With Windows predominant in Army battlefield systems, managing two operating systems will create challenges, say experts

The Defense Department has worked to adopt open software and operating systems for some of its projects, For example, the Army’s Future Combat Systems will rely on a Red Hat version of Linux called the "Systems-of-Systems Common Operating Environment."

However, most of the rest of the Army – like most of the world – uses a Microsoft operating system. Windows underpins Blue Force Tracking , a successful military application that traces the location of friendly forces.

"The most likely outcome is that we will have one network that has two environments," said Army Col. Brian Donahue, director of Army LandWarNet G3. Donahue has taken part in a series of conferences taking place in late 2007 and early 2008, convened by Gen. Richard Cody, vice chief of staff of the Army, to address this problem and others. "We will have a Linux-based environment within the FCS portion of the network and Windows will probably be the predominant element in the rest of it."

That’s hardly an ideal outcome, information technologists say. "Does Red Hat inter-operate with Windows and active directory? Yes we do, but not as cleanly and as easily if they were openly documented," said Paul Smith, Red Hat's vice president of government sales operations.

Ideally, the IT environment would be much simpler. A field of heterogeneous proprietary operating systems causes headaches. Almost every version of Microsoft operating systems can be found in the military. Only recently did the Army upgrade its Standard Army Maintenance System from MS-DOS to Windows XP. Keeping old operating systems going requires people with knowledge about them. They hamper the addition of new functionality and add complexity.

"I’m all for homogenous environments. I believe if we could run everything on one operating system, it would help us a lot," said Peter Amstutz, the Defense Contract Management Agency's chief of network design.

But not all operating systems are created equal. The Army decided to incorporate Red Hat based on the system's ability to integrate new functionality, Donahue said. "Linux just has more power do to payload integration."

Linux is more modular, Smith said. Because its specifications are public, it becomes easier to create new applications for it. Some software developers, however, have complained privately that FCS lead systems integrator Boeing and SOSCOE co-developer Science Applications International Corporation have been less-than-forthcoming with SOSCOE documentation. A Boeing spokesman said the "software package is available and required for all partners to use."

The face off between Windows and Linux was foreseeable. It’s a conflict that FCS designers ultimately decided was less important than getting what they wanted from their operating system. “The difficult is derived from the operational capability we’re trying to create,” Donahue said. "It is the attempt to get to that operational end state that drove us to the technical challenge of differing operating systems."

This type of decision has been repeated many, many times over the decades. At the time of developing a particular application, it made sense to use a particular operating system. Those decisions perpetuate a complex environment because many applications won’t function on a new operating system and money isn’t available to build a replacement application.

Meanwhile, possible technological solutions exist. Computers can run emulations of old operating systems on new platforms. But DCMA’s Amstutz doesn’t recommend it. The agency looked into that possibility, and rejected it, "primarily because of the complexity factor," he said. By running a translating agent to emulate an old operating system on a new platform, not only would an organization continue to support old operating systems, but also would have to gain expertise in emulation, he added. Further, if the operating system that the emulator itself runs on changes, the whole thing collapses.

"We said 'Maybe the gains aren’t that great to take that kind of risk,'" Amstutz said.

What’s the solution? "My recommendation to IT managers would be to write everything to a standard operating system that the organization decides on. Pick a point in time and from that point forward, do everything in a standard way. Draw a box around the legacy stuff, and support it as best you can. Hopefully some of the business functionality will eventually migrate or be replaced through lifecycle, and eventually you’ll get to the point where everything is the same," Amstutz said.

Meanwhile, various parts of DOD are investigating how they might pare down operating system complexity. An "Open Technology Roadmap Plan" released in 2006 by DoD's Office of Advanced Systems and Concepts said a successful demonstration of open technology development would usher in a new era were "OTD technology development processes, resources, tools and methods are applied by default when acquisition programs are built and implemented."

More recently, the Navy has called for its IT environment to become consistently open. "The days of proprietary technology must come to an end," reportedly said Vice Adm. Mark Edwards, deputy chief of naval operations for communications during a March 5 conference. "We will no longer accept systems that couple hardware, software and data."

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