive the propellers or water jets.
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"1000" is the Navy's way of designating that this is the next generation of DDG, as it represents a major design and development departure from previous generations.
It's not so much a break in the numbering system, since the previous DD ships ended at 997.
Its hull number will be DDG-1000, which abandons the guided missile destroyer sequence used by the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers (DDG-51– ), and continues the previous "gun destroyer" sequence from the last of Spruance-class, USS Hayler (DD-997).
Anyone else... (Score:2)
So that ship gets 3 screens (Score:2)
And I still can't get dual screens to work reliably/painlessly. Sigh.
Named after... (Score:2)
More importantly... (Score:2)
The first commanding officer of the Zumwalt will be Captain James Kirk (yes, that's actually his name).
Bad acronym (Score:2)
I Knew the Admiral's Brother (Score:2)
All hale the class of '72
USS Umwelt (Score:2)
I misread the name as USS Umwelt and I figured it appropriate that nobody could agree what OS it was running.
Also, the stealth features would have to be impressive: ... how did a giant wooden rabbit get this far out to sea?
Enemy1: What's that on our radar?
Enemy2: It looks like a US Navy Destroyer
Enemy1: I don't know it could be a small fishing boat
Enemy2: No, wait
How many things can you make linux run on (Score:3)
Linux runs on old hardware.
Linux runs on embedded hardware.
Linux runs on XBOX.
Linux runs on a toaster.
Some geek out there is smugly telling his friends "I made Linux run on a US Navy Destroyer".
Open Source Technology Ethics (Score:2)
Use of open source software in a military context violates the ethics of open source software systems.
These ethics are inherent I would like to point out, and are not arguable. Particularly if you are from a country this weapon will be parked next to if your private central bank refuses to do business in federal reserve notes.
Open source is a human endeavor and since it holds no boundaries such acts as including it in state weapons is blasphemous.
The blow back from this sort of weaponization of LINUX will b
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"Use of open source software in a military context violates the ethics of open source software systems."
Citation needed.
Licencing... (Score:2)
Isn't there a rule against this?
Re:Death wants to be freeeeeeeeee! (Score:5, Funny)
People don't kill people. Linux kills people.
Re:Death wants to be freeeeeeeeee! (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux doesn't kill people, Windows NT [wikipedia.org] kills people! [wired.com]
(Or at least it kills ships... got to watch out for those divide by zero errors!)
Re: Death wants to be freeeeeeeeee! (Score:3, Funny)
Das reboot!
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In Facist America...
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That's an interesting point. I wonder what filesystem these Linux systems are running? Perhaps the Navy is the organization that secretly bought Hans Reiser's assets a few years ago.
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MurderUS
MurderOUS
MurderER
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Hey, when you signed on to open source you agreed you had no control over what it ended up being used for. Stallman's rage could probably power a small city though.
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And this is another illustration of why you should know your license agreements! Don't just rely on summaries or pick-your-features selectors. If you care where your software goes or what it's used for, take the time to do the research and know what your license says.
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Hey, when you signed on to open source you agreed you had no control over what it ended up being used for. Stallman's rage could probably power a small city though.
Actually, Stallman has no problems with free SW (even GNU stuff) being used for military applications, as long as any redistribution of the SW respects the license (said redistribution obviously not taking place for the custom SW powering the destroyer, so no license problems happening).
Re:And? (Score:4, Informative)
Hey, when you signed on to open source you agreed you had no control over what it ended up being used for.
Indeed, and for good reason. There are almost limitless ways in which a software author might want to discriminate against fields of use, and no prospect of achieving global consensus on what should or should not be allowed. One of the key benefits of Open Source is that you don't have to read the licence of every single package you install to find out whether it is safe to use. The most practicable way to achieve this is to prohibit restrictions on what you can use the software for.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fire has been used by humans for 1.9 million years or so. It is very useful for killing people painfully. I'm still pretty happy with fire.
Linux has been used from the early nineties, and now its going to kill people. I'm still pretty happy with Linux.
Granted, I'm not going to brag about that aspect, but I wouldn't go so far to say it is a ghastly aspect. Modern militaries use everything from brooms to paperclips in support of their mission to kill stuff. That's because militaries use systems to accomplish their tasks, just like everything else does. If you create a system to move food around the globe, you also create a system that moves food between war zones.
I'd be proud that Linux is deemed capable of underlying a mission critical system, even if I don't like the results of said system.
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The question might be slightly more pointed to people who contribute code and other development work to the Linux ecosystem. Knowing that the hours of work you put in to improve kernel latency is what has made it possible to use Linux to accurately bombard Middle Eastern villages with cruise missiles might rankle a bit when the project you were actually working for was a protein-folding "cure Alzheimer's" super-computing project.
We can car analogy this. I don't mind using cars with internal combustion engin
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Animals fight. Humans fight. It's stupd and sad and I hope we can move long term away from it. In the meantime, I for one am happy we have a strong defense. Do you honestly think Russia and China aren't interested in global hegemony?
That said, I'm not so happy about our offensive game.
Anyway freedom is a double edged sword. Nobody gets to pick and choose who uses FOSS for what purpose. That's sort of the point. You honestly don't think Linux has played a military roll before?
On the other hand they may contribute back to the community, and probably already have done so.
And it's a hell of a lot better than them running Windows. You'd be amazed how many mission critical Windows boxes are on a typical ship, to say nothing of a military vessel.
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Sort of yes. I'm not at all happy with the US govt.s aggressive foreign policy, *or* intrusive domestic policy. But it doesn't really matter whether they use MSWind or Linux, except that I believe Linux is more reliable (well, I haven't used MSWind in over a decade) and they MAY adhere to the GPL, if it suits them. (SELinux is one significant contribution. Not enough to forgive the NSA over, but still significant...unless, of course, it's a honeypot.)
Given the typical military mission that I've heard of
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You had me until the last sentence.
War isn't profitable? Sure, it isn't profitable for you and me. But it's highly profitable for the military industrial complex and for the state.
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War isn't profitable for countries. It used to be profitable for the country that won the war, but not in the last 100 years, for any major conflict, and I don't think that it's been profitable for anything involving actual countries for the last 25 or so. (I'd need studies to be sure.)
Profitable for the suppliers or weapons, yes. No question there.
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Technically, it's not open source software. It's a proprietary Unix-compatible OS (yeah, that's still a thing).
The headline is wrong since it has essentially nothing to do with Linux.
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My bad, got things mixed up. I had already read it, so I'd forgotten about the Red Hat Linux part. It does use Lynx, which is what I was referring to, to interface with systems not designed for TCP/IP communication.
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Bullshit. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is open source. Did you bother even skimming the short referenced article?
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This is slashdot, not R'ing TFA is par for the course, not R'ing TFS gets you a gold star!
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Are we supposed to be happy that the blood, sweat and tears of the thousands of developers who gave their time to an ideal of free software are now being used by the world's favorite rogue state to bring death and destruction to far flung corners of the globe?
Calm down there AC.. This ain't the Linux you are looking for. The headline was very misleading. It runs LynxOS which is certainly not open source. There might be some GNU tools which are open source, but at the kernel level it is not Linux.
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From TFA:
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Are we supposed to be happy that the blood, sweat and tears of the thousands of developers who gave their time to an ideal of free software are now being used by the world's favorite rogue state to bring death and destruction to far flung corners of the globe?
I also heard that a screwdriver was used in assembling the computers. The same kind of screwdriver which is used to put together computers targeted to run peaceful operations with open source software. This must end.
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Are we supposed to be happy that the blood, sweat and tears of the thousands of developers who gave their time to an ideal of free software are now being used by the world's favorite rogue state to bring death and destruction to far flung corners of the globe?
In addition, I heard that missiles fired from these ships will feature a penguin logo, and that the military contractor who made millions from the work of "thousands of developers who gave their time to an ideal of free software" likes to wipe
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No, but reality is that military has, throughout human history, been a driver of new technologies.
If military is embracing linux as essentially client/desktop OS, it's a good thing for those who want linux as a viable desktop alternative, and some technological inventions and innovations are likely to find their way into civilian use soon enough.
And in the end, it wouldn't really matter for those killed if they were killed by a ship running linux, windows or macOS, like it doesn't matter to them if the ship
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OK, OK, aircraft carriers, yes, yes, but they're boring.
Don't forget about the Tomahawks - they can devastate a small village far from shore.
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While that's true, they cost more than a village and you can only carry a few. Allowing naval arty to service normal arty fire missions returns a traditional (and useful at this range!) role to naval ships.
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If we get rid of the roads, we might stand a chance at ending the Drug War.
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If we get rid of the roads, we might stand a chance at ending the Drug War.
If we get rid of contractors to the Government, that profit from this "war" - and the Pols who maintain the security of their power by perpetrating a "war' against their own people...
"DRUG WAR - HIDDEN HISTORY" [boingboing.net]
Re:Weapons purposes in license (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't there a provision in the license stating the software cannot be used for weapons purposes or something of the like?
No, and if there were then it would not be considered Open Source (clause 6 of the OSD, 'No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor').
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No, and if there were then it would not be considered Open Source (clause 6 of the OSD, 'No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor').
I take my definition of Open Source from a time before there was an OSD.
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So what? Red Hat Enterprise Linux IS open source. They are both used.
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LynxOS is not open source.
True, but I strongly suspect the comment I replied to was referring to Linux rather than LynxOS.
(Not that the vendors of LynxOS appear to have anything against military use. It is mostly non-OSD-compliant freeware that tends to have field-of-use restrictions, as opposed to software that is fully propietary or fully Open Source.)
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But if its being used by a tyrant, is the code really free?
You need to understand the license. It's not the developer that is free, it's the user. And there are few freer than a tyrant.
Of course, if he developes the code and distributes the changes, then the license requires him to distribute the source on request, but as he's a tyrant he is free to ignore the license.
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and so what?
the US just has to pass a law saying any OS or code can be used in military applications
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Wait, NOW you're trying to say licenses should be used to restrict how one uses software?
Would you people please make up your minds!
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Why?
Putting restrictions would really go against the free software ideal. This software is Free for everyone except for the people I don't like, kid of excluded everyone.
You will be better off with a commercial license that says it is free for use for the groups that I do like. You see this often for software that give the license for free for Home, Educational and Not-for-Profit.
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figure you have to track multiple fast moving threats like missiles and lots of other potential targets and non-combatants. that's a lot of processing power
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to transfer taxpayer dollars to the pockets of MIC CEOs - all else is padding.
That is not true. It was, in fact, designed to transfer taxpayer dollars to the campaigns of certain politicians. The CEOs are just the middlemen.
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Bzzzzt. Fail. From TFA:
Both LynxOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are on board.
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Under virtualization.
Windows for warships was used in the past (Score:2)
Windows for warships was used in the past and one it crashed taking down a few systems with it.
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Or not.
http://what-if.xkcd.com/33/ [xkcd.com]
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Yeah it's a stupid description. What they mean is that they are running Linux on VMs.