14 DAY TRIAL // The US NAVY has contracted a third-party company to help them switch to Linux for their UAV program – not from Windows, but from Solaris.
In the midst of all the migrations that the digital world is experiencing right now, the last thing that you would expect to see is for a major branch of the US military to ask to switch to Linux from another Unix solution.
Solaris has been considered for many years one of the most stable solutions available, either if it was for military purposes or for civil applications, such as airports and other branches. This is not one of the most publicized operating systems in the world, but Solaris is actually running on a number critical systems.
What Solaris doesn’t have is a flexible infrastructure and a friendly interface. Sure, it can be tweaked in a number of ways, but it is not meant to be pleasant, it's built to work and to be secure.
“Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control experts at the Raytheon Co. Technical Services segment in Dulles, Va., will switch a major unmanned helicopter control system from Solaris to Linux software, and upgrade the system with universal UAV control qualities under terms of a $15.8 (€11.3) million contract.”
“Officials of the U.S. Naval Air Systems command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., are asking Raytheon to upgrade the company's Vertical Takeoff and Landing Unmanned Air Vehicle (VTUAV) Tactical Control System (TCS), which was designed to help operators fly the Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned helicopter,” reads the official announcement regarding this transition.
The new system will have to provide some essential features that seemed to be missing on the current platform, such as intuitive controls, automated testing procedures, and support software upgrades in the field.
This is just one measure that affects just one small branch of the US Navy, but it seems that the people in charge want to make the entire system compatible and work on the same architecture, which should be the same for all military services as a common basis for buying, developing, and upgrading a wide variety of U.S. military UAV control systems.
The Navy also said that the life of the proprietary Sun Microsystems Solaris 8 is coming to an end, which is probably the main reason for this switch. It's unclear what the other branch of the military will do, but Linux is probably a safe bet.