'Subject:
Re: YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP! (Navy Software Dead in the Water)
Date:
19 Jul 1998 00:07:18 GMT
From:
nospam@wwa.com (Bloody Viking)
Organization:
ACME Eternal Batteries, Ltd. Oslo, Minnesota.
Newsgroups:
comp.software.year-2000
References:
1
Theo DP (theodp@aol.com) wrote:
: Navy Software Dead in the Water...Last week the US Navy acknowledged that the
: USS Hue City and the USS Vicksburg -- two of the Navy's prize battle cruisers
: -- will be out of commission until further notice as engineers try to integrate
: new weapons control systems on the ships...The heart of the problem lies with
: two new systems being built into the ships. The Aegis Baseline 6 system helps
: defend the vessels against air attacks, and the Cooperative Engagement
: Capability (CEC) system gathers and shares radar data from multiple ships.
The Navy has lots of old weapon systems. The powerplants on older
steam-driven ships will run though, as that equipment is REALLY backward.
I mean, pneumatic-driven boiler controls where the "transistors" are
pneumatic-driven valves - literally. The problem will be late-model ships
like the gas turbine driven ones, and of course all the weapon systems,
which frequently have discrete logic gates.
Some fun stuff to watch for: The CIWS system, which is closely tied into
the ship radars. (The CIWS is that R2D2 gatling gun device.) Also,
antiaircraft missiles, and any nuclear tactical missile. The antiaircraft
missiles are also tied into the radars, like the CIWS gatling guns. These
systems can be configured in several ways, if one radar is busted. But if
all the radars are busted, it's useless.
Even funnier will be the CIC where all the information is fed into. It has
largely taken over the function of the Bridge. (cab) It looks like a wierd
video arcade in CIC.
The Navy might consider dusting off the really old ships, with weapon
systems that pre-date the computers, like the Iowa models. |
