Britannia no longer rules the waves was: IBM 610 workstation computer

Quote:

"Marconi UK : we have stopped making SW transmitters and antennas, our reason for being now ... shoddy naval software.

Source: Article by Neil Mackay, Investigations Editor, *Sunday Herald* (Scotland), 10 Oct 2004

The Royal Navy's new, state-of-the-art destroyer has been fitted with combat management software that can be hacked into, crashes easily and is vulnerable to viruses, according to one of the system's designers who was fired after raising his concerns. Gerald Wilson, who has 25 years' experience designing naval software, worked for Alenia Marconi Systems (AMS) in a joint venture with Bae Systems and the Italian company Finmeccanica on the combat system for the Type 45 destroyer, which will rely on Microsoft Windows 2000. System failure in action, he says, would leave the ship blind, defenceless, and as good as sunk. . . Windows was chosen by AMS in order to cut costs, as the DPA has been encouraging a switch to off-the-shelf systems. Wilson says the Navy should stick to its current operating system, Unix, which is said to be more reliable. Designers can also customise Unix, which would allow unnecessary components to be removed to reduce risk."

Presumably they've upgraded to XP by now...

BAE Systms have bought a large US defence contractor to gain access to the US market, let's hope the US Navy has more sense than to buy the same system!

-- Cheers, Stan Barr stanb .at. dial .dot. pipex .dot. com (Remove any digits from the addresses when mailing me.)

The future was never like this!