...could give a whole new meaning to "blue screen of death"Windows warfare
Defence
Published: 09-Oct-2004
By: Julian Rush
It runs most of our office and domestic computers - but should it be trusted with matters of life and death?
The Ministry of Defence has chosen the Windows operating system for the war-fighting computers of the Royal Navy's latest destroyers.
But a combat-systems expert from the company designing the technology says `Windows 2000' is neither reliable nor secure enough for the job.
The Type 45 is the Royal Navy's newest destroyer. The first of six, HMS Daring, is due in service in 2007.
Her role - to defend naval task forces against air attack.
And to help her crew make split second decisions under fire, she's to be equipped with a state-of-the-art computerised Combat Management System.
Its screens will give the captain and crew a second-by-second picture of the battle around them. It's absolutely critical to modern war fighting - without it, the ship is blind and defenceless.
For the first time, the Type 45's will run on Microsoft Windows.
"My concern, as a whole, is that the use of windows for warships puts at risk the safety of ships at sea and the defence of the Realm"
Gerald Wilson, former combat systems designer
Gerald Wilson is a former employee of the company designing the system, who'd raised the concerns of a group of software engineers that Windows wasn't reliable enough or secure enough for such a critical military system.
Most computer users put up with it when Windows occasionally crashes. They've learned how to cope with virus attacks.
Only now has he decided to go public, after all his efforts to alert the defence establishment privately were rebuffed.
"If you are engaged in combat, or in a situation in which combat might occur, it is vitally important that your command systems stay up and don't crash, run slow or have to reboot themselves."
The system is being built by AMS - a British Aerospace joint venture with an Italian company. Under pressure from the Ministry of Defence to adopt commercial products where possible to cut costs, they chose Windows two years ago.
Gerald Wilson is adamant there is an alternative that's just as cheap. Unix, not Windows, is mainly used to power the internet because it's more reliable, more secure; AMS were already using it in existing combat systems.
He suggested using what's called open source software - which comes with the source code so the designers could re-programme it to simplify the system - always a good way to reduce risks.
"By contrast, if you take the Windows operating system, it comes in a shrink-wrapped box and it's very difficult to configure out of it certain parts or certain functions. Therefore it seems to me quite impossible to take such a system and use it as a foundation for something like a command system, where you must be able to predict reliably how the system is going to behave, in order to ensure its safety, security and reliability."
Gerald Wilson
"General purpose systems are just that: they're general. Most highly secure systems have specialist solutions. If you are guarding Fort Knox, you don't use a Yale lock."
Professor Ian Angell, Professor of Information Systems, LSE
Because of bugs and security flaws, Microsoft has to release frequent security fixes and patches. Only this week the headline in the leading trade magazine,
Computer Weekly, warned:
"users face five years of patching pain as security flaws keep rising."
Microsoft says the product to be used - Windows 2000 - is accredited to international standards for both security and upgrading. It is, they told us:
"as reliable as Unix, as secure as Unix, if not more so."
Neither British Aerospace nor the Ministry of Defence would be interviewed. But in statements, both said the the decision to use Windows had been subject to an independent review and they were satisfied
'a proper engineering approach had been taken to safety and security'.
The review, though, was an internal one, by staff of the MOD's Defence Procurement Agency, albeit ones not connected with the Type 45 project.
If it all works, there are plans to use Windows for the command system on the submarines that carry Britain's nuclear deterrent.
"It's one thing having and anti-aircraft destroyer running on Windows; it's quite another matter when we are talking about Her Majesty's nuclear threat. Because it inconceivable that we could allow the possibility of accidental release of nuclear missiles."
Gerald Wilson
An accidental launch is an extremely remote possibility. But it must surely be right to ask that nothing be compromised to prevent it.
