Ada in the Persian Gulf!

Ada in the Persian Gulf!

[Karl A. Nyberg]

Forwarded...

-- Karl --

>From croak@sc4.hq.af.mil Thu Jan 24 10:59:53 1991
>From: Thomas J. Croak - AF/SCXS - 59931 <croak@sc4.hq.af.mil>
Subject: A Real Ada War Story

Please forward as you see fit:

Air Force Space Command has succeeded in an extremely fast turnaround on
critical Ada code in support of the war effort.  This example shows how Ada
can support the concepts of flexability, maintainability, reuse, ease of
integration, and increased productivity.

The Theater Display Terminal (TDT) is a missle warning display system which
was designed and built in 1986 and in 1987 became AFSPACECOM's first
operational Ada system.  It is a remote processor built to replace a
teletype machine with a state-of-the-art workstation using a graphical user
interface complete with windows, mouse control and pull down windows.  TDT
runs on a Sun 3 with UNIX and Verdix Ada.

TDT is a *Strategic* device designed to give theater commanders a visual
indication of a large scale nuclear missile attack.  The displays are based
on world maps which give gross indications of missile launch and direction.
The symbol indicating a missile launch would cover nearly five middle east
countries.  Although the latitude/longitude of the launch site is included
in the information from the missile warning satellites, the operator must
consult a map in cases where the launch is from a small country.

11 Jan 91 - The theater operations personnel identified the need for a
*Tactical* missile warning capability to automatically derive the country
from which a tactical missile was launched.

12-13 Jan 91 - AFSPACECOM personnel copied an existing country-of-origin
algorithm and an extensive geo-political database from a new Cheyenne
Mountain missile warning system and installed it in the TDT code.

13 Jan 91 - Enhanced system was demonstrated with test data on the
development system.

14 Jan 91, 1300 - Enhanced system demonstrated to operations personnel on an
operational system.

14 Jan 91, 1900 - Category A test using live data from the sensor.

15 Jan 91 - Software flown to theater and installed immediately.

16 Jan 91 - New capability used operationally during Iraqi SCUD missile
attack on Israel.

Re: Ada in the Persian Gulf!

[(George C. Harrison) Norfolk State University]

In article <9101242044.AA02455@grebyn.com>, karl@grebyn.com (Karl A. Nyberg) writes:

> Air Force Space Command has succeeded in an extremely fast turnaround on
> critical Ada code in support of the war effort.  This example shows how Ada
> can support the concepts of flexability, maintainability, reuse, ease of
> integration, and increased productivity.
> 
etc. etc.

Karl, thanks for the posting.  This is indeed the kind of news the nay-sayers
really need to hear.  (too bad very few will volunteer to read this!)

-- George C. Harrison -------------- || -- My opinions and observations --
---|| Professor of Computer Science  || -- Only. -------------------------
---|| Norfolk State University, ---- || ----------- Pray for Peace -------
---|| 2401 Corprew Avenue, Norfolk, Virginia 23504 -----------------------
---|| INTERNET:  g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu ---------------------------------