
The Navy’s newest warship is powered by Linux - PLenz
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-navys-newest-warship-is-powered-by-linux/
======
makerops
Was curious as to who the ship was named after:

"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]"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Monsoor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Monsoor)

~~~
reustle
And here is a picture of the coffin [1]

[1] [http://storiesofusa.com/images/us-navy-seal-michael-
monsoor-...](http://storiesofusa.com/images/us-navy-seal-michael-monsoor-
casket.jpg)

~~~
mrbill
And a video of them doing so - start at 8:45.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfK2BQCIIes](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfK2BQCIIes)

------
tytso
The Zumwalt is using Real-Time Java, using a JVM from IBM that has an
incremental GC with real-time guarantees (unlike the real-time Java spec,
which essentially works by disabling the GC for real-time threads, so their
NonHeapRealTime threads were essentially an architected memory leak). IBM's
Real-Time Java, with their real-time Metronome GC, is running on real-time
Linux, for which I was the tech lead at the IBM Linux Technology Center.

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.

~~~
VladRussian2
>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 :)

------
Amadou
Anybody remember the USS Yorktown? The one that ran Windows NT 4.0 and had the
apocryphal story about blue-screening and having to be towed back to shore?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_%28CG-48%29#Smart...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_%28CG-48%29#Smart_ship_testbed)

~~~
wnevets
From your link:

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.

~~~
stcredzero
I've also read that NT 4 servers on AEGIS cruisers once had to be rebooted
weekly.

~~~
astrodust
This was to avoid the bug in NT where the servers, if they hadn't crashed
already, would crash _for sure_ at the 49.7 day mark.

This bug took down air traffic control computers:
[http://news.techworld.com/operating-
systems/2275/microsoft-s...](http://news.techworld.com/operating-
systems/2275/microsoft-server-crash-nearly-causes-800-plane-pile-up/)

~~~
stcredzero
_> would crash for sure at the 49.7 day mark._

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.)

~~~
chris_wot
Yeah, except if they were attacked 49.7 days after the last reboot.

~~~
recursive
Such a time wouldn't exist.

~~~
derleth
> Such a time wouldn't exist.

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.

~~~
stcredzero
What would seal the deal would be if there was some external signal that
revealed that the crash happened. This could be as easy to arrange as a
confederate onboard with a powerful laser pointer.

------
kibwen
_" Almost all of the ship's internal communications are based on Voice Over IP
(with the exception of a few old-school, sound-powered phones for emergency
use)."_

Interesting, I'd never heard of sound-powered phones before:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound-
powered_telephone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound-powered_telephone)

~~~
cobrausn
Well, that brought back some memories. Shouting into sound powered phones over
the din of the engine room of a submarine is one thing, but trying to actually
hear what the other person is shouting back... it must be the audio equivalent
of learning to read doctor's prescriptions.

~~~
michaelwww
Were you on a diesel boat? Because I was on a nuclear sub and it was pretty
quiet and the sound powered phones worked great.

~~~
cobrausn
Nuclear, but the plant was fairly loud. That or the phone system sucked, not
sure which. The effect was still the same - lots of shouting and guessing what
was said. :-D

~~~
michaelwww
I was on a boomer which mostly cruised around at 3 knots staying quietly
hidden.

------
anigbrowl
I always find this phrase 'powered by...' a bit sad when used in relation to
computer software. I'm pretty sure the ship is _powered_ by a large diesel
engine or a small nuclear reactor. It's _managed_ or _controlled_ by
Linux...well, technically via Linux but that's beside the point. A trivial
objection, but I don't care for my news reporting to read like a breathless
press release complete with meaningless marketing-speak.

~~~
saraid216
But it's not actually Linux that's managing or controlling the ship. It's
Linux that's managing or controlling the software that's _actually_ managing
or controlling the ship.

I mean, if we're getting into a semantic argument.

~~~
lelandbatey
Yes, we can only really accurately say:

    
    
        "Linux is playing a role of some significance in the latest 
        ship for the US Navy."

~~~
tantaman
That and Linux has actually been used by the US Navy for over a decade now. I
guess "The Navy's Still Using Linux" isn't quite as catchy a title.

------
ChuckMcM
This will be interesting (it takes containerized data centers to an
interesting place). Given that naval engagements seem to be either
'unsophisticated Somali pirate' level or 'super sonic ship-killer cruise
missile' there isn't a whole lot of middle ground in terms of reaction space.

I can say this though, I'd love to see the insides of one of these ships.

~~~
gk1
They look just about the same as ships in the current fleet. Much of the new
tech is not easily recognizable, even from the inside. For example, high-tech
materials, C4I systems, etc.

~~~
ChuckMcM
So living in Las Vegas in the 70's there was an amazing place called 'Buck's
War Surplus' that had all sorts of stuff [1] end up there, it will be
interesting if the self contained data center units do. Since they are
designed to take "regular" gear instead of mil spec gear they could make for a
heck of a doomsday data center backup :-)

[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 :-(

------
undoware
Great -- now the fragment of code I wrote for the kernel make s me potentially
party to killing.

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.

~~~
X4
The container design is heavily inspired from Google's Datacenters. This will
continue happening and cannot be prevented, even a new license for the Kernel
prohibiting a military use won't help. Because they can fork an "old kernel"
and continue their secret development on it. It's better to know what the
government is doing rather than just trusting on a "license". We've been shown
often enough in the past and present that people can't blindly trust a
Government's actions and ethics.

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.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Err, any nuclear attack be it "mini" or regular is provocation to nuclear war.
The US won't sit back and watch the Chinese blast our navy to bits with
airburst nuclear weapons causing EMP. More than likely the US would strike
back with nukes.

You don't get to avoid the whole balance of power/MAD card because your nukes
were used for EMP only.

~~~
PeterisP
Well, for USA there are only two possible kinds of war opponents - guerilla
warfare or countries that have also nukes; and you're not that likely to use
ships like the one described for Afganistan. The only combat use for the ship
is against nuke-capable opponents, and MAD is not an excuse to build military
systems that won't function in any serious war with the intended enemies.

------
robertfw
We'll just have to cross our fingers that they don't run into any cylons...

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?

~~~
rtkwe
Traditionally they might have been air gapped but from the description of
anyone being able to use any station that would not longer possible. They
might run on isolated servers, almost definitely since the Armed forces are
religious about separation of classified and non-classified systems and data.
(This is one reason why sites hosting the Wikileaks and Snowden documents are
banned from networks. If classified data, which the leaks still are despite
being leaked, appears on an unclassified system there's hell to pay.)

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.

~~~
mbreese
From the article, it sounded like each of the systems was running on a
stripped down Linux VM, so each of the stations would be logically isolated
from each other, running in the same "data center".

------
Shish2k
> more than 235 equipment cabinets (racks) in total

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?

~~~
morrad
Seeing as this is the military, I would guess that they have triple redundant
systems for some things, but that still is a decent amount of computing power
there.

~~~
X4
Is the "James Kirk" part a joke, or is that the real name of Zumwalt's
Captain? Sorry, if this looks blue-eyed, I can't tell that from sarcasm.

~~~
KC8ZKF
It's "James A. Kirk" though, not "James Theodore Kirk."

~~~
morrad
Tiberius.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_T._Kirk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_T._Kirk)

~~~
KC8ZKF
Thanks! I could have sworn the last time I watched Star Wars, he said his
middle name was Theodore.

------
dhimes
This is the year of the Linux warship.

------
auctiontheory
It's James "A." Kirk. Boo hiss. Source:
[http://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/ddg1000/Pages/bio1.aspx#.U...](http://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/ddg1000/Pages/bio1.aspx#.UmFwfmRAT8k)

------
milliams
The article seems to mention that they are running LynxOS, not Linux. Can
anyone clarify?

~~~
shavenwarthog2
LynxOS is hard-real-time, unlike Linux, but is Linux-compatible.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LynxOS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LynxOS)

------
jdubs
A few software licenses restrict the use of software in use of nuclear weapons
& other WMD. I'm sure this vessel is capable of launching nuclear weapons, but
it makes me wonder if the government will honor those license agreements or
even if they were apart of the consideration.

~~~
claudius
While some software has such strange licenses, most ‘free’ software is truly
free and e.g. Debian even makes it a strict requirement for inclusion that
there are no restrictions on how software can be used.

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.

~~~
a3n
Ah, but will they publish their nuke-enabling mods to GPL software?

~~~
azernik
No, the GPL only requires you to share your changes if you distribute the
product (and no, issuing it to your own soldiers/employees doesn't count). If
they give/sell these to other countries, though...

~~~
knewter
does sending compiled code inside of a missile count as distribution? seems
like it would.

~~~
a3n
But then you'd have to print the GPL on the nose cone. End users have rights.

------
chatman
Wow, what a surprise!!! Incredibly surprising, but you know what, even most
mobile phones and most servers in the world are powered by Linux too!!

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.

------
njharman
An improvement in OS choice over [http://gcn.com/articles/1998/07/13/software-
glitches-leave-n...](http://gcn.com/articles/1998/07/13/software-glitches-
leave-navy-smart-ship-dead-in-the-water.aspx)

~~~
backprojection
I don't know if my perspective is just so heavily biased or impractical at
this point, but I'm almost embarrassed that my country's Navy would use
windows for such a critical system.

------
antsar
> The CDS workstation uses common USB interfaces for its peripheral devices
> (such as trackballs and specialized button panels)

This could open up some interesting potential vulnerabilities, but I'm
assuming/hoping that they've thought of that.

------
ck2
Hopefully it will reduce the cost, albeit slightly.

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?

~~~
mpyne
10 aircraft carriers, not 13 (though it will be 11 again in a couple years).

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...

------
Nux
Guess it's not first time when Linux facilitates mass murder and misery, or of
course, _ahem_ national defense.

What a shame. GPL should have a clause "do no evil".

~~~
rosser
The GPL will never have a "do no evil" clause. Such a thing is un-enforceable,
and directly conflicts with "Freedom 0".

For example, the JSON license is deemed to be non-Free by the FSF because "The
Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."

Source: [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-
list.html#JSON](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#JSON)

------
chris_wot
To hell with Linux, the US Military use CORBA?

~~~
platz
That's the real story here. The military has control of the allowed corba
implementations so they don't suffer from different runtimes, and get all the
typed benefits and speed benefits.

------
wslh
Imagine a science fiction story where someone introduces a backdoor in the
Linux kernel or in some known command...

~~~
VladRussian2
first episode of [modern] Battlestar Galactica.

------
mpyne
The Navy has actually _used_ Linux within warships for awhile now (via its
defense contractors). The boat I served on a few years ago used Linux for at
least two different subsystems. And before Linux they've used UNIX so it's not
as if the Navy is completely new to all this.

------
FrojoS
I once heard that the Navy has a electronics phobia and relies as much as
possible on mechanical and physical human control because EMP (e.g. du atomic
bombs) are such a big thread. Maybe this is untrue or only true for key
vessels like air craft carries. Does anyone know?

~~~
mpyne
I wouldn't say a phobia, as much as an acknowledgment that historical
experience has shown that electrical-type facilities are the most susceptible
to damage, and that the conversion from analog electrical to digital
electronic didn't always help matters.

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.

------
cweaver
Does anyone know how those EMEs compare in size with existing control systems?
They seem quite large for what I assume they do.

~~~
X4
I don't know the exact measures, but does a D-Wave Quantum Computer fit into
the EME? Here's a larger picture: [http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/wp-
content/uploads/2013...](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/wp-
content/uploads/2013/06/LW4A1956.jpg)

Or they needed very heavy shielding, for whatever reason? I'm curious why that
is too, does someone know it?

------
polskibus
where's the source code though?

~~~
claudius
You get it when you buy one, I’d presume.

~~~
hrjet
Which means every tax payer should have access to it?

~~~
teddyh
Well, submit a FOIA request for it and see what happens.

------
jstalin
I wonder what an EMP would do to it.

~~~
disc
Modern warships are designed for EMP threats. It's mentioned in MIL-STD-464.

~~~
X4
wow, I didn't know that! That's really crazy.

------
lispm
Wonderful, just what the US needs: more weapons.

