SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Fnord666_
Each one of the US Navy's Virginia-class submarines costs about $2.6 billion. So, it should come as no surprise that it contains a lot of custom, high-end electronics and military hardware. The Navy is looking to save a little money on future submarines, and make them a bit easier to operate, by ditching some of that fancy custom technology in favor of a game console controller. According to Lockheed-Martin, the US government is in the process of outfitting Virginia-class submarines with Xbox 360 controllers to control the periscope.
[...] The idea to switch to gaming peripherals comes from Lockheed-Martin's classified research lab in Manassas, Virginia, which is lovingly referred to as "Area 51." Engineers and officers work together at this facility to find new uses for commercial hardware in the military. That could include hardware like the 360 controllers, Kinect, or a touch-screen tablet, but also consumer software like Google Earth.
[...] The Navy currently has 13 Virginia-class nuclear submarines to outfit with gamepads. Six new subs are already in various stages of production, and as many as 29 more might be built before a new vessel is ready for production in about 20 years.
Source: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/256049-us-navy-use-xbox-360-controllers-submarine-periscopes
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:24PM (5 children)
Has to work in extreme conditions because the military works in places (open desert for months/years at a time, under the sea, etc.) that, for example, the xbox wasn't designed for (think "climate-controlled living room").
Wrong. This has to work in an environment not very different from a living room. This is a submarine; submarines are not found in the open desert. And this is used on the bridge, where people are, not in the seawater. It doesn't need to withstand extreme climates.
Has to not need replacement because places that the military goes with their equipment (open desert for months/years at a time, under the sea, etc.) are hard to get to--the trip to make to deliver a replacement may well be as difficult and expensive as the trip that's using the item needing replacement, and in the meantime the military fails at readiness because parts are not working.
Wrong. The military carries spares of stuff all the time. You don't think they're going to have 5 more of these dirt-cheap controllers in a storage bin on-board?
But I just can't visualize an off-the-shelf xbox controller lasting any time in an extreme environment: heat, moisture, repeated heavy use*, exposure to oils and/or sand, radiation, heavy use that would wear out the cable/connector strain reliefs and connection points, random failure from manufacturing defect, a long list of problems waiting to happen.
This is the bridge of a submarine, not an extreme environment. Bridge officers don't wear environmental suits; the crew's areas are climate-controlled. There's no more moisture than there is in a teenager's basement. There's no sand on a submarine bridge (do I really need to inform people of this here? This is pathetic.) There's no radiation on a submarine bridge to worry about, or else they wouldn't have people there. Heavy use? What do you think teenagers playing these systems do with them? Handle them delicately? If it breaks, big deal; pull it out and go get the next spare from the spares locker and plug it in.
Honestly, the idiotic nay-saying I'm seeing in these comments has really made me embarrassed to be a commenter on this site.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:48AM (2 children)
Yeah, these are xbox controllers. They're going to need more than five spares. They're probably going to have to come up with an alternative to that shite non-replacable lithium battery system, too.
Plus, I'd love to be a fly on the wall when the officer of the deck or whomever tries to press the left arrow on the d-pad and the frigging thing goes right.
Yessir, xbox controllers. Not what I'd want to control my periscope. Well. If I had a periscope. :)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:55AM (1 child)
They're probably going to have to come up with an alternative to that shite non-replacable lithium battery system, too.
What in the fuck are you talking about? These are simple wired controllers. 5 spares, 20 spares, what does it matter? They don't take up *that* much space. They'll probably even have crewmen buying their own higher-quality high-end controller instead and plugging that in. These things are all compatible; it's just a simple USB connection and a dead-simple API.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @06:52AM
The real problem is if some gamer encounters a faulty controller and is retarded enough to borrow the periscope spares or even the periscope one... ;)
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday September 21 2017, @11:36AM (1 child)
Everyone wants to look smart. Everyone wants recognition. Everyone wants to be seen every now and then no matter how hard they try to hide. We're always going to see this behaviour no matter where we go.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:18PM
Perhaps, but I expect better from tech news sites: I expect an audience that's actually technically competent, and knows enough to not shoot their mouths off about stuff they have no clue about, or at least when they do make comments, to actually have some humility and realize they're speaking from a position of relative ignorance. For instance, I don't presume to be an expert or even barely competent about structural or civil engineering, and any comments I make about bridge-related articles are not going to be worded in a way to make me seem like I am some kind of expert; I might bash politicians who make funding decisions, but I'm not going to second-guess any actual CivEs about the engineering aspects. But here, for some reason, we have people who think they're experts on defense sector requirements and military operations, but they don't even know what "COTS" stands for. Anyone who actually works as an engineer in defense would not screw that acronym up.