41 ms·

A submarine's weakness: its software?

199 points by jwithington 5y ago

northisup 5y ago
advent of code is actively working on this...
- jwithington 5y ago
  is it really?? you're the second one to post this
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    The story this year has you descending into the ocean in a submarine.
tablespoon 5y ago
> The Connecticut alone carries enough torpedoes to destroy any other nation's entire nuclear submarine force. Nitpick, but isn't that a lot like saying "this magazine carries enough bullets to kill a whole platoon of soldiers"? I mean, it technically does, but only if they're all lined up in front of you and you never miss, which is almost certainly not true in real-world conditions. > This failure to intervene is probably the most egregious shortcoming of VMS. But it's notoriously awful along other dimensions. Here's some of what I remember, mixed in with conversations with folks more recently onboard: It seems like the military really ought to give the users of systems like this the ability to say "fuck no" and send it back after doing some user testing. Some of the issue identified are egregious and maybe the kind of thing that could get a submarine that's actually fighting sunk. I mean, it sounds like it's so bad it nearly got a submarine that was just cruising around sunk.
- scottLobster 5y ago
  Yeah, it sounds impressive until you realize that only 8 nations have more than a dozen submarines, and most nations have zero.
  - handrous 5y ago
    Hell, if we assume one-hit-kills and no duds/misses, a mid-war German U-Boat probably qualifies for the same achievement, as far as sheer amount of ordnance carried. Not that WWII subs were any good at hunting other subs, but still. It's not really impressive or surprising that a sub would carry enough torpedoes to technically be able to sink all the nuclear subs of any non-US country.
  - zauguin 5y ago
    It's even more restrictive since the statement is only about nuclear subs. I don't think that there are 8 nations with nuclear subs at all, let alone a dozen of them.
- throwmamatrain 5y ago
  Torpedos are not bullets, I don't think this is a good analogy.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Torpedos are not bullets, I don't think this is a good analogy. They aren't, but I'm sure there are operational complications to using them that make the analogy work (e.g. countermeasures).
    - throwmamatrain 5y ago
      I believe my point was that a modern torpedo hitting a ship is a very high kill probability (mobility or other), being it is guided and explosive. I would say a missile is more similar to a torpedo. We can look to the Falklands as to how dangerous missiles are against ships. This isn't your grandfathers WWII torpedo. There is only one other case of an anti-ship missile I can think of off hand, in Desert Storm when a Silkworm was shot at a fleet and shot down with a SeaRAM(?) I think. I am surprised at the downvotes, but I guess also not. Either way, the information is out there. I agree with the article in that military software is generally awful, but I'm guessing it is not easy to innovate.
  - KineticLensman 5y ago
    > Torpedos are not bullets, I don't think this is a good analogy. The point of the analogy is that the enemy platoon / nuclear submarine force would need be to be located and behave in a way that allowed a single shooter to wipe them all out almost simultaneously. This is particularly unlikely for submarines, especially nuclear-armed ones.
    - handrous 5y ago
      > especially nuclear-armed ones. I took "nuclear sub" to mean "nuclear powered" (as opposed to e.g. diesel-electric, which are still fairly common), which I think represents a somewhat larger set of submarines, outside the US, than just the set of all non-US "boomer" (nuclear-armed) subs. That is, attack subs without nuke-tipped missiles can still be nuclear subs because they have a nuke plant onboard for power.
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  i think the author is trying more to highlight the importance of the submarine by mentioning it's singular capabilities.
- jwithington 5y ago
  I do think that's a fair critique of my analogy on the firepower of a Seawolf class submarine. I'm trying to relay that it's exceedingly deadly submarine. The best in the world. The envy of all other submarine classes. I don't think there are fighter aircraft that carry enough missiles to down an entire country's bomber force. The Seawolf was made to destroy other ships. It has all the stats and capabilities to do it. But the kicker is it has incredibly bad navigation software.
  - mLuby 5y ago
    That's reasonable. Sloppier would've been: "The Connecticut alone could destroy any other nation's entire nuclear submarine force."
    - jwithington 5y ago
      Well, the design requirements for the Seawolf class were actually probably something like this! Basically the Navy wanted a monster that go deep behind Soviet lines and tear things up before they made it out of the backyard. "[Seawolf's] emphasis on fast tactical search speeds and a massive torpedo magazine were reflections of its design mission, which was to independently search for and kill Soviet submarines in the relatively confined and target rich northern waters of the Soviet Arctic littoral." [1] [1] https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=newport-papers https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
  - quesera 5y ago
    I read it with the opposite meaning: > The Connecticut alone carries enough torpedoes to destroy any other nation's entire nuclear submarine force. The Connecticut uniquely carries enough torpedoes to destroy... vs. The Connecticut carries enough torpedoes to single-handedly destroy...
nick238 5y ago
The 'Forum' link goes to https://github.com/invictus2010/fixvms/issues https://github.com/invictus2010/fixvms/issues which seems to be a private repo. Is that intended?
- jwithington 5y ago
  thanks nick! that is not intended. let me make it public. i called it a forum because readers in the military-world may be less familiar with "issues" in github ;)
_t8ub 5y ago
It is surprising that there isn't constant passive bathymetrics. The models exist, the hydrophones are already there, and the entire hardware/software stack needed to implement it is there. What's the hold up?
- intpx 5y ago
  Just a guess, but stealth is one of the primary design requirements even passive coils are RF devices.
  - _t8ub 5y ago
    No way. RF doesn't go anywhere in water. Besides, an entire hydrophone array is at least 60 dB quieter than propulsion systems in terms of EM emissions and will be on par with life support systems, which I assume do not ever get voluntarily shut down underwater.
- hugh-avherald 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on what passive bathymetrics entails?
OldHand2018 5y ago
The author seems to know about submarines, so let's give him (?) the benefit of the doubt... But without knowing the cause of the accident, the author is calling for a specific change. This seems problematic. Perhaps there is a very good reason that the computer system performs like this. Also, if you have the computer checking everything, then those 5 people that are supposed to be redundantly computing the navigation plan are highly likely to be less diligent. Human nature and all. Isn't that likely to result in a worse outcome?
- riskneutral 5y ago
  Everything about this hilarious and terrifying. It's hilarious and terrifying that they couldn't drive a $3 billion nuclear submarine without crashing it. That the navigation software on the sub is so bad that there is a website about it describing how its navigation software takes "minutes" to zoom in and out of maps. That if the sub were to be equipped with smarter and smarter autopilot software, the humans operators would eventually forget how to pilot the sub themselves the way that commercial airline pilots keep forgetting how to fly.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    > That if the sub were to be equipped with smarter and smarter autopilot software, the humans operators would eventually forget how to pilot the sub themselves the way that commercial airline pilots keep forgetting how to fly. Well the lack of situational awareness with EFIS (glass cockpit) systems is a known issue. Pilots tend to 'switch off' because of the low workload and then when something goes wrong they're not aware of the situation because they haven't been following along. This has contributed so some incidents such as the AF 447 crash where the pilots were basically unaware of the actual situation of the plane and flew it straight into the ground (well, sea). I can understand the Navy wants its crews to be more involved for that reason (and perhaps also because the enemy might deliberately instill confusion by messing with navaids etc), but I think there should be at least a warning if you try to do something that's known to be stupid.
- jwithington 5y ago
ok_dad 5y ago
That's because the Navy doesn't rely on software to do these checks, the officers and crew are supposed to ensure they don't crash. This idea of having software check things is dead in the water, because of that. The real problem is training, and much like any other human problem, this one cannot be solved through technology; it has to be solved by culture changes. VMS, however, was horrible a decade ago, and I'm not surprised it's still horrible. We used paper charts rather than VMS back then because it was so horrible.
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  > This idea of having software check things is dead in the water, I accept that people have to make the judgement calls and sign-off, but if the maps are in fact accurate why couldn't the computer at least issue a warning / red flag or similar when there are obvious problems (requested depth within some threshold of the actual depth). I came across a scenario editor for a land training simulator that didn't provide any way of testing intervisibility between two points. The course authors wasted vast amounts of time when assigning vehicle positions clicking around maps to see if potential targets were in fact visible to the trainees. An auto check would have allowed the course authors to use their expertise to do things that couldn't be automated, building better scenarios faster.
  - ok_dad 5y ago
    I agree in the case of planned maneuvers for sure, however if you want the result of the "5 Whys" (kinda joking) then my answer is: because the contractors that build this stuff SUCK ASS. Sorry for the harsh language, but I worked on a pre-com ship during my time (an LCS, go figure) while it was being built, and the absolute lack of standards on every level (from the top of the SWO military chain through the dogshit contractors) is part of what made me leave the Navy. I'm not gonna complain about it too much, but man oh man, I think you and I could build better software than what I saw, and I don't even know you from Adam.
    - jwithington 5y ago
      I do want to build better software for DoD, but I can't figure out how to sell in. I'd start by tackling VMS! No clue how I'd go about it though.
whatrocks 5y ago
I'm working on some cool submarine software here: https://adventofcode.com/ https://adventofcode.com/
- xbar 5y ago
  Nice. I'm learning Rust and decided to write memory-safe submarine software this week. It really knows how to collaborate with crabs.
zppln 5y ago
Although it does sound like this piece of software could use improvement, I would never expect a mission support system to be the only thing safeguarding me from going aground. I don't know anything about submarines, but I would expect some kind of real-time navigation system to alert me before hand.
- jwithington 5y ago
  To clarify: this is the real-time navigation system lol
  - zppln 5y ago
    Oh, I was under the impression it was just a planning system. Mea culpa!
    - jwithington 5y ago
      I think I should make this more clear! It serves both functions.
- thuccess129 5y ago
  > I don't know anything about submarines, but I would expect some kind of real-time navigation system to alert me before hand. For docking simulation to the space station, SpaceX has a website for controlling the Dragon capsule's UI. That could be the UI ergonomy baseline for measuring the current submarine's software against. The Orion and Starliner capsules have their own different more hardware oriented UI. I would expect nextgen submariners to be digital first native fast twitch glass screen navigators, but a submarine taking damage will be a splashy environment as seen in the movies and touch screens won't be as reliable as physical toggles with redundant bypasses etc. Maybe "Fat Leonard" contributed to the contracting process that put this software on the suboptimal submarine without proper human factors consideration.
9999px 5y ago
Yeah…sure…it hit a "seamount" – it's definitely not out-classed and out-matched by Chinese unmanned submarine drones. https://metallicman.com/uss-connecticut-black-operations-submarine-south-china-sea-ram-mountain-what-really-happened/ https://metallicman.com/uss-connecticut-black-operations-sub... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeJLwUfLcEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeJLwUfLcEU
- kcb 5y ago
  Something doesn't add up here. If it's China's official policy that it blatantly and deliberately attacked a USN warship, why aren't we at war with them? They've never directly attacked any other US ships or planes in the South China Sea.
  - pphysch 5y ago
    Foreign spies are caught and punished/executed probably every year more or less. And governments have virtually no incentive to admit "hey my spy got caught by the enemy". Ditto for stealth submarines.
    - kcb 5y ago
      It's really hard for me to believe the USN allows countries to blow up their warships then has the courtesy to hide it domestically. The whole purpose of the USN is a show of force and power projection. If countries are allowed to take that sort of action without immediate retaliation that is all gone.
      - pphysch 5y ago
        Why is that hard to believe? Firstly, they didn't blow it up. If the Chinese story is true, they surgically disabled it. Either way, no American blood was shed. Secondly, the modus operandi of the contemporary Pentagon is walking a fine line between a) inflating foreign threats to secure Congressional funding and b) deflating any challenges to the perception of American military supremacy. Defending Americans from actual threats is a distant follower.
bmmayer1 5y ago
This is fascinating, but also fascinating that submarines have been operated in real world conditions based purely on sonar for over 100 years.
tra3 5y ago
Remind me when USS McCain collided with another ship in a busy channel [0]. Because of a UI issue, they couldn't figure out where throttle control was and ran into someone. Which is crazy to me. I was going to say, that there probably a few dozen people that use submarine nav software, so it's hard to get a representative sample of usability...but then it occurred to me that airplane software has a fairly limited audience too. What's the process for test for developing aircraft software? How is nav done in aircraft? Theoretically they have the same issues (like hitting the ground). [0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/uss-mccain-collision-ultimately-caused-by-ui-confusion/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/uss-m...
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  I think there are several orders of magnitude more planes than submarines. From Wikipedia: Los Angeles class submarines built: 62, entering service 1976. Abus A350s built: 443, entering service 2015.
  - tra3 5y ago
    Fair enough, I suppose. The article author was comparing submarine nav software to phone nav software though and google says there are 5+ billion mobile users. That's another couple of order of magnitude more. That'd explain why mobile software is more polished. I guess any kind of mass market product would be higher quality. The same argument ("number of eyeballs") has been used with open source software vs closed source.
- jwithington 5y ago
  There are probably a few thousand users of submarine navigation software. But the willingness to pay *should* be quite high, which in most other markets would translate to a quality product. The tool should help submarines: * Prevent groundings (loss of a $3B platform, 120+ lives in worst case) * Do their missions better (increase the value of the platform)
  - tra3 5y ago
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Whoa... I had no idea that submarine software was this bad. Not just the lack of warnings but also "Waits for VMS to load the next screen, which can take minutes.". Why do you have to wait minutes to load a map?? And why is this running Windows XP? I'm also surprised there's no contour lines between the depths (although perhaps this is done to not infer a knowledge of depths in the intermediate points where perhaps there is no such knowledge).
- gaetgu 5y ago
  IIRC the military actually got a private extension to XP's EOL from Microsoft just so that they don't have to change all that tech.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Oh really but even still up to now?? I mean the EOL was in 2014. How long do they keep that up? :) I suppose they do what we do in our factories at work. Airgapping and extremely strict firewalling where any access is needed.
- chiph 5y ago
  > I'm also surprised there's no contour lines between the depths (although perhaps this is done to not infer a knowledge of depths in the intermediate points where perhaps there is no such knowledge). Yes, contour lines would imply accuracy that isn't there. The depth numbers indicate positions where the depth was actually measured. Any other location that doesn't have a number was not measured. Bear in mind that even if you have a depth number on your chart, it might be old and out of date. Safe navigation is never guaranteed. And subs never run depth-finder sonar when on patrol.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    How do depth numbers get out of date? Sedimentation? Underwater volcano eruption? Continental drift?
    - 5y ago
mightyham 5y ago
Crappy pieces of software like that cannot simply be wholly blamed on the vendor. It's up to navy leadership to decide how to distribute funds to vendors to develop software. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a high up navy officer who likes VMS, thinks that the missions planing process is fine the way it is, and doesn't want to allocate money for anything beyond bug fixes. Things like that happen all the time in government software contracting.
- jwithington 5y ago
  i dont doubt this! someone is accepting this work despite decades of submarine officers losing their minds at it
mLuby 5y ago
> It's unacceptable work from our vendors and procurement processes… It's as if our procurement process and the vendor collaborated to absolve themselves from any responsibility by serving us such an aggressively unhelpul[sic] tool. If subs were companies, competition would solve this problem. Some enterprising engineer says to herself "I can build a better VMS" and does. Since it's 10x better than the existing VMS, some submarine crews adopt it, and pretty soon it's in widespread use across the fleet. Engineer profits, sub crews are more effective and probably it's cheaper too. But it's the government, even worse it's defense. So regulations and secrecy (some reasonable, some not) muddy the waters until everyone's blind, including apparently the VMS.
- trasz 5y ago
  If subs were companies, they would all be sold long ago to China and India.
  - mLuby 5y ago
    That does happen. :)
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
> the navigational software on the $3B warship is far less capable any maps app on your phone. The software, called "Voyage Management System" (VMS), is the hub of all the ship's planning. But it can't even do basic safety-of-ship alerting. My phone can do "safety-of-ship" alerting? I'm the first to shit on defense software, it's my background, but map software for a submarine is safety-critical. While submerged it's basically their eyes. It has to be more reliable and trustworthy than possibly any other map software. Not only this but navigation information would have to be fused together from GPS as well as INS (inertial nav). My 2 cents. Background in defense but not submarines.
- 0xfeba 5y ago
  I've worked in defense as well. Older software seemed to be tested more, or otherwise more reliable. Sure, it could be outdated, but generally it was usable. As they moved away from embedded to more networked and newer tech stacks things got terrible. The software world of today is not compatible with the needs of the defense industry. Plus all the red tape and misdirection. The software need comes from an organizational budget that has to use money to justify receiving money. Then it funnels down into political buckets, who use the dollar amount given to determine needs/wants. Then it goes back up the chain to the government. Then to a contractor, then a flurry of subcontractors. Then finally a developer. Rarely is the warfighter who will actually use the system consulted. Even then, rarely will the programmer meet that person using the software. Yet they all call themselves "agile" now.
  - jwithington 5y ago
    I don't think all of those problems are unique to government software. Some (a lot?) enterprise software is atrocious and disliked by end users. That's because the people making the purchasing decisions != end users. But it's flabbergasting just how bad VMS is considering it's the navigation system for these national assets. It's not like an HR system with poor UX--navigation is essential to the safety and effectiveness of the whole platform!
    - wolverine876 5y ago
pikzel 5y ago
This webpage could be a few lines html and css, but uses 172 node modules. 4240 files. The repo is 17.6 MB. We Deserve Much Better.
- jwithington 5y ago
  how do you see this?? i'm a newbie to web development and selected https://github.com/yuanqing/single-page-markdown-website https://github.com/yuanqing/single-page-markdown-website for something clean and minimal in design. but those are crazy stats! what would you suggest for newbies like me?
  - joconde 5y ago
    Jekyll is quite popular and generates very light webpages. I find the result pleasant to use. https://jekyllrb.com https://jekyllrb.com
GartzenDeHaes 5y ago
In the mid-2000's, I hired a recent college grad who was in the US Navy. Her job in the Navy was to administrate a MS Exchange server on a ship. It was kind of mind blowing to learn that each ship had a full MS back-end stack.
- trcarney 5y ago
  Yup, and backed up with magnetic tape every night.
- post_from_work 5y ago
  Still do. You'll call someone and ask for their email "Well right now I'm ashore, but next week I'll be on ship, so you need to email me at john.doe@{$shipname}.navy.mil, I won't have access to my john.doe@navy.mil account."
mprovost 5y ago
When I saw the URL I assumed the article was going to reveal that modern submarines are still running VMS on DEC Alphas (or a VAX!). Honestly I was surprised when that wasn't the case.
- pacman128 5y ago
  I thought the same at first. I worked on the Air Force AWACS E3 (https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104504/e-3-sentry-awacs/ https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045...) program as a contractor in the 2000's. It had dual IBM-360 computers and wireframe-like graphics for their radar displays at the time. This was the Block 30/35 version. It looks like from the link that they may have completely transitioned to the Block 40/45 version which replaced the 360's. They were talking about this move when I worked there 16 years ago.
octorian 5y ago
I would argue that software written under government contract is inherently awful and unusable, because... - It is driven entirely by formal requirements and specifications - These requirements are approved by "the customer," which is a set of people completely independent from "the actual users." - A requirements document cannot easily capture "the UI/UX doesn't suck," because that sort of thing often tends to be more subjective or not well thought out in advance. - The developers often pat themselves on the back for meeting the requirements. - The customer has to accept the software and foist it on the users, because it meets the requirements. ...and... - The competition is entirely about who gets the contract to build the software, and not for which software is actually the best.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  That last part is key. I suspect some form of X-prize approach would be worth trying - seed out a large number of small ISVs for government software (from license management to submarine firing systems). Spend the money not in the requirements (which as you say are usually written by a non developer with minimal experience of the problem - after all if they were an expert they would have other more useful things to do) and spend the money on building automated test rigs. I know I sound trite, and this is not even the best way (which is to organically grow solutions to problems), but we have a small window - software is eating everything and we will need to write the first generation of software that covers all politics and I damn well want that to be open to everyone to read. The software that runs governments will essentially be law. We should be free to read our laws
- inetknght 5y ago
  > - It is driven entirely by formal requirements and specifications Can you explain why this is a bad thing? I've found that formal requirements and specifications are almost always good unless they're just vague (in which case: they're not really formal) > - These requirements are approved by "the customer," which is a set of people completely independent from "the actual users." Well, yes. That is indeed a problem. > - A requirements document cannot easily capture "the UI/UX doesn't suck," because that sort of thing often tends to be more subjective or not well thought out in advance. I've found that very very few people actively request people to say "your UI sucks". Instead, they want "constructive criticism" and/or "describe why it sucks!". Which, is sort've fair. But it gets to be extremely tiring to explain why the UX doesn't "just suck" but is fundamentally flawed. > - The developers often pat themselves on the back for meeting the requirements. Nothing wrong with that either. > - The customer has to accept the software and foist it on the users, because it meets the requirements. The customer has to accept the software because that's how contracts are done. But they don't have to foist it on the users. They just want to show that they've been able to deliver on their promise of a software solution. > - The competition is entirely about who gets the contract to build the software, and not for which software is actually the best. Well that's quite a problem.
londons_explore 5y ago
Special purpose software built for use by just a few people tends to be the worst software. Many people have tried to fix that problem, few succeed.
- jopsen 5y ago
  Yeah, this goes pretty much everywhere. I guess our industry is still ripe for disruption. Should someone figure out how make quality software cheap :)
alwayshumans 5y ago
So one of the fundamental design elements of a electronic chart display information system(Ecdis) or warfare Ecdis is the use of the safety depth contour. Anything inside the blue area would cause alarming on a traditional Ecdis. The bigger issue is the data that is used to navigate on, I could write a very boring blog detailing why th systems work so badly...
- jwithington 5y ago
  you should! let's geek out on it
- jwithington 5y ago
  would love to chat with you about it. i think we should solve this problem.
flatline 5y ago
My first house is on that map of the Severn River. I have that nautical chart printed out hanging on a wall.
qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
"CRUD boys" at it again. I am glad this hasn't crept into avionics.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gattr 5y ago
A bit off-topic, but maybe some experts could answer a question? I've recently re-read Clancy's "Red Storm Rising", the sections on submarine (and anti-) warfare are really interesting (I understand some of it may be simplified/fictional). E.g., how the Mark 48 torpedo can be set to and launched in "hunting mode", where it circles at a slow, undetectable speed, and only after acquiring a target it suddenly accelerates for a kill. Let's consider this excerpt from [1]: Terminal Homing is the final stage of the torpedo attack. (...) Terminal homing is an active sonar ping that retransmits on reception becoming more rapid as the range to target closes at maximum speed. (...) The target is alerted to the attack, but there is nothing it can do to defeat the weapon at this point. The weapon is too close and moving too fast to allow time for a countermeasure to be effective. Now, I might have read too much David Weber ([2]), but wouldn't a small, cheap-ish counter-torpedo suffice? Put 10-20 of them in small automated launchers all around the hull, and let them crash head-on with the (now perfectly detectable) approaching boat-killer, still at a safe distance (which is.. I don't know, 100-200 m?) [1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33018/modern-submarine-torpedo-attacks-are-nothing-like-what-you-see-in-the-movies https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33018/modern-submarine... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse
- nradov 5y ago
  Yes several navies are working on torpedo interceptors. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/04/16/navies-companies-push-for-torpedo-killing-torpedoes/ https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/04/16/navies-...
- tra3 5y ago
  Like chaff [0] or flares? I wonder if you could triangulate the launch point though. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)
  - virtue3 5y ago
    From what I've seen on naval ships you'd launch it to the side that is incoming so you'd be behind the wall of Chaff. I think that would be significantly harder to triangulate because you'd mostly just see the noisy stuff up front and your original target would be behind the wall of chaff. Chaff is also designed to reflect signals all over the place so that it's difficult to get accurate results back. This would make triangulating near impossible (if it's working as intended)
QuarterReptile 5y ago
The critique of VMS is correct, and the general disdain for navy software, appropriate. VMS suffers from a combination of unintuitive UI spearheaded by mouse-only interaction; extreme configurability, which the navy narrows down by requiring that everyone operate it the same way; and being generally slow and buggy. Having said all that, the author is placing way too much blame on the technology. It should be an aid and much less of an impediment, but there is no chance that the crew was operating correctly.
baybal2 5y ago
I heard that most of US navy runs on WinNT, and it is the world's biggest user of it.
adolph 5y ago
A post about computer systems on a submarine is up for 9 hours without a mention of whether it can run Minesweeper or not? Can it?
- MerelyMortal 5y ago
  Submarines are not minesweepers, a minesweeper is an actual type of surface ship.
pdoege 5y ago
NAVSEA had no idea what they are doing with regards to C&C on subs. NAWCTSD used to have good ideas. I remember that the NAVSEA rules were that you had to recover from a crash in less than 30 secs. The NAWCTSD rules under Ahlers were that you were not allowed to crash. Big contractors with big budgets ruled the roost and delivered poor results. I wish that the NAWCTSD "More with less" ideas had lasted.
freddealmeida 5y ago
I think we could argue this is the issue for any modern warfare technology. I would say that most are insecure and if not already compromised, easily done. The head of cybersecurity resigned because he couldn't get funding to even look deeply into this. GPS is not as good as most people think. Especially in Southern Hemisphere. It makes interesting reading.
ThinkBeat 5y ago
What computer hardware is this running on? What sort of "server farm" does a modern submarine have? Do they need to be super hardened operation in a vehicle that may be called to launch its missiles in a high radiation zone? In a worst-case scenario the sub my surface in the middle of or end of a nuclear war. They probably want to ensure that the missiles get underway even in such extreme conditions
- FredPret 5y ago
  I bet they have BeQuiet PSU’s on that server!

199 points by jwithington 5y ago

northisup 5y ago

advent of code is actively working on this...

jwithington 5y ago
is it really?? you're the second one to post this
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  The story this year has you descending into the ocean in a submarine.

tablespoon 5y ago

> The Connecticut alone carries enough torpedoes to destroy any other nation's entire nuclear submarine force. Nitpick, but isn't that a lot like saying "this magazine carries enough bullets to kill a whole platoon of soldiers"? I mean, it technically does, but only if they're all lined up in front of you and you never miss, which is almost certainly not true in real-world conditions. > This failure to intervene is probably the most egregious shortcoming of VMS. But it's notoriously awful along other dimensions. Here's some of what I remember, mixed in with conversations with folks more recently onboard: It seems like the military really ought to give the users of systems like this the ability to say "fuck no" and send it back after doing some user testing. Some of the issue identified are egregious and maybe the kind of thing that could get a submarine that's actually fighting sunk. I mean, it sounds like it's so bad it nearly got a submarine that was just cruising around sunk.

scottLobster 5y ago
Yeah, it sounds impressive until you realize that only 8 nations have more than a dozen submarines, and most nations have zero.
- handrous 5y ago
  Hell, if we assume one-hit-kills and no duds/misses, a mid-war German U-Boat probably qualifies for the same achievement, as far as sheer amount of ordnance carried. Not that WWII subs were any good at hunting other subs, but still. It's not really impressive or surprising that a sub would carry enough torpedoes to technically be able to sink all the nuclear subs of any non-US country.
- zauguin 5y ago
  It's even more restrictive since the statement is only about nuclear subs. I don't think that there are 8 nations with nuclear subs at all, let alone a dozen of them.
throwmamatrain 5y ago
Torpedos are not bullets, I don't think this is a good analogy.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Torpedos are not bullets, I don't think this is a good analogy. They aren't, but I'm sure there are operational complications to using them that make the analogy work (e.g. countermeasures).
  - throwmamatrain 5y ago
    I believe my point was that a modern torpedo hitting a ship is a very high kill probability (mobility or other), being it is guided and explosive. I would say a missile is more similar to a torpedo. We can look to the Falklands as to how dangerous missiles are against ships. This isn't your grandfathers WWII torpedo. There is only one other case of an anti-ship missile I can think of off hand, in Desert Storm when a Silkworm was shot at a fleet and shot down with a SeaRAM(?) I think. I am surprised at the downvotes, but I guess also not. Either way, the information is out there. I agree with the article in that military software is generally awful, but I'm guessing it is not easy to innovate.
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  > Torpedos are not bullets, I don't think this is a good analogy. The point of the analogy is that the enemy platoon / nuclear submarine force would need be to be located and behave in a way that allowed a single shooter to wipe them all out almost simultaneously. This is particularly unlikely for submarines, especially nuclear-armed ones.
  - handrous 5y ago
    > especially nuclear-armed ones. I took "nuclear sub" to mean "nuclear powered" (as opposed to e.g. diesel-electric, which are still fairly common), which I think represents a somewhat larger set of submarines, outside the US, than just the set of all non-US "boomer" (nuclear-armed) subs. That is, attack subs without nuke-tipped missiles can still be nuclear subs because they have a nuke plant onboard for power.
FridayoLeary 5y ago
i think the author is trying more to highlight the importance of the submarine by mentioning it's singular capabilities.
jwithington 5y ago
I do think that's a fair critique of my analogy on the firepower of a Seawolf class submarine. I'm trying to relay that it's exceedingly deadly submarine. The best in the world. The envy of all other submarine classes. I don't think there are fighter aircraft that carry enough missiles to down an entire country's bomber force. The Seawolf was made to destroy other ships. It has all the stats and capabilities to do it. But the kicker is it has incredibly bad navigation software.
- mLuby 5y ago
  That's reasonable. Sloppier would've been: "The Connecticut alone could destroy any other nation's entire nuclear submarine force."
  - jwithington 5y ago
    Well, the design requirements for the Seawolf class were actually probably something like this! Basically the Navy wanted a monster that go deep behind Soviet lines and tear things up before they made it out of the backyard. "[Seawolf's] emphasis on fast tactical search speeds and a massive torpedo magazine were reflections of its design mission, which was to independently search for and kill Soviet submarines in the relatively confined and target rich northern waters of the Soviet Arctic littoral." [1] [1] https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=newport-papers https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
- quesera 5y ago
  I read it with the opposite meaning: > The Connecticut alone carries enough torpedoes to destroy any other nation's entire nuclear submarine force. The Connecticut uniquely carries enough torpedoes to destroy... vs. The Connecticut carries enough torpedoes to single-handedly destroy...

nick238 5y ago

The 'Forum' link goes to https://github.com/invictus2010/fixvms/issues https://github.com/invictus2010/fixvms/issues which seems to be a private repo. Is that intended?

jwithington 5y ago
thanks nick! that is not intended. let me make it public. i called it a forum because readers in the military-world may be less familiar with "issues" in github ;)

_t8ub 5y ago

It is surprising that there isn't constant passive bathymetrics. The models exist, the hydrophones are already there, and the entire hardware/software stack needed to implement it is there. What's the hold up?

intpx 5y ago
Just a guess, but stealth is one of the primary design requirements even passive coils are RF devices.
- _t8ub 5y ago
  No way. RF doesn't go anywhere in water. Besides, an entire hydrophone array is at least 60 dB quieter than propulsion systems in terms of EM emissions and will be on par with life support systems, which I assume do not ever get voluntarily shut down underwater.
hugh-avherald 5y ago
Can you elaborate on what passive bathymetrics entails?

OldHand2018 5y ago

The author seems to know about submarines, so let's give him (?) the benefit of the doubt... But without knowing the cause of the accident, the author is calling for a specific change. This seems problematic. Perhaps there is a very good reason that the computer system performs like this. Also, if you have the computer checking everything, then those 5 people that are supposed to be redundantly computing the navigation plan are highly likely to be less diligent. Human nature and all. Isn't that likely to result in a worse outcome?

riskneutral 5y ago
Everything about this hilarious and terrifying. It's hilarious and terrifying that they couldn't drive a $3 billion nuclear submarine without crashing it. That the navigation software on the sub is so bad that there is a website about it describing how its navigation software takes "minutes" to zoom in and out of maps. That if the sub were to be equipped with smarter and smarter autopilot software, the humans operators would eventually forget how to pilot the sub themselves the way that commercial airline pilots keep forgetting how to fly.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  > That if the sub were to be equipped with smarter and smarter autopilot software, the humans operators would eventually forget how to pilot the sub themselves the way that commercial airline pilots keep forgetting how to fly. Well the lack of situational awareness with EFIS (glass cockpit) systems is a known issue. Pilots tend to 'switch off' because of the low workload and then when something goes wrong they're not aware of the situation because they haven't been following along. This has contributed so some incidents such as the AF 447 crash where the pilots were basically unaware of the actual situation of the plane and flew it straight into the ground (well, sea). I can understand the Navy wants its crews to be more involved for that reason (and perhaps also because the enemy might deliberately instill confusion by messing with navaids etc), but I think there should be at least a warning if you try to do something that's known to be stupid.
jwithington 5y ago

ok_dad 5y ago

That's because the Navy doesn't rely on software to do these checks, the officers and crew are supposed to ensure they don't crash. This idea of having software check things is dead in the water, because of that. The real problem is training, and much like any other human problem, this one cannot be solved through technology; it has to be solved by culture changes. VMS, however, was horrible a decade ago, and I'm not surprised it's still horrible. We used paper charts rather than VMS back then because it was so horrible.

KineticLensman 5y ago
> This idea of having software check things is dead in the water, I accept that people have to make the judgement calls and sign-off, but if the maps are in fact accurate why couldn't the computer at least issue a warning / red flag or similar when there are obvious problems (requested depth within some threshold of the actual depth). I came across a scenario editor for a land training simulator that didn't provide any way of testing intervisibility between two points. The course authors wasted vast amounts of time when assigning vehicle positions clicking around maps to see if potential targets were in fact visible to the trainees. An auto check would have allowed the course authors to use their expertise to do things that couldn't be automated, building better scenarios faster.
- ok_dad 5y ago
  I agree in the case of planned maneuvers for sure, however if you want the result of the "5 Whys" (kinda joking) then my answer is: because the contractors that build this stuff SUCK ASS. Sorry for the harsh language, but I worked on a pre-com ship during my time (an LCS, go figure) while it was being built, and the absolute lack of standards on every level (from the top of the SWO military chain through the dogshit contractors) is part of what made me leave the Navy. I'm not gonna complain about it too much, but man oh man, I think you and I could build better software than what I saw, and I don't even know you from Adam.
  - jwithington 5y ago
    I do want to build better software for DoD, but I can't figure out how to sell in. I'd start by tackling VMS! No clue how I'd go about it though.

whatrocks 5y ago

I'm working on some cool submarine software here: https://adventofcode.com/ https://adventofcode.com/

xbar 5y ago
Nice. I'm learning Rust and decided to write memory-safe submarine software this week. It really knows how to collaborate with crabs.

zppln 5y ago

Although it does sound like this piece of software could use improvement, I would never expect a mission support system to be the only thing safeguarding me from going aground. I don't know anything about submarines, but I would expect some kind of real-time navigation system to alert me before hand.

jwithington 5y ago
To clarify: this is the real-time navigation system lol
- zppln 5y ago
  Oh, I was under the impression it was just a planning system. Mea culpa!
  - jwithington 5y ago
    I think I should make this more clear! It serves both functions.
thuccess129 5y ago
> I don't know anything about submarines, but I would expect some kind of real-time navigation system to alert me before hand. For docking simulation to the space station, SpaceX has a website for controlling the Dragon capsule's UI. That could be the UI ergonomy baseline for measuring the current submarine's software against. The Orion and Starliner capsules have their own different more hardware oriented UI. I would expect nextgen submariners to be digital first native fast twitch glass screen navigators, but a submarine taking damage will be a splashy environment as seen in the movies and touch screens won't be as reliable as physical toggles with redundant bypasses etc. Maybe "Fat Leonard" contributed to the contracting process that put this software on the suboptimal submarine without proper human factors consideration.

9999px 5y ago

Yeah…sure…it hit a "seamount" – it's definitely not out-classed and out-matched by Chinese unmanned submarine drones. https://metallicman.com/uss-connecticut-black-operations-submarine-south-china-sea-ram-mountain-what-really-happened/ https://metallicman.com/uss-connecticut-black-operations-sub... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeJLwUfLcEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeJLwUfLcEU

kcb 5y ago
Something doesn't add up here. If it's China's official policy that it blatantly and deliberately attacked a USN warship, why aren't we at war with them? They've never directly attacked any other US ships or planes in the South China Sea.
- pphysch 5y ago
  Foreign spies are caught and punished/executed probably every year more or less. And governments have virtually no incentive to admit "hey my spy got caught by the enemy". Ditto for stealth submarines.
  - kcb 5y ago
    It's really hard for me to believe the USN allows countries to blow up their warships then has the courtesy to hide it domestically. The whole purpose of the USN is a show of force and power projection. If countries are allowed to take that sort of action without immediate retaliation that is all gone.
    - pphysch 5y ago
      Why is that hard to believe? Firstly, they didn't blow it up. If the Chinese story is true, they surgically disabled it. Either way, no American blood was shed. Secondly, the modus operandi of the contemporary Pentagon is walking a fine line between a) inflating foreign threats to secure Congressional funding and b) deflating any challenges to the perception of American military supremacy. Defending Americans from actual threats is a distant follower.

bmmayer1 5y ago

This is fascinating, but also fascinating that submarines have been operated in real world conditions based purely on sonar for over 100 years.

tra3 5y ago

Remind me when USS McCain collided with another ship in a busy channel [0]. Because of a UI issue, they couldn't figure out where throttle control was and ran into someone. Which is crazy to me. I was going to say, that there probably a few dozen people that use submarine nav software, so it's hard to get a representative sample of usability...but then it occurred to me that airplane software has a fairly limited audience too. What's the process for test for developing aircraft software? How is nav done in aircraft? Theoretically they have the same issues (like hitting the ground). [0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/uss-mccain-collision-ultimately-caused-by-ui-confusion/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/uss-m...

kayodelycaon 5y ago
I think there are several orders of magnitude more planes than submarines. From Wikipedia: Los Angeles class submarines built: 62, entering service 1976. Abus A350s built: 443, entering service 2015.
- tra3 5y ago
  Fair enough, I suppose. The article author was comparing submarine nav software to phone nav software though and google says there are 5+ billion mobile users. That's another couple of order of magnitude more. That'd explain why mobile software is more polished. I guess any kind of mass market product would be higher quality. The same argument ("number of eyeballs") has been used with open source software vs closed source.
jwithington 5y ago
There are probably a few thousand users of submarine navigation software. But the willingness to pay *should* be quite high, which in most other markets would translate to a quality product. The tool should help submarines: * Prevent groundings (loss of a $3B platform, 120+ lives in worst case) * Do their missions better (increase the value of the platform)
- tra3 5y ago

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Whoa... I had no idea that submarine software was this bad. Not just the lack of warnings but also "Waits for VMS to load the next screen, which can take minutes.". Why do you have to wait minutes to load a map?? And why is this running Windows XP? I'm also surprised there's no contour lines between the depths (although perhaps this is done to not infer a knowledge of depths in the intermediate points where perhaps there is no such knowledge).

gaetgu 5y ago
IIRC the military actually got a private extension to XP's EOL from Microsoft just so that they don't have to change all that tech.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Oh really but even still up to now?? I mean the EOL was in 2014. How long do they keep that up? :) I suppose they do what we do in our factories at work. Airgapping and extremely strict firewalling where any access is needed.
chiph 5y ago
> I'm also surprised there's no contour lines between the depths (although perhaps this is done to not infer a knowledge of depths in the intermediate points where perhaps there is no such knowledge). Yes, contour lines would imply accuracy that isn't there. The depth numbers indicate positions where the depth was actually measured. Any other location that doesn't have a number was not measured. Bear in mind that even if you have a depth number on your chart, it might be old and out of date. Safe navigation is never guaranteed. And subs never run depth-finder sonar when on patrol.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  How do depth numbers get out of date? Sedimentation? Underwater volcano eruption? Continental drift?
  - 5y ago

mightyham 5y ago

Crappy pieces of software like that cannot simply be wholly blamed on the vendor. It's up to navy leadership to decide how to distribute funds to vendors to develop software. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a high up navy officer who likes VMS, thinks that the missions planing process is fine the way it is, and doesn't want to allocate money for anything beyond bug fixes. Things like that happen all the time in government software contracting.

jwithington 5y ago
i dont doubt this! someone is accepting this work despite decades of submarine officers losing their minds at it

mLuby 5y ago

> It's unacceptable work from our vendors and procurement processes… It's as if our procurement process and the vendor collaborated to absolve themselves from any responsibility by serving us such an aggressively unhelpul[sic] tool. If subs were companies, competition would solve this problem. Some enterprising engineer says to herself "I can build a better VMS" and does. Since it's 10x better than the existing VMS, some submarine crews adopt it, and pretty soon it's in widespread use across the fleet. Engineer profits, sub crews are more effective and probably it's cheaper too. But it's the government, even worse it's defense. So regulations and secrecy (some reasonable, some not) muddy the waters until everyone's blind, including apparently the VMS.

trasz 5y ago
If subs were companies, they would all be sold long ago to China and India.
- mLuby 5y ago
  That does happen. :)

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

> the navigational software on the $3B warship is far less capable any maps app on your phone. The software, called "Voyage Management System" (VMS), is the hub of all the ship's planning. But it can't even do basic safety-of-ship alerting. My phone can do "safety-of-ship" alerting? I'm the first to shit on defense software, it's my background, but map software for a submarine is safety-critical. While submerged it's basically their eyes. It has to be more reliable and trustworthy than possibly any other map software. Not only this but navigation information would have to be fused together from GPS as well as INS (inertial nav). My 2 cents. Background in defense but not submarines.

0xfeba 5y ago
I've worked in defense as well. Older software seemed to be tested more, or otherwise more reliable. Sure, it could be outdated, but generally it was usable. As they moved away from embedded to more networked and newer tech stacks things got terrible. The software world of today is not compatible with the needs of the defense industry. Plus all the red tape and misdirection. The software need comes from an organizational budget that has to use money to justify receiving money. Then it funnels down into political buckets, who use the dollar amount given to determine needs/wants. Then it goes back up the chain to the government. Then to a contractor, then a flurry of subcontractors. Then finally a developer. Rarely is the warfighter who will actually use the system consulted. Even then, rarely will the programmer meet that person using the software. Yet they all call themselves "agile" now.
- jwithington 5y ago
  I don't think all of those problems are unique to government software. Some (a lot?) enterprise software is atrocious and disliked by end users. That's because the people making the purchasing decisions != end users. But it's flabbergasting just how bad VMS is considering it's the navigation system for these national assets. It's not like an HR system with poor UX--navigation is essential to the safety and effectiveness of the whole platform!
  - wolverine876 5y ago

pikzel 5y ago

This webpage could be a few lines html and css, but uses 172 node modules. 4240 files. The repo is 17.6 MB. We Deserve Much Better.

jwithington 5y ago
how do you see this?? i'm a newbie to web development and selected https://github.com/yuanqing/single-page-markdown-website https://github.com/yuanqing/single-page-markdown-website for something clean and minimal in design. but those are crazy stats! what would you suggest for newbies like me?
- joconde 5y ago
  Jekyll is quite popular and generates very light webpages. I find the result pleasant to use. https://jekyllrb.com https://jekyllrb.com

GartzenDeHaes 5y ago

In the mid-2000's, I hired a recent college grad who was in the US Navy. Her job in the Navy was to administrate a MS Exchange server on a ship. It was kind of mind blowing to learn that each ship had a full MS back-end stack.

trcarney 5y ago
Yup, and backed up with magnetic tape every night.
post_from_work 5y ago
Still do. You'll call someone and ask for their email "Well right now I'm ashore, but next week I'll be on ship, so you need to email me at john.doe@{$shipname}.navy.mil, I won't have access to my john.doe@navy.mil account."

mprovost 5y ago

When I saw the URL I assumed the article was going to reveal that modern submarines are still running VMS on DEC Alphas (or a VAX!). Honestly I was surprised when that wasn't the case.

pacman128 5y ago
I thought the same at first. I worked on the Air Force AWACS E3 (https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104504/e-3-sentry-awacs/ https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045...) program as a contractor in the 2000's. It had dual IBM-360 computers and wireframe-like graphics for their radar displays at the time. This was the Block 30/35 version. It looks like from the link that they may have completely transitioned to the Block 40/45 version which replaced the 360's. They were talking about this move when I worked there 16 years ago.

octorian 5y ago

I would argue that software written under government contract is inherently awful and unusable, because... - It is driven entirely by formal requirements and specifications - These requirements are approved by "the customer," which is a set of people completely independent from "the actual users." - A requirements document cannot easily capture "the UI/UX doesn't suck," because that sort of thing often tends to be more subjective or not well thought out in advance. - The developers often pat themselves on the back for meeting the requirements. - The customer has to accept the software and foist it on the users, because it meets the requirements. ...and... - The competition is entirely about who gets the contract to build the software, and not for which software is actually the best.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
That last part is key. I suspect some form of X-prize approach would be worth trying - seed out a large number of small ISVs for government software (from license management to submarine firing systems). Spend the money not in the requirements (which as you say are usually written by a non developer with minimal experience of the problem - after all if they were an expert they would have other more useful things to do) and spend the money on building automated test rigs. I know I sound trite, and this is not even the best way (which is to organically grow solutions to problems), but we have a small window - software is eating everything and we will need to write the first generation of software that covers all politics and I damn well want that to be open to everyone to read. The software that runs governments will essentially be law. We should be free to read our laws
inetknght 5y ago
> - It is driven entirely by formal requirements and specifications Can you explain why this is a bad thing? I've found that formal requirements and specifications are almost always good unless they're just vague (in which case: they're not really formal) > - These requirements are approved by "the customer," which is a set of people completely independent from "the actual users." Well, yes. That is indeed a problem. > - A requirements document cannot easily capture "the UI/UX doesn't suck," because that sort of thing often tends to be more subjective or not well thought out in advance. I've found that very very few people actively request people to say "your UI sucks". Instead, they want "constructive criticism" and/or "describe why it sucks!". Which, is sort've fair. But it gets to be extremely tiring to explain why the UX doesn't "just suck" but is fundamentally flawed. > - The developers often pat themselves on the back for meeting the requirements. Nothing wrong with that either. > - The customer has to accept the software and foist it on the users, because it meets the requirements. The customer has to accept the software because that's how contracts are done. But they don't have to foist it on the users. They just want to show that they've been able to deliver on their promise of a software solution. > - The competition is entirely about who gets the contract to build the software, and not for which software is actually the best. Well that's quite a problem.

londons_explore 5y ago

Special purpose software built for use by just a few people tends to be the worst software. Many people have tried to fix that problem, few succeed.

jopsen 5y ago
Yeah, this goes pretty much everywhere. I guess our industry is still ripe for disruption. Should someone figure out how make quality software cheap :)

alwayshumans 5y ago

So one of the fundamental design elements of a electronic chart display information system(Ecdis) or warfare Ecdis is the use of the safety depth contour. Anything inside the blue area would cause alarming on a traditional Ecdis. The bigger issue is the data that is used to navigate on, I could write a very boring blog detailing why th systems work so badly...

jwithington 5y ago
you should! let's geek out on it
jwithington 5y ago
would love to chat with you about it. i think we should solve this problem.

flatline 5y ago

My first house is on that map of the Severn River. I have that nautical chart printed out hanging on a wall.

qwertyuiop_ 5y ago

"CRUD boys" at it again. I am glad this hasn't crept into avionics.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gattr 5y ago

A bit off-topic, but maybe some experts could answer a question? I've recently re-read Clancy's "Red Storm Rising", the sections on submarine (and anti-) warfare are really interesting (I understand some of it may be simplified/fictional). E.g., how the Mark 48 torpedo can be set to and launched in "hunting mode", where it circles at a slow, undetectable speed, and only after acquiring a target it suddenly accelerates for a kill. Let's consider this excerpt from [1]: Terminal Homing is the final stage of the torpedo attack. (...) Terminal homing is an active sonar ping that retransmits on reception becoming more rapid as the range to target closes at maximum speed. (...) The target is alerted to the attack, but there is nothing it can do to defeat the weapon at this point. The weapon is too close and moving too fast to allow time for a countermeasure to be effective. Now, I might have read too much David Weber ([2]), but wouldn't a small, cheap-ish counter-torpedo suffice? Put 10-20 of them in small automated launchers all around the hull, and let them crash head-on with the (now perfectly detectable) approaching boat-killer, still at a safe distance (which is.. I don't know, 100-200 m?) [1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33018/modern-submarine-torpedo-attacks-are-nothing-like-what-you-see-in-the-movies https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33018/modern-submarine... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse

nradov 5y ago
Yes several navies are working on torpedo interceptors. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/04/16/navies-companies-push-for-torpedo-killing-torpedoes/ https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/04/16/navies-...
tra3 5y ago
Like chaff [0] or flares? I wonder if you could triangulate the launch point though. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)
- virtue3 5y ago
  From what I've seen on naval ships you'd launch it to the side that is incoming so you'd be behind the wall of Chaff. I think that would be significantly harder to triangulate because you'd mostly just see the noisy stuff up front and your original target would be behind the wall of chaff. Chaff is also designed to reflect signals all over the place so that it's difficult to get accurate results back. This would make triangulating near impossible (if it's working as intended)

QuarterReptile 5y ago

The critique of VMS is correct, and the general disdain for navy software, appropriate. VMS suffers from a combination of unintuitive UI spearheaded by mouse-only interaction; extreme configurability, which the navy narrows down by requiring that everyone operate it the same way; and being generally slow and buggy. Having said all that, the author is placing way too much blame on the technology. It should be an aid and much less of an impediment, but there is no chance that the crew was operating correctly.

baybal2 5y ago

I heard that most of US navy runs on WinNT, and it is the world's biggest user of it.

adolph 5y ago

A post about computer systems on a submarine is up for 9 hours without a mention of whether it can run Minesweeper or not? Can it?

MerelyMortal 5y ago
Submarines are not minesweepers, a minesweeper is an actual type of surface ship.

pdoege 5y ago

NAVSEA had no idea what they are doing with regards to C&C on subs. NAWCTSD used to have good ideas. I remember that the NAVSEA rules were that you had to recover from a crash in less than 30 secs. The NAWCTSD rules under Ahlers were that you were not allowed to crash. Big contractors with big budgets ruled the roost and delivered poor results. I wish that the NAWCTSD "More with less" ideas had lasted.

freddealmeida 5y ago

I think we could argue this is the issue for any modern warfare technology. I would say that most are insecure and if not already compromised, easily done. The head of cybersecurity resigned because he couldn't get funding to even look deeply into this. GPS is not as good as most people think. Especially in Southern Hemisphere. It makes interesting reading.

ThinkBeat 5y ago

What computer hardware is this running on? What sort of "server farm" does a modern submarine have? Do they need to be super hardened operation in a vehicle that may be called to launch its missiles in a high radiation zone? In a worst-case scenario the sub my surface in the middle of or end of a nuclear war. They probably want to ensure that the missiles get underway even in such extreme conditions

FredPret 5y ago
I bet they have BeQuiet PSU’s on that server!