Future Military Systems

According to several sources, including Janes, Department of Defence, and even PC Gamer magazine, a Silicon Valley based company, Pacific Consultants, is currently developing a new hardware platform for the United States Military. Named "Land Warrior", as it is known is currently being based on an Intel P3, Running a Special Version of Windows 2000 (Ugh). Each soldier will wear this , and it will virtually control it's bearers fate. I am intrigued to know exactly how they will maintain a secure connection, from the "Mainframe", to the troops wearing it. This has to be under consideration. Why did they choose Win2k?

For Further info (A press release from Pacific Consultants) Read the link.

www.pacificconsultants.com/press/rshowcase.html


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Remembers when they tried NT on a warship :D

i heard about this a year ago. if my memory serves me correct they were once developed by nekomedia. i used to do some r&d stuffs for those companies. once they asked for some weird stuffs like "flash for an interface with coldfusion as the brain and an excel worksheet for a database". i did it yes, but i was wondering why did they ever want something like that. :confused:

hey, cf turned into ice in my last post. hehe.

obi, am i being gullible or what? can i know where did you get that info? sounds fun! :p

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Originally posted by obi
Remembers when they tried NT on a warship :D

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They had not to worry too much. Nt crashes, it doesn't sink.

Jean-Francois

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Originally posted by Galdron
, and it will virtually control it's bearers fate.

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what does that mean does this mean no more war its all computer games??

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Originally posted by Galdron
- - "Land Warrior", as it is known is currently being based on an Intel P3, Running a Special Version of Windows 2000 (Ugh). - - I am intrigued to know exactly how they will maintain a secure connection, from the "Mainframe", to the troops wearing it. This has to be under consideration. Why did they choose Win2k?

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Oh man, I can't believe they are actually using Windows! :eek: Sounds like a suicide to me... :( The article you linked to didn't say anything about it, but at least TechTV confirms it... Some old articles say LW's are using an OS called Lynx.
And using a Pentium... AMD's are much faster and better in floating point operations and they are much cheaper than Pentiums...
For more information about Land Warriors, you might want to check this little Google search.
To your question about security... Maybe they are using VPN connections..
And why did they choose a Microsoft product? KissMyFloppy has got an answer... :D

-ZeroOne :cool:

Hi i have maybe some info u like everything is hackeble and win2K is the securest windows around i think but it has 1 problem there is a NSA exploit/backdoor i think that's why they toke 2K i see it before mee a amerikan soldier that is going mad in such expensive gear or a spy or infaltrant or something so i think it must have somekind of backdoor i think this sucks quite a bit you got a dillema you can make it hacker proof but then you have 2 worry about those psycho spy's but if they don''t make it hacker proof no psycho spy's but then they'v got psycho hackers i say they must shutt the project down

greets
adon

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Originally posted by darkadon
Hi i have maybe some info u like everything is hackeble and win2K is the securest windows around i think but it has 1 problem there is a NSA exploit/backdoor - -

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Uh... I think you could cut your word flow in sentences... But I think that NSA backdoor is/was just an urban legend.. There was a file named something nsa something which then actually had nothing to do with NSA. I would be more horrified of the Win XP registeration thing...

-ZeroOne :cool:

Someone will be able to find a way to hack into it, for security is just an illusion.The government is not invincible and nether the troops.

Just think of the things that someone could do by hacking into it, they could change everything, targets, locations, hell it would be basically having an army to control and how many people would want that.

Well I don't think that the time has come to use such advanced technology for warfare.Since the government has never been secure in the first place.Maybe they should re think the idea of having it, or at least rething win 2000.

For a look at how using Windows worked the last time they tried it on an operational platform...............

http://www.info-sec.com/OSsec/OSsec_080498g_j.shtml

:D

They automatically use Microsoft? Why? More than likely it was bid out, and Microsoft undercut they competition. I personally would not want to wear a system created by the lowest bidder. I would think that Mac's G4 with a special version of Mac O.S. would be far superior in performance and perhaps even security. But thats just my opinion.

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The military using Microsoft products? GOD HELP US!!! ;)

I would believe that the fact that the government would use any companies products, especially Microsofts extremely disturbing.

I seriously believe that they would be much better off developing their own OS to use. Sure, it may cost more, but ultimately the benifits would make it more than worthwhile. If there is a problem with the units, then they could fix it themselves, not have to wait months for a patch to be release by a third party developer.

If they do use a Windows 2K for it, there is gonna be lots of shyte hitting the proverbial fan.

Whats next, using IIS to provide updates on the soldiers status?:eek:

My opinion the reason is the simplicity of windows and most people have some knowledge of how to use it. We (US) will get it for the trade on the Anti-Trust case

TotalChaos(D~Sq has made a very valid point...

But it raises another, possibly even greater concern...

are the united states prepared to trade of it's security for such a small price...

none can deny that microsoft have attempted (and succeeded in part to make a monopoly. The punishment for them could be great, or if the US decides

Every other week, you hear about another flaw in one of microsoft's products.. whether it be IIS (It Isn't Secure) or even its quite good office suites...

If the US is prepared to trade off its security for cheap software, send them my way... I can't code for crap, but at least my code doesn't allow you to take over anything running on the system...

Y'know, it's obvious that the different areas of the government don't work together.....

The NSA spent a lot of time developing a very secure distro of Linux (I believe I saw the article on slashdot), and the Army goes and shells out loads of cash for a M$ product.

Besides--you can make X-Window, esp. the Sawfish window manager, look and feel just like M$ Windows. It's not as if the common grunt is going to be poking around in the underlying code, y'know....

Besides which, Linux is inheirently more secure than Windows.

Certainly, "Government Intelligence" *is* an oxymoron.

Government Intelligence is, I would have to say, most certainly an oxymoron KublaiKhan....

But in all fairness, while we may say that the government is stupid, and that the only reason the microsoft anti-trust cases haven't been resolved is that the government is holding out for a really sweet deal from microsoft (well, at least I say that, coz I know that I would do that if I was them) there was without a doubt, a lot of consideration into the choice of OS to use for this operation or project or whateva....

I'm Australian, so I may not have as much info regarding US Government, but I do believe that they do not needlessly endanger the lives of those under their care, especially just for a miniscule saving of money.....

But any further than that and we just get into government policy, which is not what this thread is about, so.. I'm off...

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Originally posted by Matty Cross
I seriously believe that they would be much better off developing their own OS to use. Sure, it may cost more, but ultimately the benifits would make it more than worthwhile. If there is a problem with the units, then they could fix it themselves, not have to wait months for a patch to be release by a third party developer.

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you clearly dont have alot of experiance with the US gov. if they decided to make their own os, not only would it take like 20 years, it would be total crap in the end. anything the government tries to do on its own is done in the cheapest possible way, with not enough man power, and practly no experiance.

hell, they cant even get the freakin pentigon comp systems secure, and you want them to start making an OS from scratch? are you crazy?

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Originally posted by 8*B@LL
hell, they cant even get the freakin pentigon comp systems secure, and you want them to start making an OS from scratch? are you crazy?

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:D good point...
I'm also definitely against using Windows as the OS for Land Warriors, but the idea of using Linux was good, I'd also thought it myself. It's ready, but it's rather easy to customize the way they ever want to. I'm sure they can afford some coins on software development if they can afford the hardware for what, 10.000 soldiers??
And how are they ever going to use Windows without a mouse in their bullet-proof vest? With a pen? Yeah, sure... Linux is much more stable and secure and can be used in command line as well as speech recognizing or what ever are they willing to use as the input method... And, like said many times in this topic already, Windows is an expensive option.

-ZeroOne :cool:

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This is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a six foot tall wookie from planet Endor. Does this make sense? No, this does not make sense! Think about this for a minute!

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??

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Originally posted by Matty Cross
Co-incidently, what do the pentagon systems run on??

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unfortunatly, i cant really say for sure, all i can say is that they dont even try to hide the fact that MANY nations are quite sucessfull in hacking into the pentigon as well as many of our other military systems. fortuantly the ones that have the best sucess are countries like Israel(if im not mistaken, they are the most sucessfull), and other allies.

its still scary.

put it this way... world runs on money right? so it must be better to use microsoft for some reason. And im sure they are aware of the problems with security. But then again how can they aford all that gear for 1 soldier?.. not to mention say one of them gets killed, and like a crazy ass bad guy gets a hold of the equipment.. i mean they would be like sniffing on a hub :) wouldnt they see where all the opponen't men are? etc ?

oh well perhaps i think too much

I think some general important-type army guys have been watching to many B-grade future war movies.

And a microsoft operating system? Heh heh, now I just can't wait to see "This application has performed an illegal operation and must be shut down. If this problem persists, please contact your software vendor" appearing in the futuristic eyepiece of the soldiers of the future.

Im of the opinion that the American armed services need to invest some of their bazillions of dollars in some actual human intelligence, rather than spending a fortune on whatever the latest technology is to come out of Silicone Valley. Future soldiers with eye pieces, pah.

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Originally posted by Half^A^Biscuit
But then again how can they aford all that gear for 1 soldier?.. not to mention say one of them gets killed, and like a crazy ass bad guy gets a hold of the equipment.. i mean they would be like sniffing on a hub :) wouldnt they see where all the opponen't men are? etc ?

oh well perhaps i think too much

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Heck, that's perhaps even worse than the scenario I thought... I thought they (the bad dudes) could hack into the system and by that way see all the locations, messages etc. of the soldiers, but your vision might be more possible.
But, I thought even more (so don't blame yourself of thinking too much - thinking is always allowed here ;)). I think "This application has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" would change into "This application has performed an illegal operation and the soldier wearing it will be blown up"... Not sure if I should put a :D but because that's one solution to the "enemy-can-get-our-equipments" problem I prefer not to... ;):(

-ZeroOne :cool:

Just A Note of Thanks to all who have posted on my thread, all your theories are interesting, and I enjoy the variety of ideas, I am currently researching other topics and will try to post more soon.

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