US Army Chooses Linux

Contrary to popular belief, not all military equipment works on specific, super-reliable and top-secret hardware and software. Of course, mission-critical systems, such as on-board computers of airplanes, ships, or UAVs, run under a real-time OS that has little in common with ordinary consumer systems. But side by side with them work perfectly ordinary computers and operating systems. Today, the military is increasingly using Linux. Among the June contracts, published by the US Department of Defense, is an agreement with Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems worth almost thirty million dollars, according to which the company must transfer all Linux MQ-8B Fire Scout UAV control systems to Linux by February 2014.



This decision was preceded by a scandal in October last year. On the computers of the Air Force base in Nevada, from which many drones are controlled, a virus-keylogger was detected . Computers worked under control of Windows.

In 2008, the Worm: W32 / Agent.BTZ worm infected many computers in the Pentagon. The virus spread through flash drives and other removable media for three years. After this incident, the rules for handling such carriers in the US military were significantly tightened. Earlier, in 1998, the entire USS Yorktown ship was “frozen” by 2 hours and 45 minutes due to a program error. The ship was controlled by computers based on Windows NT 4.0.
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Linux and other free software has long been widely used by the American army. The Defense Ministry website has a detailed FAQ , which lists specific examples of the use of open source by the military, as well as studies indicating the numerous advantages of free software over proprietary software, and many nuances of using the GPL license in military applications.