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I worked on this project. It's a project filled with realizable goals and impossible mandates. SCA is the most useless thing I've ever encountered. The requirem

I worked on this project. It's a project filled with realizable goals and impossible mandates. SCA is the most useless thing I've ever encountered. The requirement to use CORBA is simply impossible, there is no way you can make a real-time system using CORBA. The project I worked on recently changed its goal from being the high bandwidth backbone of the Army to >"The program will demonstrate the HNW version 3.0 waveform (supports the JC4ISR radio) and then store the waveform in the DOD Waveform Repository" From: http://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY2014/pdf/army/2014win-t.pdf http://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY2014/pdf/army/2014win-... The technology is there, the need is there, the funding has been there, but the overall management of it by the military is awful. You can't really fault the contractors either, they are just doing what they are told.

platz 11y ago
> there is no way you can make a real-time system using CORBA It seems the military uses CORBA frequently for such systems. "the Navy has specified the use of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)—the military's favorite mission-critical middleware model." http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-navys-newest-warship-is-powered-by-linux/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-na... and http://www.ois.com/Markets/military-and-aerospace.html http://www.ois.com/Markets/military-and-aerospace.html The military has control of the allowed CORBA implementations so they don't suffer from different runtimes that plauged it's usage in Internet scenarios, and get all the typed benefits and speed benefits. Not that I think CORBA is necessarily a great protocol in general, but then again I don't have any idea what tradeoffs are appropriate for the military either.
- hydrogen18 11y ago
  Using CORBA in a system and building a system entirely using CORBA are two different things. All of the branches wind up granting individual projects some degree of leeway over these types of mandates. Mostly because the military needs the products to actually work.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
That's a common problem. I griped about their mandating CORBA for use with separation kernels. I figured we could do something simpler like Sun's XDR, a stronger ASN.1, or JSON. Make a tool to autogen import or export code. Not happening. Meanwhile, Galois built a high assurance version of ASN.1 and ZeroMQ has shown CORBA for the outdated garbage it is. Had mandates not existed, the contractors would've probably been able to pick these right up to get their benefits and do certified implementations. But it's the military...
nickpsecurity 11y ago
That's a common problem. I griped about their mandating CORBA for use with separation kernels. I figured we could do something simpler like Sun's XDR, a stronger ASN.1, or JSON. Make a tool to autogen import or export code. Not happening. Meanwhile, Galois built a high assurance version of ASN.1 and ZeroMQ has shown CORBA for the outdated garbage it is. Had mandates not existed, the contractors would've probably been able to pick these right up to get their benefits and do certified implementations. But it's the military...
sdr_corba 11y ago
The technology is not there, that's the big joke on top of all the management blunder. There are multiple radios used in the field for different distances and bandwidths: VLF, LF/MF/HF, V/UHF, SAT, and ultra high frequency SAT. There is very little in common between those radios in terms of total equipment mass, space and cost. The "waveform" is an insignificant part. The significant mass, space and cost is on band-specific power amplifiers (PAs), antennas and front-end filters, and those 3 elements are not interchangeable nor can they be software-defined. What they have done after >15 years is to ignore all the frequency bands except V/UHF, and call the result a success.
- remarkEon 11y ago
  Remembering back to my training a few years ago on all these radio systems, I'm not really sure there's a replacement for gaining a deep understanding of radio wave theory and actually getting out there and building antennas and systems. In one course, we built all the antennas we needed from things like claymore wire and constructed resistors from hammering a nail into the ends of a battery. IMHO that radio hardware itself really does need to be something that "just works" and isn't weighed down by trying to do too much.
- kayfox 11y ago
  Harris actually makes two radios that do support a wide range of frequencies: http://rf.harris.com/capabilities/tactical-radios-networking/an-prc-152/ http://rf.harris.com/capabilities/tactical-radios-networking... http://harrisradio.com/products/unity-xg-100p/ http://harrisradio.com/products/unity-xg-100p/ The tech is there. Also, as for front ends and PAs, you can make wideband transciever frontends, the PAs in JTRS appear to be specific to bands, so it does not appear that they are trying to do the impossible. Tho they do appear to be trying to make it compatable with every thing under the sun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Tactical_Radio_System#Waveforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Tactical_Radio_System#Wa...
  - Aloha 11y ago
    You can build a radio system that will do damm near DC-Daylight but that doesn't mean it will perform as well as a radio with a narrower bandpass. Usually its a pretty solid constant, the wider the bandpass of the radio, the lower performance, its sometimes a worthy tradeoff, but often not.
johansch 11y ago
Same old story then; incompetent buyers wasting tax payer funds. A well-known anti-pattern....
- lelandbatey 11y ago
  Incompetent buyers is the best description for it, but it's not all. There are few financial incentives/penalties in government, the only real risks are political. You'll not get in big trouble for securing funding for a project that ultimately doesn't succeed, but you will end up in big trouble if you run a successful and frugal project that steps on the toes of someone higher up. And ultimately those political forces are what drive these projects. You do some work for a client in the army, and then Mr. Army gets on a bus with a guy in the air force. Mr. Army sings your praises to a big-shot from the Air Force and just like that you've got another $5M contract (to make Drupal websites).
- imglorp 11y ago
  Checks and balances have truly failed in all aspects of procurement.
  - rebootthesystem 11y ago
    Checks and balances have truly failed in nearly all aspects of government.

platz 11y ago

> there is no way you can make a real-time system using CORBA It seems the military uses CORBA frequently for such systems. "the Navy has specified the use of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)—the military's favorite mission-critical middleware model." http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-navys-newest-warship-is-powered-by-linux/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-na... and http://www.ois.com/Markets/military-and-aerospace.html http://www.ois.com/Markets/military-and-aerospace.html The military has control of the allowed CORBA implementations so they don't suffer from different runtimes that plauged it's usage in Internet scenarios, and get all the typed benefits and speed benefits. Not that I think CORBA is necessarily a great protocol in general, but then again I don't have any idea what tradeoffs are appropriate for the military either.

hydrogen18 11y ago
Using CORBA in a system and building a system entirely using CORBA are two different things. All of the branches wind up granting individual projects some degree of leeway over these types of mandates. Mostly because the military needs the products to actually work.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

That's a common problem. I griped about their mandating CORBA for use with separation kernels. I figured we could do something simpler like Sun's XDR, a stronger ASN.1, or JSON. Make a tool to autogen import or export code. Not happening. Meanwhile, Galois built a high assurance version of ASN.1 and ZeroMQ has shown CORBA for the outdated garbage it is. Had mandates not existed, the contractors would've probably been able to pick these right up to get their benefits and do certified implementations. But it's the military...

nickpsecurity 11y ago

sdr_corba 11y ago

The technology is not there, that's the big joke on top of all the management blunder. There are multiple radios used in the field for different distances and bandwidths: VLF, LF/MF/HF, V/UHF, SAT, and ultra high frequency SAT. There is very little in common between those radios in terms of total equipment mass, space and cost. The "waveform" is an insignificant part. The significant mass, space and cost is on band-specific power amplifiers (PAs), antennas and front-end filters, and those 3 elements are not interchangeable nor can they be software-defined. What they have done after >15 years is to ignore all the frequency bands except V/UHF, and call the result a success.

remarkEon 11y ago
Remembering back to my training a few years ago on all these radio systems, I'm not really sure there's a replacement for gaining a deep understanding of radio wave theory and actually getting out there and building antennas and systems. In one course, we built all the antennas we needed from things like claymore wire and constructed resistors from hammering a nail into the ends of a battery. IMHO that radio hardware itself really does need to be something that "just works" and isn't weighed down by trying to do too much.
kayfox 11y ago
Harris actually makes two radios that do support a wide range of frequencies: http://rf.harris.com/capabilities/tactical-radios-networking/an-prc-152/ http://rf.harris.com/capabilities/tactical-radios-networking... http://harrisradio.com/products/unity-xg-100p/ http://harrisradio.com/products/unity-xg-100p/ The tech is there. Also, as for front ends and PAs, you can make wideband transciever frontends, the PAs in JTRS appear to be specific to bands, so it does not appear that they are trying to do the impossible. Tho they do appear to be trying to make it compatable with every thing under the sun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Tactical_Radio_System#Waveforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Tactical_Radio_System#Wa...
- Aloha 11y ago
  You can build a radio system that will do damm near DC-Daylight but that doesn't mean it will perform as well as a radio with a narrower bandpass. Usually its a pretty solid constant, the wider the bandpass of the radio, the lower performance, its sometimes a worthy tradeoff, but often not.

johansch 11y ago

Same old story then; incompetent buyers wasting tax payer funds. A well-known anti-pattern....

lelandbatey 11y ago
Incompetent buyers is the best description for it, but it's not all. There are few financial incentives/penalties in government, the only real risks are political. You'll not get in big trouble for securing funding for a project that ultimately doesn't succeed, but you will end up in big trouble if you run a successful and frugal project that steps on the toes of someone higher up. And ultimately those political forces are what drive these projects. You do some work for a client in the army, and then Mr. Army gets on a bus with a guy in the air force. Mr. Army sings your praises to a big-shot from the Air Force and just like that you've got another $5M contract (to make Drupal websites).
imglorp 11y ago
Checks and balances have truly failed in all aspects of procurement.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  Checks and balances have truly failed in nearly all aspects of government.