Re: In Defense of the Mandate

[agate!howland.reston.ans.net!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!linac!uchinews!news @ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Dave Griffith)]

In article <C82G4M.DE0@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> willett@cbnewsl.cb.att.com  
(david.c.willett) writes:
> 
> 	I've been sitting on this issue of whether the Ada Mandate
> is a GOOD THING or not, and I've decided to put forward a defense of the 
> Mandate.  The defense rests on some historical factors concerning 
> weapons procurement and production.  Given the victory in the Cold War,
> it can be argued that these presumptions no longer apply, but nevertheless
> they applied for the past several years and may still today.
> 
> First, the groundwork....
> 
> 	Consider World War II.  That war was important because it marked 
> the emergence of the United States as one of the two superpowers.  It also
> marked the beginning of the "Military-Industrial Complex" as we know it.
> Much fundamental U.S. Defense procurement policy can be traced to the 
> procurement practices adopted to win World War II.
> 
> 	World War II taught the U.S. what it takes to win a protracted 
> conflict.  Specifically, that one must be able to produce large quantities
> of standard weapons to overwhelm the enemy at the front.  Producing these
> quantities means that *ANY PRODUCER* must be able to manufacture "from
> scratch" any weapon currently in the U.S. arsenal.  During World War II,
> appliance manufacturers made rifles and tractor factories produced airplanes.
> Today the MIL-STDs are written so that this sort of cross production can
> be implemented again.  It's one reason DOD stuff costs so much more than its
> civilian counterparts.
> 

If this were what the MIL-STDs are trying to do, they've done so in a very odd 
 
way.  The classic counter to this argument is the M-16.  Using advanced  
plastics and alloys, it is only produced at a handful of factorie (2?).  If  
production had to be ramped up 100-fold in a matter of months, it simply  
couldn't be done.  OTOH, the M-16's main competitor, the AK-47/74, is produced 
 
out of bar stock and wood.  Numerous suppliers are available.  In a pinch,  
replacement parts for AK's have been produced by Afghani village blacksmiths.
The AK is acknowleged to be more reliable, if heavier, than the M-16.  Now  
_that's_ weapons procurement.   I see no evidence that current military  
procurement follows such "protracted conflict" scenarios.  Chances of anyone  
but McD managing to put out an F-16 are pretty small.

> 
> 	Consider that embedded software, the kind Ada was developed to 
> produce, is a critical part of modern weapons.  An F-16 simply isn't an 
> F-16 without the fly-by-wire software.  Fire control radars and ECM systems
> depend more on software than on hardware to accomplish their mission.
> 
> 	I claim that an arbitrary embedded system (J) written in Ada is
> (on average) easier for an independent programming team to understand and
> subsequently enhance than one written in any previous language.  Thus,
> it is easier for independent programming teams to create variants of that 
> system (J', J'', J'''.....) than it would be if J were written in some older
> language.  That capability is needed if we have to fight protracted conflicts
 
> like World War II, Korea, or VietNam.

Even accepting your claim on the merits of Ada for this requirement, the chance
  
of a modern war lasting long enough that major program revs would have to be  
shopped out to independent contractors is pretty small.  This would only really
  
be likely to occur in a "total war" on the scale of WWII.   

Your WWII analogy can be used to _oppose_ the mandate.  If WWII style ramp up  
was necessary, the current supply of Ada programmers would be grossly  
inadequate.  There would be a fairly sizeable time lag as programmers were  
retrained to Ada, and a (temporary) quality lag as they brought their skills up
  
from usable to professional.  With this in mind, the WWII analogy suggests that
  
defense procurement use the language for which an adequate supply of  
programmers can be quickly supplied in case of emergency.   C or Cobol,  
probably.

None of this is to put down current military procurement or the Mandate.   
Merely to show the the "protracted conflict" scenario given is incapable of  
explaining either.  On the actual merits of the Mandate, I return you to your  
regularly scheduled flame war.

--
Dave Griffith, Information Resources, University of Chicago,
Biological Sciences Division               dave@delphi.bsd.uchicago.edu
If it's too commercial, you're too old.