Former submariner here. My thoughts echo those of a ex-submariner group I'm a part of -- it makes sense across the board. It's 1) a cost saving measure, 2) WAY easier to get replacements, and 3) WAAAYY easier to train new people to use it safely and efficiently.
1. The Virginia class was first commissioned in 2004, with a 33 year design life. The XBox 360 was first shown in public in 2005, with a design life of ...? Yup, it's consumer electronics, with a design life of much less than 33 years. Even though there are on the order of 80-100M of them in the wild, by and by XBox 360s and replacement parts will be getting scarce.
(If you think this is an exaggeration, consider the availability of spare parts today for a computer system commissioned 33 years ago, in 1984 — an original IBM PC XT, perhaps, or an original Macintosh, both of which were manufactured in — for the time — high volume. Things like 5.25" floppy disks, or a replacement M-series IBM keyboard with the original DIN plug, were once ubiquitous, but today they're rarities.)
2. A second concern is that these days everything comes with an embedded processor and an enterprising hostile entity might try to sneak malware on board a fast attack submarine via the periscope controller handset. (I've no idea what form such malware might take, or what it might accomplish, but that's not the point: it's that using cheap commercial handsets widens the threat surface of the submarine's sensor suite arbitrarily.)
1) As others have said xinput is pervasive as this point. If the Xbox 360 controller becomes hard to source then I'm sure a replacement xinput derived device will still be around. If not, it's a well documented standard and new devices can be made.
2) This leans on my first response. Xinput is the winner here, not the Xbox controller. If after testing they can't harden it then we have a lot of other options, up to and including a bespoke controller.
I guess what I'm saying is that video game controls are so much fun for a reason. They 'just work'. And while there is a little bit of dystopian sheen to seeing video games become the source for defacto tooling for war machines I'm always for a simplification of man/machine interactions.
> If the Xbox 360 controller becomes hard to source then I'm sure a replacement xinput derived device will still be around. If not, it's a well documented standard and new devices can be made.
First of all, I want to say I agree with you. That said, you didn't really refute GP's point.
The IBM XT was well documented, had many clones and alternatives, but still you can't find parts at most electronic stores 33 years later. Several decades is a very long time in consumer electronics.
One thing I'd point out is that the only relevant objections are things that are true about the XBox controller that aren't true about all the alternatives. One-off bespoke custom hardware at dozens of thousands of dollars a pop are not necessarily going to be better supported at these time scales, because even if you sign an iron-clad contract with an entity to do whatever maintenance you could dream up, they still have the "going out of business entirely" option. You also can't neglect the hours of training involved and all the other associated costs with bespoke solutions.
We're trying to solve the problem of how to point periscopes here, not solve the generalized problem that when it comes down to it, nobody really knows what 2027 is going to be like.
(By contrast, "this is a new vector for malware if the supply chain is not secured" is a valid concern because one presumes and/or hopes that bespoke military hardware is better controlled there. This is a solvable problem, but solving it eats into the cost advantage.)
Responding "the same problem exists with the custom hardware" isn't what everyone is replying with. Instead they keep going with the trope that it's an open standard and not realizing the example given was an open standard 33 years ago.
Further more, I agree with your parenthetical that the malware angle is the more important argument. I disagree that it's a solveable problem though, but I feel the Xbox controller isn't the reason it isn't solvable. Any platform can be hacked given sufficient motivation.
Honestly I think using these controllers are likely the best approach, but let's not pretend it doesn't have issues (it's just the it's the same issues or less cumbersome issues than alternatives).
This is an interesting debate, but I think it misses the most important point: cost.
The Navy can buy thousands of Xbox controllers for the cost of even a single bespoke controller. The US has on the order of 100 submarines. Replacement controllers for the lifetime of each submarine -- even multiplied by 10 -- is a hilariously small cost compared to the alternatives.
So buy 1,000+ Xbox controllers and keep them in a warehouse. Problem solved.
> buy 1,000+ Xbox controllers and keep them in a warehouse.
Yes, I was going to suggest this. It would solve the availability issue and reduce the malware issue. If it's replacing a $38,000 item, they could buy 1,265 extra per sub.
I can however find as many Atari controllers as I could ever need, both locally and online. When considering availability you can't discount the sheer _volume_ of the things that have been manufactured. A truly ubiquitous human input device like an XBox controller is going to be available for a good long time without much extra work. It's well tested against repeated abuse (source: I'm bad at XBox games) and there are millions of the things in existence.
Exactly, use the correct controller for the correct scenario. Keyboard+mouse works for many games, but for games where you control vehicles (racing games, aircraft simulators, submarines), joystick controls just work better.
Also, let's not forget that Microsoft would probably help out with hardening the security of the controllers. It's not like the Navy would have to reverse engineer the controller to figure out how to make it more secure.
Even if you spend a ton of time and money hardening it, if the xbox-like game controller is more efficient and easier to train on, then you save there in training costs and improved operational effectiveness. This of course relies on an assumption that the current method of control is overly complicated and difficult.
The xinput gamepad is a pervasive standard, with plenty of third party hardware implementations and wide software support across operating systems. Heck, even Chrome and Firefox have JS apis to access xbox controller input.
Eventually it will be surpassed, but it's far more available and supported than whatever they were doing before, and its simple enough to be easy to continue to manufacture.
Also, do we really think the military couldn't find someone to contract with to continue making them if they needed to? Knock offs are $20 on Amazon, they're very simple devices.
1) I don't really understand this criticism - why would a bespoke milspec controller be any more likely to be around than a widely documented consumer controller?
Which do you think is easier to replace today, or get a manufacturer to remake: a model M from 1984, or a custom machine keyboard from 1984.
Hell, wind the back another 10 years - I worked in a hospital with a really old bit of kit. It was a Siemens EEG machine, and the keyboard was capacitive metal tabs. No travel at all - they simply registered when pressed by a finger but not other things (like a modern smartphone screen). I'd much rather dig up a common keyboard than one of those curios.
Is Microsoft going to be willing to share their original specs so you can build an identical controller years down the track? Given we're talking military here reverse engineering to remake wouldn't be acceptable.
You wouldn't need an identical controller, just one that has an identical line protocol. In this case it's a USB HID Device that prescribes to the XInput Hardware API. Logitech, Razer, and others already make compatible devices.
There have been third-party Xbox controllers almost since the console came out. No doubt ONE of them will gobble up a DoD contract to continue production if it's offered. (Former Submarine FT)
The military has been buying 360 controllers to do a bunch of different things and I'm sure MS has been providing them on contract and will continue to provide them because it's easy money.
Xinput is a pervasive standard at this point, to where there is a large market of third party controllers and software support in various linux distros as well as a JS api to access it in Chrome and Firefox.
As long as the military doesn't buy them on Amazon.com, yea they probably would. Escrow of technical and IP documents is pretty common in industry procurement, I'd imagine that it's even more common in procurement for defense.
1. This is easily solved by buying enough supply of controllers right now to last for 33 years.
2. Are you sure the non-commercial version come from and doesn't have embedded processor, and how do you know it's really good quality and not just very expensive because of low quantity production?
"Lifetime buys" are a thing, and also can be expensive because you don't always have a good estimate when doing so. Either you buy too many and waste $ with excess stock, or you don't buy enough then 10 years later have to scrounge for more stock at higher prices, or come up with a replacement.
Let's assume we actually get 50 Virginia class submarines (whims of Congress, and all that). Let's assume we need on average 3 controllers per year. That's a total of 5,000 XBox controller.
At $20 a piece, the pentagon has now spent $10,000. This is not what in military spending passes for excess $ :) Yes, the numbers might be somewhat off, and there's storage cost, but really - we're talking Pentagon here. The place of the infamous $640 toilet seat :) (I know, the price got reduced to $100. Still, on the scale of Pentagon procurement, a lifetime buy of XBox controllers is pretty trivial)
Not to mention making a controller would be trivial for a DoD contractor. I feel like some people in this thread want it both ways. If they see a contractor reinventing the wheel by making a custom xbox-like controller for god knows how much money they'll get criticized. If the DoD buys off-the-shelf parts then they'll get criticized as well.
I think when its come to HIDs like controllers or keyboards, off the shelf is fine. We can have the exact same conversation for Dell keyboards or 3rd party keyboards and mice.
There is hardly a thing, like a wasted hardware in the military.
For such a purchase you do not make a guess and buy. You make a guess, multiply it by 3 and then buy.
Cost saved by going for customer grade electronics vs. specialized will easily justify this. You will still be saving lots of money.
I didn't say you wouldn't save compared to some other solution. I said it's not as simple as just buying. You'll have loss no matter your estimate.
And as I said to a sibling comment below, you can't always just buy excess. You have budgets you need to stay under, to support everything you handle.
Consumer grade is not the same as buying from the same places we buy, either. You have to use approved vendors, which add their own markup. What you or I may buy for $5 might only be available for $25.
mysterydip, you're doing a lot of posting and not listening to some of these very good answers.
First. No, lifetime buys are not always a tough problem. While they can be tough, consumer grade electronics have to be the best product to predict lifetime buys on due to clear end of life and good data on mean time to failure.
Second. Let's do some math. Let's assume a 30 year operation. There are 48 of this sub planned. Let's say for some reason they go through 3 a year. At $30 each, we're looking at $130k to outfit the entire fleet of subs for their operational lifetime. Or, we could buy about 3.5 of the existing joystick, not even enough to outfit the 4 subs that are already in operation.
Lastly, it is likely that a 3rd party would take over the manufacture of these devices when they end of life anyway. It's a popular consumer electronic after all. The government would just buy a bunch then, reducing lifetime warehouse costs and getting better data to predict the lifetime buy.
It's probably also worth comparing to the cost of a bespoke solution. If it takes two engineers six months to design and test, you'll have spent more on their salaries alone than on your projected lifetime buy (which itself doesn't even account for any bulk discount).
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it's always a problem, or even in this specific case. Just that it can be, something for people to think about.
The problem comes when you start going through 3 a year, but then say 5 years down the road you start going through 15 a year. There could be a premature wear issue, some bug, an update from a related system, whatever. But you can't always plan for those, and it can come back to bite you. And whomever has the inventory at that time can have quite a markup.
For what it's worth, I think this controller idea is excellent.
The issue is there's a difference between where the money comes from (capex vs opex for a simplified and incorrect example). Your support areas don't get the same budget as your construction areas. And when money runs out for the year you still have to keep thinngs running.
And while I agree that excess stock costs pale in comparison to a sub or boat, multiply that by every part necessary to keep one operational, and then face all the people every year who say the defense budget needs cut.
I personally doubt that scarcity will be too big an issue with Xbox 360 controllers for the foreseeable future — development of new 360 hardware only ended in April last year. I can think of no piece of consumer electronics cheaper to source and repair than the 360 controller.
I'm sure, though, that both 1. and 2. are concerns the US Navy will have given ample consideration before making this move.
Did the SNES controller become a de facto standard? Because the xbox 360 controller is one. There are plenty of xinput compatible gamepads from different manufacturers, the largest right now is Logitech. Xinput became pervasive because of PC gaming, it had really good support within windows, and support has been implemented now in Linux and directly in Chrome and Firefox. It's also really popular in the robotics world for exactly the reasons the navy outlined, a group I worked with used 3rd party xbox controllers almost exclusively. The tooling support is there as well, labview has built in xbox 360 controller support, and idk about other competing software but it probably does as well.
To your second point, these things are manifactured in China. What's to prevent them from adding tracking devices or backdoors to these if they realize they're going into US military ships?
How do you know which ones are headed for a submarine? The military could literally just pick a BestBuy and go pick up a dozen controllers whenever they're at a port.
The manufacturers in China would have to put backdoors into all of them, which would be noticed pretty quickly, and the gain is what? They can control the periscope direction? That would be noticed immediately too.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it sounds more like a plot device for a "set your brain on the seat beside you" action movie.
Though with 'cost plus' contracts... providers are incented to create crazy new things for every problem.
If there weren't moral questions around this - it would be amazing to see a NATO forces 'hackathon' where people create top gear/tech for soldiers with off-the-shelf components and software.
I have a funny feeling that 'if they put their hearts to it' - there'd be no competition in terms of what could be created.
Imagine the SpaceX of 'jet fighters' - 2x the capability, 5% the cost.
Anyhow, obvious moral issues there ... just a thought.
Well, you have the issue of EMP hardening. Not sure if that is a problem in submarines. But elsewhere, you have a serious defensive flaw if an EMP attack can disable military hardware.
I doubt an EMP torpedo would exist targeting submarines underwater. Water is just crazy good at dampening electromagnetic waves. And if you can score a direct hit, the EMP device's weight in extra explosives is cheaper and more destructive.
The Musk biography is a pretty good source for that question. From what I remember, SpaceX produces a rather extreme fraction of its parts in-house (something like 80%–it's been a while). What they don't create themselves, they often source from the consumer market. They avoid the tradition space industry supplies wherever possible because they have had success with off-the-shelve parts available for a fraction of the costs.
I believe the book gave a radio module as an example. It was available for $120,000 at "space-rated" quality, but they bought something at RadioShack for around $3,000, and later replaced it with an in-house part that was smaller/lighter/more power efficient.
There is 'off the shelf', 'automotive', 'aeronautic', 'unmanned space' and 'manned space' quality gear.
If you think about it - when you're flying a plane, the 'tolerances' for everything just has to be higher - there's much more at risk.
In a complex system, there are a lot of single points of failure that can cause haywire.
Unsurprisingly, the tolerances for 'unmanned' vs. 'manned' space flight are quite different - and for good reason.
Perhaps the economics are not always quite right, it may make sense to make some small probe out of 'cheap gear' - but there is of course added risk, and usually, you 'only get one launch' attempt.
Finally - there's a reason a 'space grade' radio might cost $13K, and that's because they don't make very many :).
I interned on the Space Shuttle robot arm project - we made these aluminum 'handles' for the arm to grab onto. I mean - really, really basic stuff. $200K each. Engineering, overhead, testing, sales yada yada - we only ever made a few dozen.
>we made these aluminum 'handles' for the arm to grab onto. I mean - really, really basic stuff. $200K each. Engineering, overhead, testing, sales yada yada - we only ever made a few dozen.
That sounds ridiculous. Did your coworkers have a strong opinion of that, or not care?
Next time you're sat in a meeting with 5 other highly paid software developers, discussing a two line bugfix, think about how much that bugfix will have cost.
I would love to see an Outlook plugin that estimates meeting costs using salary band information for attendees. It would help keep rambling to a minimum.
Requirements analysis, systems analysis and research (when you do things in space absolutely everything needs to be looked at), materials design and test (materials behave differently in space). Fixtures? How are they affixed to satelites? You can't just 'glue' them. The type of 'screws' are pretty important. This might require a lot of back and forth.
Each step of the process involves internal review and review by the customer - i.e. Japanese space agency, and can take weeks.
Testing requires a massive 'clean room' which is expensive to maintain. And you don't just make these things anywhere - tolerances have to be perfect.
Not only is it tough engineering, it's a lot of bureaucracy.
And then overhead: IT, support, software, flights, hotels yada yada yada. It adds up.
Don't you have (shouldn't you have) a "certified parts library" so you don't need to go through the process of studying which material is needed for a handle, use standard and pre-certified screws to affix them, which you already know won't come off due to vibrations during launch, and won't accidentally fuse once in space (https://www.quora.com/If-two-metals-touch-in-space-they-fuse...).
Basically do it right, so you only do it once, like software libraries (in an ideal world). Unless you really really have a damn good reason to not pick an existing handle from the library.
Perhaps you should hawk your minimally-tested, 'just trust us', generic pre-designed handles made out of cheap steel to NASA, and tell them what a bundle they'd save. If it works then you'll be on a gravy train.
Well, a limited-run gravy train, for 50 or so units.
I appreciate some good snark, but that's more or less exactly what SpaceX is doing, although their handles are slightly more complicated.
By using off-the-shelf hardware, and reusing the first stage, they're on a good trajectory to undercut previews launch system by almost an order of magnitude. And NASA trusts them enough to outsource even manned flight to them.
Though there is a lot of bureaucracy, you'd be surprised at how much work it is.
Consider how much a massive 'clean room' costs to operate.
Consider how much gear it takes to simulate the operation of massive robot arm in a 0G environment, when we live in a 1G environment.
Consider what happens when a 1 ton arm, attached to a 20 ton structure, applies toque to a 1/2 ton satellite... when the satellite is moving ...
Consider how much it costs to send 4 Engineers, a PM and a Bus Dev to Japan for three weeks for talks with Japanese Space Agency? Several times?
Consider the lawyers bill - Japanese, Canadian and American ones. Translators. Insurance estimates. Liabilities.
FYI - did you know that every single thing that goes into space is tracked? Every single screw had an ID number. It's original manufacturer, shipping, the date it was put on the station, by whom, when it was removed - etc etc. Every goddam screw :).
Now think of how much software and admin is needed to track all that.
And now consider that if one single manager, at one single subcontractor opens an 'issue report' anywhere in the world - that the 'countdown' for a shuttle launch was postponed? (Happened to my boss, opened a tiny change request on Admin Software in Toronto - went for lunch - Shuttle countdown froze, panic and hilarity ensue). And the overhead costs associated with that.
Space is expensive, especially 'manned space'.
Vert complex, one-of-a-kind system - where nothing is allowed to go wrong.
And we've managed to end up with shuttle with all of that bureaucracy.
I understand the complexity of the issue at hand. I can.
Nevertheless simple handles going for 200K a piece is a vast budget. Any proper business would quickly open up an internal department to "do the handles" since it both allows them to grow for free (you get additional specialists and the handles) and allows to use the same engineers for something else. More importantly testing becomes less of an issue since now you may easily do integrated testing of several disjoined components at once.
So no - I understand where the expenses come from. But it doesn't mean that structure is in _any_ way motivated.
The idea of subcontracting and every little piece of hardware being done by a separate little entity doesn't seem to work both in terms of pricing and in terms of the amount of work it would be doing be it a merged entity.
Mostly. Note that EELV and NASA launches by SpaceX have an extra paperwork charge, which is as big as $20mm. One hopes that eventually the US government will be able to take advantage of the same, cheaper service that commercial launches buy.
"easily do integrated testing of several disjoined components at once."
It just doesn't work that way.
It's an area of hyper-specialization.
Everything made for space is a 'one off', there really are no economies of focus or scale. Maybe in launch.
There just aren't 'lines of business' in space really.
Once you walk in the situation and spend a few days there, and see what's going on, you get it.
I haven't even scratched the surface of it.
Every process is recorded, needs to be archived.
Every single piece of software hardware ever used needs to be 'kept around' in case something goes wrong. 20 year old computers, floppy disks, have to be managed and 'kept up' in case something from way back needs to be tested.
Purchasing requirements/limitations. Political control (governments pay for this, so they set rules, change them). Security clearances. Accounting standards. Process audits. Insurance audits. Hyper-specialization HR impossibilities (like 10 guys in the world qualified to do ABC activity).
You must wonder why it costs '100M dollars' to film a big movie, have a look at the detailed budgets. A lot comes out of the woodwork.
I think I'm really starting to understand more about all the reasons why SpaceX can get stuff in space for a fraction of the cost of Nasa in less than a decade in business
Basically yes. The NASA space shuttle was conceived by NASA, chosen by Nixon among a group of possible projects, and then the tank built by Lockheed, orbiter by ATK, etc. If anything, many of the above problems wouldn't just go away, some of them would become even more costly.
I've been reading the bio of Musk and it discusses that they progressively replace COTS as much as possible, building and designing in house because in the end, THAT is cheaper.
I guess there's no way to know for outsiders, but I've heard SpaceX buys a lot from McMaster-Carr. Parts for rocket itself or other tools used to build/test rockets? I have no idea.
Former defense contractor here. I trust Microsoft to have put more time and money into making that controller maximally usable and useful than whatever subcontractor would have made the thing otherwise.
I wonder how much rigor Microsoft's controllers would have to go through to become a defense industry standard. The $500 Hammer legend doesn't exit in a vacuum, and I've experienced why.
It's not new either, I saw people using xbox controllers to control drones 10ish years ago.
But yeah, why use custom controls when an off-the-shelf product with 15+ years of development iterations which is produced in the tens of millions a year will probably never beat it? A good example of going against Not Invented Here syndrome.
Regular PMs by qualified staff with a certified spare available for the down time and a service contract to cover them both. I think its more in the + direction.
Everything in this article sounded great except the submarine commander seemingly considering just running down to the local market to get a controller if theirs broke.
