Stealth ship a step forwards using Windows NT less so

[Plekhanov]

BBC

Stealth ships steam ahead

By Chris Summers
BBC News Online

The Swedish Navy is testing out a new ship which is believed to be the most "invisible" yet. The Royal Navy and the US Navy both have plans of their own for similarly futuristic "stealth" ships. BBC News Online investigates the shape of the future of naval warfare.

Ever since radar was invented by the British during World War II, military boffins have been trying to think of ways to beat it.

The US Air Force invented the first "stealth" aircraft, the U-2 spy plane, in 1954, and 10 years later they unveiled the Lockheed Blackbird.

Both planes were designed in such a way as to keep their radar "signatures" to an absolute minimum.

Now naval architects have come up with a similar way of beating the radar.

The Visby: In pictures
The first Visby corvette, designed by the Swedish shipbuilders Kockums and built at their Karlskrona yard, has just completed sea trials with the Royal Swedish Navy. It will come into service in January and will be followed by four more.

American designers are working on the US Navy's own fleet of stealth ships, the DD(X) destroyer, which is due to enter service in 2011.

Northrop Grumman Ship Systems is leading a consortium which has been given the $2.8bn contract to build the futuristic ships.

Northrop Grumman spokesman Brian Cullin told BBC News Online: "The DD(X) will be as revolutionary as the Dreadnought was when the British introduced it at the turn of the last century."

He said the DD(X) would save the US Navy a fortune in running costs because it would have 200 fewer sailors to operate it than the existing Arleigh Burke class.

Mr Cullin said it would also be more efficient for the US Treasury.

"In the Iraq war last year the Navy was firing Tomahawks at $1m a piece. Projectiles for the DD(X) will cost significantly less and it will be able to fire large volumes of surface fire at close range, which will bring huge economies."

Fooling radar

As for the Royal Navy, it too will have a new breed of stealth ships in action soon. HMS Daring, the first of the Type 45 destroyers, is being constructed at BAE Systems' Govan and Scotstoun yards in Glasgow. It is to due to enter service in 2007.

But the Swedes are in the lead, with the Visby.

It is constructed almost entirely of carbon fibre, the same material used to make the chassis of Formula One cars and the hulls of racing yachts.

Its angular design gives it a minimal radar signature, known as a cross-section, and its 57mm cannon can also be retracted to reduce it still further.

John Nilsson, one of the designers, told BBC News Online: "We are able to reduce the radar cross section by 99%. That doesn't mean it's 99% invisible, it means that we have reduced its detection range."

In a nutshell, if the Visby was 100km from an enemy vessel it could see the enemy on its radar but not vice versa. It could get within 30km of the enemy before being spotted.

Carbon fibre is also a lot lighter than steel and the Visby, at 600 tonnes, is half the weight of a conventional corvette.

Mr Nilsson said: "Naval officers fall in love with [this] ship. It's not classically beautiful. In fact it looks like a lunchbox. But it has better manoeuvrability and can achieve that level of stealth."

Avoiding angles

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said naval designers have known for a long time that radar signatures depend on the angles involved.

He said: "The trick is to avoid right angles, which reflect radar right back.

"We use a secret angle on our Type 23 frigates which enables our ships to reduce their radar signature to an absolute minimum."

John Fyall, of the Defence Procurement Agency, said: "Our new Type 45 destroyers will use much of this technology to reduce their radar signatures.

"The whole idea is to make it look like it's not a big ship."

A BAE Systems spokesman said the design of the Type 45 and the materials used would reduce its radar visibility but he said the hull would be steel, not carbon fibre.

He said: "It will provide the future backbone of the Royal Navy as it faces multiple threats."

State of the art

The MoD spokesman questioned the "survivability" of ships made of carbon fibre, and also doubted whether they could be cope with ocean conditions.

Mr Nilsson said the Visby - which is 73m long - was only designed for littoral, or coastal warfare, but he said they had designed a 120m ship which had worked well technically.

Ships will never be completely invisible. A lot of modern submarines are extremely hard to detect, but that is always going to be difficult for a surface ship to match

Commodore Stephen Saunders
Jane's Fighting Ships
As for the question of survivability, he said: "It is not so much a question of material but physical size. Any ship below 100 metres, regardless of material, will be gone if it's hit with a modern surface-to-surface missile."

The new ship is also controlled by state-of-the-art computers using a Windows NT operating system.

But Kockums and the Swedish Navy deny it could be sabotaged by hackers and say that even if it did they could fall back to traditional steering and navigation.
Mr Nilsson said: "I am not an expert in computer security but we have focused a lot on that and this ship has a lot of firewalls and clever ways of avoiding it (being hacked)."

Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, said: "Stealth is not an end in itself. The value of a ship is in what it can deliver.

"Undeniably having a stealth ship allows you to operate in places where you might not have been able to operate."

He said one potential flashpoint where they may be useful was around Taiwan, in the event of a clash between the US and Chinese navies.

But Commodore Saunders said: "Ships will never be completely invisible.

"A lot of modern submarines are extremely hard to detect, but that is always going to be difficult for a surface ship to match."

WAYS OF SPOTTING SHIPS
Visually - either with the naked eye or by satellite (can depend on cloud cover and darkness)
Radar - invented in 1940s (new ships aim to reduce radar "signature")
Sonar - primarily used by submarines (new ships have quieter engines and special paint which can deflect sonar)
Infra-red - Many missiles use heat-seeking systems to track enemy vessels (new ships are specially designed to mask heat sources such as engines)

Well windows NT is fairly established and relatively stable by now but I still wouldn’t want it controlling a warship I was on.

[Montcalm]

For more safety they should use Windows98,and what the hell does Sweden need a stealth ship?

[Plekhanov]

Well if you've got a coastline you need warships (remember you yanks keep telling us Euros we should stop relying on the US to protect us) and if you are building new warships I suppose they might as well be stealth.

[Xon]

For more safety they should use Windows98,

Please tell me you are joking...

[Plekhanov]

Sorry about the Yank thing Montcalm I forgot you were Canadian.

[Darth Wong]

Windows NT is so old now that Microsoft took it off the official support list years ago, and they haven't been releasing security updates. I can only assume they're using severely neutered versions of it in order to cut down on the likelihood of problems, although security may not be much of an issue if the computer system has no wireless interface to the outside world. The last time we heard about Windows NT crashing and leaving a warship dead in the water, it was a software bug rather than a security exploit.

[Plekhanov]

Not wishing to denigrate the Royal Navy (which of course does still rule the waves we’re just letting the US think they do for a while) I have to wonder.

"We use a secret angle on our Type 23 frigates which enables our ships to reduce their radar signature to an absolute minimum."

I mean what the hells “a secret angle” is it some kind of a newly discovered angle that doesn’t show up on regular protractors or something? Or am I just being naive and military stuff uses all kinds of angles I was never taught in geometry class or something?

[jenat-lai]

[bender mode on] Ahh, the ol' 32 degree bend... I was a Pro, 90 degrees, 180 degrees, 45 degrees.. even 32...[/bender mode]

[Seggybop]

Windows 2000/XP are NT version 5. They're probably using one of those, or something derived from them.

[Ma Deuce]

Not wishing to denigrate the Royal Navy (which of course does still rule the waves we’re just letting the US think they do for a while) I have to wonder.

The RN is doing a fine job of ruling the waves, now that (for the first time since the Battle of Trafalgar) they have fewer warships in active service than the French Navy .

I mean what the hells “a secret angle” is it some kind of a newly discovered angle that doesn’t show up on regular protractors or something? Or am I just being naive and military stuff uses all kinds of angles I was never taught in geometry class or something?

By facing an object into a radar beam a certain way, the it's shape at that specific angle will reflect the minimum amount of the radar beam back to the receiver. To use a rough example, a ship is far more visable to radar if it's bradsode is facing the radar beam than if it's bow is facing it.

As for the "secret" angle, that simply means that the specific angle (in degrees) they use is a secret. All you can do is guess where that angle is on a protractor.

[Plekhanov]

Thanks for the explanation Ma Deuce, I should apologise for not making myself more obvious, I was being a bit facetious about the whole secret angle thing, I do have a basic understanding of how stealth works (I read my aircraft magazines as a kid like everybody else) it was just the whole secret angle thing was such a pathetic attempt to blind us poor tax payers with the magic of technology. It was the idea that you could make an entire ship using one “secret angle” that seemed so ridiculous that and the idea that they’d managed to come up with an angle that had escaped all the others researching the same problem.

And as for our number of ships us Brits don’t need technology or numerical superiority our stout, pure hearts (and the incontrovertible fact that God is on our side) ensure we’ll win through every time no matter what the odds.

[Metrion Cascade]

Why the hell don't militaries write their own operating systems?

[RogueIce]

Is it just me, or do only two out of the seven pictures in that slideshow thingy not look like some kind of image just placed in there...

Damn it, the ship's getting so advanced that it looks like a computer graphic in real life!

[His Divine Shadow]

and what the hell does Sweden need a stealth ship?

Sweden had an empire once, they shall have one again!

[Xon]

Windows NT is so old now that Microsoft took it off the official support list years ago, and they haven't been releasing security updates.

Windows NT (with no version number) referse to the Windows NT OS line. Which includes; Windows NT 3.x, Windows NT 4 Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003.

They still release patches for WinNT 4, but there are some Architectural flaws which cant be patched around which are fixed in later versions.

I can only assume they're using severely neutered versions of it in order to cut down on the likelihood of problems, although security may not be much of an issue if the computer system has no wireless interface to the outside world.

You can actually reasonable lock down a Windows NT OS line derivative. Easiest way is to only allowed approved applications to run (where an app is IDed by a hash), and then firewall Windows RPC ports using a software firewall. Also the apps should be running under a restricted user account too.

Also if they use stable drivers, thats 99% of Windows problems fixed.

The single biggest security risk is the idiot operator which trusts anything appears on the screen. And since they shouldnt be running an email client, that closes the biggest virus vector.

The last time we heard about Windows NT crashing and leaving a warship dead in the water, it was a software bug rather than a security exploit.

My question is why didnt the effected software reboot itself?

Why the hell don't militaries write their own operating systems?

Because it isnt worth it.

Windows NT (specifically Windows 2000) has already certified for the uses in security sensitive enviroment. It has the best development tools around running on it, it already has an extensive track record(when used properly) and its cheap, very cheap.

Microsoft has invested tens to hundreds of billions of dollars into the Windows OS line, the development tools for Windows, and other neat toys.

Software is hidiously complex. Windows 2000 had over 29 million lines of code. At the time of its development it was one of the most complex pieces of software in existance. Windows XP, Windows 2003 are even larger and biuld on the same codebase.

The massive exposure Windows has is a critical factor in how fast bugs are found.

So the military gets a very well tested and very complete OS, for a very cheap. Microsoft loves government contracts.

[Pu-239]

Why not QNX/Solaris/Linux ??

And aren't large, complex codebases a BAD thing...?

[Faram]

Who knows what OS really is on that thingy, it might be somting else but when asked just say NT.

Or the media person they asked might know jack shit about the computers and other information on Visby.

He is just a media spokes person I doubt that he has any security clerance what so ever. He just gets a paper to read for the media.

[Sarevok]

The article mentions

The US Air Force invented the first "stealth" aircraft, the U-2 spy plane, in 1954, and 10 years later they unveiled the Lockheed Blackbird.

I believe this is wrong. The U-2 was not a stealth aircraft.

[Xon]

Why not QNX/Solaris/Linux ??

fall back to traditional steering and navigation

Since the computers are basicly being used for steering & course ploting which is basicly a desktop/workstation job(aka using a GUI). Nor is a hard real-time problem domain.

And QNX/Solaris/Linux is not and has never been a desktop OS which can rival Windows.

And aren't large, complex codebases a BAD thing...?

New and untested large, complex codebases are a bad thing.

A large, complex codebase which has been heavily tested in every conceivable way(and then in ways which would probably void the warrienty) and when you are going to probably use most of the feature isnt.

[Plekhanov]

The article mentions

The US Air Force invented the first "stealth" aircraft, the U-2 spy plane, in 1954, and 10 years later they unveiled the Lockheed Blackbird.

I believe this is wrong. The U-2 was not a stealth aircraft.

Well it was painted black doesn't that mean it was stealth?

[Montcalm]

For more safety they should use Windows98,

Please tell me you are joking...

I was joking

[Ma Deuce]

I believe this is wrong. The U-2 was not a stealth aircraft.

You are correct: During it's flights over the USSR, the U-2 was plainly visable on the Russians' radar screens. The U-2's only defence was that it flew at such altitude that it wasn't until Gary Powers' aircraft was shot down in May of 1960 that their air defences were able to reach it. The U-2 was extremely slow, and the CIA realized years before the U-2 incident that it was only a matter of time before the Russians would be able to bring it down, so they began making plans to acquire an aircraft that would fly both higher and much, much faster, eventually resulting in the SR-71. It should be noted that while the SR-71's shape gives it a rather small radar signature for an aircraft of it's size (though still much larger than any stealth aircraft), the purpose of it's shape had nothing to do with reducing radar signature, only increasing speed and aerodynamic profecincy.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The SR-71 is a sweet aircraft and I curse the day the USAF had to axe it again in '98.

[phongn]

Well if you've got a coastline you need warships (remember you yanks keep telling us Euros we should stop relying on the US to protect us) and if you are building new warships I suppose they might as well be stealth.

The Swedish stealth ship apparently isn't that stealthy -- the sea spray that it generates can be easily tracked on radar. The ships in that tonnage class aren't really that useful, either, but they have a lot of places to hide to avoid getting killed by a helicopter.

[sketerpot]

And QNX/Solaris/Linux is not and has never been a desktop OS which can rival Windows.

For a single application (course plotting and navigation), I would think that you'd just need an OS that can put a window on the screen and let you click things. That is, unless they need email, MS Office, solitaire, et cetera, on their navigation computer.

And if you need a great desktop OS, there's always OS X, though I don't know what the hardware situation would be like.