8*B@LL
your correct that I don't have much experience with the US Govt, I said that myself... my point was that I really don't think that the Goverment would want to needlessly endanger the lives of its soldiers with a shonky OS..

Call me crazy (nearly every body else does), but it might take a lot of time for them to develop, but with the amount of public attention that could be drawn to this project and the possibly huge amount of backlash that could follow if it goes badly, I think that the US Government would try and do a good job here....

I certainly wouldn't entrust the lives of any one under my care on a publicly available operating system which is constantly under critisism for the number of security holes it has and is only rated as C2 by the DOD Orange Book
(Windows NT4 was actually rated C2.. I don't know what 2K would be rated as, but its most likely still C2....)

And I agree with Linux train of thought... just that they should develop it to their custom needs, stripping off any unneccessary risks to the systems....

Co-incidently, what do the pentagon systems run on??