The US Army's program manager for the $120+ billion Future Combat Systems Brigade Combat Team was recently speaking in Fort Lauderdale, FL at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual winter conference. He said they want a common computing environment throughout FCS's myriad vehicles, flying UAVs, UGV ground robots, sensors et. al.
According to Federal Computer Weekly, Maj. Gen. Charles Cartwright added that Linux running on Intel-based computers seems to provide the best common operating environment and central processing unit for computers in FCS, as it works best with the US Army's current and future applications.
Gotta admit, I'm glad he didn't say it would all run on Microsoft. Not only would that have meant we might as well surrender to the Chinese now and save time, it would also have given "blue screen of death" a whole new meaning.
While there is something to be said for OpenBSD when it absolutely, positively, has to be secure as hell, I suspect developments around Linux clustering (at the top end) and support (at the bottom end) are playing a strong role in pushing that OS within the military.
Penguin power prevails!
I'm still waiting for the day they wise up and design our nuclear defense around the game Missile Command, because I have been trained for that. No commie ICBMs stand a chance. And dont get me started on how to fight Invaders from Space.
The application "Fire Avenger Cannon" is not responding...
Though, I used Linux a bit and it's not immune from these problems - but generally it deals with them more elegantly than Windows.
Let the games begin...