Navy Hopes Windows Is the Smart Choice - Government Activity

ENT, Sept 20, 2000 by Ted Williams

Dial ahead to the year 2008. Picture a US Navy luminary smashing a champagne bottle across the hull of the CVN 77, a new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. It functions more efficiently and requires fewer crew members than previous carriers, thanks in large part to the Windows-based operating system that powers communications and integrated warfare systems among other ship electronics.

Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com) was chosen to perform these duties by the CVN 77's system designer, Lockheed Martin Corp. (www.lockheedmartin.com) because of the flexibility and scalability of the PC structure, and probably more importantly because of the enormous cost savings over the mainframe-based hybrid systems present in most of today's carriers. Rich Lockwood, director of advanced naval and C4I programs at Lockheed Martin's Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems-Surface Systems, says the choice was obvious.

Recent Microsoft history with the Navy's vessels, however, may indicate otherwise, but Lockwood has complete confidence in the choice.

"We believe Microsoft has a better insight on where the industry is going, and we wanted someone like that on our team," Lockwood says. "Lifecycle crewing and acquisition and maintenance costs were key determinators with the CVN 77 program. We looked at what Microsoft was able to do, as opposed to going with several stove-type mainframe systems."

As computers have evolved during the last half of the 20th century, the costs of customized military systems have grown astronomically. The need to investigate alternatives in the commercial systems market became clear. Lockwood says Microsoft stepped up to the plate as the best option.

Costs for the CVN 77's systems are difficult to predict at this point. But Lockwood says, "We'll be able to save millions in maintenance costs alone."

Lockwood says Navy personnel assigned to the 90,000-ton carrier can expect to be trained on "Son of Windows 2000" -- the iteration that will be available near the end of the seven-year construction period. Lockheed was selected by Newport News Shipbuilding (www.nns.com) to develop the aircraft and weapons launchers as well as other operational systems for the carrier. The shipbuilding portion of the contract calls for $500 million.

On the surface, the plan sounds like a winner. Today's average carrier contains more than 100 different computer displays -- myriad workstations and standalones backed by a mainframe system. Going to Windows will enable one uniform operating system, fewer displays, and fewer people needed to operate them. What could be the downside?

Maybe history can tell us.

In the mid-1990s, the Navy launched a cost-cutting initiative called Smart Ship, where ships operated at highly computerized levels with a significant crew reduction. Windows NT was among the commercial products chosen to operate the ship systems.

In September 1997, the USS Yorktown, a guided-missile cruiser that was the first ship with the Smart Ship technology, experienced a widespread system failure and was reported dead in the water for two hours. According to published reports, the problem occurred when a crew member accidentally entered a zero into the data field of an application, causing the computer to divide a quantity by zero. That resulted in a buffer overflow error, which brought down the propulsion system.

Other reports suggest the Yorktown had to be towed to port and was disabled for more than a day, rather than the two hours publicly stated. It has been suggested that such incidents have not been unique in the program and may have occurred as recently as earlier this year.

In June 1998, Anthony DiGiorgio, a civilian engineer with the Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center for more than 25 years, wrote an article for Proceedings, a US Naval Institute magazine. In the piece, he blamed the Navy for being ill-prepared technically for the Smart Ships initiative, but also criticized NT as a product "known to have some failure modes."

Many high-end NT users throughout the enterprise have lamented its reliability and scalability in other mission-critical situations. Dan Kusnetzky, program vice president, system software, at IDC (www.idc.com), says that only scheduled downtime is acceptable for enterprise-class applications that must run 24x7. He doesn't believe Windows NT 4.0 is "really ready to take up that type of load."

DiGiorgio declined to be interviewed for this article. The Navy Office of Information was also contacted, but didn't respond in time for publication.

Lockwood says he isn't familiar with the problems of the Smart Ship program. But he says if the Internet reports have any truth, they could be the kinds of problems one would run into when testing such a system in simulation, perhaps when pushing systems intentionally to the brink to see how they react.

Retired Rear Adm. Robert Williamson, who commanded the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz during Desert Storm, is now the executive director of business strategy at Microsoft. Williamson says he has personally seen NT-based units relied upon in combat zones and he has complete confidence in them during mission-critical situations. He believes that as Microsoft has moved toward the high-end market, reliability has to become a nonissue in order to compete.