Re: THAAD Study on Ada Viability

[Marin David Condic <mcondic.nospam@acm.org>]

Ken Garlington wrote:

> "Singlespeeder" <singlespeeder@btinternet.com> wrote in message
> news:918u24$8ms$1@neptunium.btinternet.com...
> : The point is though that the defense industry isn't going to upgrade the
> : development environment and move their development wholesale onto these
> : suites. Instead they'll stick with overstretched VAX/VMS machines, and an
> : environment that may have been hot in 1983 but doesn't cut it in the 21st
> : century - certainly not when trying to meet their 21st century timescales.
>
> I dunno... my company (Lockheed Martin Aero) is moving off of VAXen and onto
> other platforms as fast as possible (including legacy programs). We are also
> using far more IDEs and upper CASE tools than before.
>

One of the things to note about defense systems is that they differ dramatically
from similar commercial systems in terms of their longevity. A given missile or
avionics system can easily be around in some stage of development/maintenance
for 20..30 years. (How old is the B52 bomber?) You pick a target processor,
development platform, compiler, toolset, etc. in the year 2000 and you may make
your first production delivery in 2010. You have to live with those choices
because to change over to the latest/greatest technology means a huge cost in
regression testing and re-validating the system.

I don't think defense companies are against moving to modern tools - as your
example of LMA illustrates. I think they just have a harder time doing it than
commercial endeavors might. We kind of know that instinctively because we're
insiders. Those outside the defense community may not be aware of it.

MDC
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