[geeks] Advanced Server 2000???

[Phil Stracchino]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 03:19:27PM -0400, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 02:04:37PM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> > Isn't is funny how Java, which is a mostly-safe programming environemnt
> > and runtime has a big disclaimer preventing it from being used in such
> > systems, whereas, a much less stable system (Windows) which explicitly
> > disclaims reliability and fitness for ANYTHING just walks right onto the
> > bridge?
> 
> Thing that kills me is the emphasis on COTS (commercially off the
> shelf software); then they go and design an entirely new vehicle like
> the Hummer or Stryker - following their logic, shouldn't they be
> just be retrofitting Chevy Suburbans with armor plating and gun mounts?

Military procurement is so politicized it isn't even funny.

As just a single example, consider Northrop Aviation, which has produced
some damned fine fighters.  Northrop produced the F-5 Tiger, "the best
fighter the US Air Force never bought"; and the F-20 Tigershark, which
showed it could do anything the latest F-16 models could at a third of
the price, with half the maintenance and a five-times-lower failure
rate, which the Pentagon hated Northrop for so much it ordered the USANG
to buy F-16s instead of F-20s and got the State Department to squash all
the overseas orders Northrop managed to get for it.  (Including offering
several impending F-20 buyers the then-latest block-D F-16s below cost.)
Northrop's ATF candidate, the YF-23, was faster, more agile, and
stealthier than Lockheed's YF-22 *except for the cockpit bow*, which
would have been trivially easy to redesign; but Lockheed got the ATF
contract anyway.

I don't think Northrop's had a significant US military contract since
the end of WW2.  Not because there's anything wrong with their aircraft
-- just because someone in the Pentagon hates Jack Northrop personally.


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