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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday September 20 2017, @09:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the go-with-what-you-know dept.

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


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:48AM (2 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:48AM (#570928) Journal

    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?

    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. :)

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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:55AM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:55AM (#570933)

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @06:52AM (#571034)
      Many nuclear submarines have game consoles for the crew to play with during breaks. So that's another potential source of spares...

      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... ;)