The way it works is some AF guy in Nevada remotely controls the drones flying half way across the world.
My guess is it's not the drones themselves running Windows, but the consoles used to communicate with the drones. It makes sense. AF guy gets to work, plugs in his USB drive filled with music and pulls up the drone control program...
Though, now that I think about it, I would be disappointed, but not entirely surprised, if the drones ran Windows also. Sigh.
Well, there was that case maybe ten years ago of the nuclear carrier that had to be towed back to port after a BSoD killed it dead in the water; its control systems all ran Windows.
> On 21 September 1997, while on maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, Virginia, a crew member entered a zero into a database field causing a divide by zero error in the ship's Remote Data Base Manager which brought down all the machines on the network, causing the ship's propulsion system to fail.
Wow. Reading more of the wiki article (and linked sources) reveals that the actual towing to port is a contested issue. Noone denies that a /0 error killed the whole ship though.
Ok I don't feel so bad now. I was stationed on a nuclear carrier and one day I accidentally deleted the entire supply/logistics/personnel/maintenance database cluster.
I mean come on, the menu option was labeled "Re-index databases". I thought it would make it go faster :)
I ended up just making something up and restoring from backup.
So the problem was actually the data validation logic in the application, allowing invalid data to get into the database (and why no constraint on the database field?) coupled with no exception handling on a division operation (always a red flag). None of that has anything to do with Windows, really, but it's an easy cheap shot to take.
No modern UAV has hardware capable of running an entire Windows installation. Think of arduino boards; those things can control huge robotics systems and they are very simple (and thus simple to debug). If you're designing a robot from the ground-up, why would you scale all the way to Windows? No one is going to be playing minesweeper inside the plane
No modern UAV has hardware capable of running an entire Windows installation.
I highly, highly doubt that you're right about this. If you happen to be right, you won't be for long. It might be that nobody wants to run Windows, but there is clear motivation, as well as hardware and software technology, to have a full-scale OS on an advanced UAV.
The google car is an exception where there is a lot of sophisticated software. UAV's like Boeing's and even the ones you buy online (with the open source software) are running on boards, not full-scale PC's with the ability to play a DVD.
UAVs are very complicated in terms of technology and engineering, but the hardware is simple because it's basically just running control loops on some board.
spoilers: Microsoft has a significant enterprise support organization, which the military is probably already dealing with, and Windows scales farther down than you'd think.
For the only reasons such stupid thing happens: the clueless manager wants the machine to run a modern OS and thinks Windows is the most modern OS out there.
post-downvote edit: I am saying nothing about viruses like Stuxnet, designed as weapons tailored to infect specific systems, for which no OS would be safe, but how brain-dead is it to design critical systems that control airborne weapon systems around an OS that's vulnerable to each and every piece of malware known to man?
Now I am curious. Why would Windows end up in such a system? I would expect an RTOS like QNX (which is not that hard to program).
I agree I am more familiar with corporate IT disasters where some pointy-haired boss decided Windows was the way to go instead of what would be the optimal choice, but I always expected flight-control software to be built with a great amount of attention to every detail.
My guess is it's not the drones themselves running Windows, but the consoles used to communicate with the drones. It makes sense. AF guy gets to work, plugs in his USB drive filled with music and pulls up the drone control program...
Though, now that I think about it, I would be disappointed, but not entirely surprised, if the drones ran Windows also. Sigh.