SMCS
Encyclopedia
SMCS, the Submarine Command System, was first created for the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom
's Vanguard class submarine
s as a tactical information system and a torpedo
weapon control system. Versions have now also been installed on other submarine classes.
system, the UK Ministry of Defence ran an open competition for the command system. Up to that point all RN ships and submarines had command systems built by Ferranti
using custom-built electronics and specialised proprietary processors. In a departure from previous practice, which had favoured 'preferred contractor' policies, the competition was won by a new company called Gresham-CAP, leading a consortium of Gresham-Lion (now part of Ultra Electronics plc) and CAP Scientific
.
The consortium proposed a novel distributed processing system based on Commercial off-the-shelf
(COTS) processors, with a modular software architecture largely written in the Ada programming language. Each set of Initial Phase SMCS equipment has multiple computer nodes. At the centre of the system there is an Input/Output Node (which provides interfaces to weapons and sensors) and a Central Services Node (which holds fast numeric processors). Each central node is duplicated to create a fault-tolerant system
which is dual modular redundant
. The Human-Computer Interface is provided by Multi Function Consoles and some additional terminals. The dual redundant central nodes are linked to each other and to the consoles via a dual redundant fibre optic LAN.
In the Initial Phase equipment fitted to the Vanguard class submarines most processing is done by Intel 80386
single-board computers, each with its own Ada run-time environment. CAP Scientific created a complex layer of middleware
to link the many processors together. At its time SMCS was the largest Ada project so far seen. As a pioneering user of Ada, the SMCS project encountered many teething problems with the large-scale use of Ada compilers, Ada development tools, and the special characteristics of the early dialect of the Ada programming language, later known as Ada 83.
and the SMCS project was owned by BAeSEMA
, a joint venture between Sema Group and British Aerospace
. Once SMCS was proven to work on Vanguard boats, it was proposed in the early 1990s to extend its use to the Swiftsure class submarine
s and the Trafalgar class submarine
s, as part of an improvement programme for these vessels. There was a commercial desire for yet further adoption of COTS technology. The consensus was to port SMCS to some form of UNIX
. Sema Group, with considerable experience both of real-time systems and of commercial UNIX, had concerns about the technological feasibility of this port. The essence of the problem was the need to map the Ada tasking environment to the run-time model of UNIX processes in a way which preserved SMCS' real-time characteristics enough to maintain dependability
. A team from BAeSEMA, led by Ray Foulkes, conducted thorough research into possible alternatives to the distributed Ada architecture used in the Initial phase. After extensive investigation of the run-time behaviour of different UNIX variants, and of the code generated by different Ada compilers, the project selected the Solaris operating system running on SPARC
computers, which could now be procured as COTS single-board computers.
To limit risk, only the consoles were converted to Solaris on SPARC in this phase. The central nodes were kept in the same form as the Initial Phase equipment. The benefit was that there was no need to implement the dual modular redundancy scheme on Solaris at this stage. However, the project had to manage some additional issues arising from mixed intel/SPARC working, such as endianism (since intel architecture is little-endian and SPARC is big-endian).
A detailed and generally accurate independent analysis of these stages in the development of SMCS was made in 1998.
The Astute Combat Management System (ACMS) combines SMCS with several other sub-systems. For ACMS, the Central Nodes have also been converted to SPARC computers. The dual redundant architecture, both of central nodes and of LAN connections, remains a key feature. There are about twice as many consoles as provided in earlier versions of SMCS. This phase of SMCS is an all-UNIX solution running Solaris on multiple SPARC nodes, with built-in dual redundancy.
. In its last major Defence Review, as reported in 2003, the UK Parliament agreed numerous improvements for RN submarines, but no changes to the Vanguard boats or the Trident missile system. It was expected that the SMCS equipment, supplied and maintained under a support contract with Ultra Electronics
, would last out the service life of the Vanguard fleet. The programmes in place for other submarine improvements were mainly for new sonar equipment, and had been reviewed and approved by the UK's parliament.
For a brief period, the SMCS project came under the ownership of Alenia Marconi Systems
, a joint venture of BAE Systems. In 2002, it was proposed to convert SMCS to run on standard PC x86 hardware, albeit in rugged industrialised form, for naval command systems. The SMCS project started to develop SMCS-NG ("Next Generation") as SMCS running on PC hardware. The plan was to convert the SMCS infrastructure and applications to run on the Microsoft Windows
operating system.
However, some software engineers had misgivings. In April 2002 Bill Gates
, appearing in his capacity as Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, had given sworn testimony under oath to the US Courts. Gates' testimony included statements that Microsoft Windows was indissoluble and could not be created in cut-down form. Paragraphs 207 to 223 of Gates' testimony indicated that Windows had an entangled monolithic structure, rather than a structure organised in modular fashion. Assuming Gates' testimony to be true, these 'pro-UNIX' engineers felt that open source UNIX rather than Microsoft Windows should be used as the foundation of future naval command systems and circulated their concerns within the company.
supplied by Thales Underwater Systems
for the Astute class submarines, and which may be retro-fitted to other classes, are built as PCs running Linux
rather than Windows.
Having developed SMCS-NG as an internal project, BAE Systems
independently proposed to the MoD that the original SMCS equipment be replaced by its own, newer, version. After sea trials in HMS Torbay
, the MoD awarded contracts to BAE Systems for refit of SMCS-NG into most RN submarines, including the Vanguard fleet. Although the Defence Minister Adam Ingram
told the UK Parliament in October 2004 that no decision had been made about conversion of the Vanguard fleet to run SMCS-NG, the MoD placed the contracts the following month.
Unlike with previous versions of SMCS, the software is supplied as a single-fit release which is intended to be configured for the sensor and weapon fit of each submarine.
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
's Vanguard class submarine
Vanguard class submarine
The Vanguard class are the Royal Navy's current nuclear ballistic missile submarines , each armed with up to 16 Trident II Submarine-launched ballistic missiles...
s as a tactical information system and a torpedo
Torpedo
The modern torpedo is a self-propelled missile weapon with an explosive warhead, launched above or below the water surface, propelled underwater towards a target, and designed to detonate either on contact with it or in proximity to it.The term torpedo was originally employed for...
weapon control system. Versions have now also been installed on other submarine classes.
Initial Phase: SMCS for Vanguard class
With the decision in 1983 to build a new class of submarine to carry the Trident missileTrident missile
The Trident missile is a submarine-launched ballistic missile equipped with multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles . The Fleet Ballistic Missile is armed with nuclear warheads and is launched from nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines . Trident missiles are carried by fourteen...
system, the UK Ministry of Defence ran an open competition for the command system. Up to that point all RN ships and submarines had command systems built by Ferranti
Ferranti
Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. Known primarily for defence electronics, the Company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but ceased trading in 1993.The...
using custom-built electronics and specialised proprietary processors. In a departure from previous practice, which had favoured 'preferred contractor' policies, the competition was won by a new company called Gresham-CAP, leading a consortium of Gresham-Lion (now part of Ultra Electronics plc) and CAP Scientific
CAP Scientific
CAP Scientific Ltd was a British defence software company. CAP merged with the French firm Sema-Metra SA in 1988 as Sema Group plc which was acquired by Schlumberger in 2001 to become SchlumbergerSema, itself acquired by Atos Origin in 2004...
.
The consortium proposed a novel distributed processing system based on Commercial off-the-shelf
Commercial off-the-shelf
In the United States, Commercially available Off-The-Shelf is a Federal Acquisition Regulation term defining a nondevelopmental item of supply that is both commercial and sold in substantial quantities in the commercial marketplace, and that can be procured or utilized under government contract...
(COTS) processors, with a modular software architecture largely written in the Ada programming language. Each set of Initial Phase SMCS equipment has multiple computer nodes. At the centre of the system there is an Input/Output Node (which provides interfaces to weapons and sensors) and a Central Services Node (which holds fast numeric processors). Each central node is duplicated to create a fault-tolerant system
Fault-tolerant system
Fault-tolerance or graceful degradation is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of some of its components. A newer approach is progressive enhancement...
which is dual modular redundant
Dual modular redundant
A machine which is Dual Modular Redundant has duplicated elements which work in parallel to provide one form of redundancy. A typical example is a complex computer system which has duplicated nodes, so that should one node fail, another is ready to carry on its work...
. The Human-Computer Interface is provided by Multi Function Consoles and some additional terminals. The dual redundant central nodes are linked to each other and to the consoles via a dual redundant fibre optic LAN.
In the Initial Phase equipment fitted to the Vanguard class submarines most processing is done by Intel 80386
Intel 80386
The Intel 80386, also known as the i386, or just 386, was a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were used as the central processing unit of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time...
single-board computers, each with its own Ada run-time environment. CAP Scientific created a complex layer of middleware
Middleware
Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...
to link the many processors together. At its time SMCS was the largest Ada project so far seen. As a pioneering user of Ada, the SMCS project encountered many teething problems with the large-scale use of Ada compilers, Ada development tools, and the special characteristics of the early dialect of the Ada programming language, later known as Ada 83.
Second Phase: SMCS for Swiftsure and Trafalgar class
By 1991, CAP Scientific was part of Sema GroupSema Group
Sema Group plc was an Anglo-French IT services company. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but was acquired by Schlumberger in 2001.-History:...
and the SMCS project was owned by BAeSEMA
BAeSEMA
BAeSEMA was a naval technology joint venture between British Aerospace and the French Sema Group. The company was formed in 1991 and dissolved in November 1998 when BAe purchased SEMA's 50% share....
, a joint venture between Sema Group and British Aerospace
British Aerospace
British Aerospace plc was a UK aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer. Its head office was in the Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire...
. Once SMCS was proven to work on Vanguard boats, it was proposed in the early 1990s to extend its use to the Swiftsure class submarine
Swiftsure class submarine
The Swiftsure class were a class of nuclear-powered fleet submarines in service with the Royal Navy from the early 1970s until 2010....
s and the Trafalgar class submarine
Trafalgar class submarine
The Trafalgar class is a class of nuclear-powered fleet submarines in service with the Royal Navy. They are a direct follow on from the Swiftsure class and were, until the introduction of the Astute class, the Royal Navy's most advanced nuclear fleet submarines.Seven boats were built and...
s, as part of an improvement programme for these vessels. There was a commercial desire for yet further adoption of COTS technology. The consensus was to port SMCS to some form of UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
. Sema Group, with considerable experience both of real-time systems and of commercial UNIX, had concerns about the technological feasibility of this port. The essence of the problem was the need to map the Ada tasking environment to the run-time model of UNIX processes in a way which preserved SMCS' real-time characteristics enough to maintain dependability
Dependability
Dependability is a value showing the reliability of a person to others because of his/her integrity, truthfulness, and trustfulness, traits that can encourage someone to depend on him/her.The wider use of this noun is in Systems engineering....
. A team from BAeSEMA, led by Ray Foulkes, conducted thorough research into possible alternatives to the distributed Ada architecture used in the Initial phase. After extensive investigation of the run-time behaviour of different UNIX variants, and of the code generated by different Ada compilers, the project selected the Solaris operating system running on SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
computers, which could now be procured as COTS single-board computers.
To limit risk, only the consoles were converted to Solaris on SPARC in this phase. The central nodes were kept in the same form as the Initial Phase equipment. The benefit was that there was no need to implement the dual modular redundancy scheme on Solaris at this stage. However, the project had to manage some additional issues arising from mixed intel/SPARC working, such as endianism (since intel architecture is little-endian and SPARC is big-endian).
A detailed and generally accurate independent analysis of these stages in the development of SMCS was made in 1998.
Third Phase: ACMS for Astute class
After being successfully deployed on the Swiftsure and Trafalgar submarines in the mixed Intel/SPARC configuration, the architecture was further revised for the UK's new attack boats, the Astute class submarines.The Astute Combat Management System (ACMS) combines SMCS with several other sub-systems. For ACMS, the Central Nodes have also been converted to SPARC computers. The dual redundant architecture, both of central nodes and of LAN connections, remains a key feature. There are about twice as many consoles as provided in earlier versions of SMCS. This phase of SMCS is an all-UNIX solution running Solaris on multiple SPARC nodes, with built-in dual redundancy.
SMCS-NG; controversy about system architecture
By 2000, Sema Group had sold its interest in BAeSEMA, and the SMCS project was now fully owned by BAE SystemsBAE Systems
BAE Systems plc is a British multinational defence, security and aerospace company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, that has global interests, particularly in North America through its subsidiary BAE Systems Inc. BAE is among the world's largest military contractors; in 2009 it was the...
. In its last major Defence Review, as reported in 2003, the UK Parliament agreed numerous improvements for RN submarines, but no changes to the Vanguard boats or the Trident missile system. It was expected that the SMCS equipment, supplied and maintained under a support contract with Ultra Electronics
Ultra Electronics
Ultra Electronics Holdings is a British company serving the defence, security, transport and energy industries. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.-History:...
, would last out the service life of the Vanguard fleet. The programmes in place for other submarine improvements were mainly for new sonar equipment, and had been reviewed and approved by the UK's parliament.
For a brief period, the SMCS project came under the ownership of Alenia Marconi Systems
Alenia Marconi Systems
Alenia Marconi Systems was a major European integrated defence electronics company and an equal shares joint venture between BAE Systems and Finmeccanica until its dissolution on May 3, 2005....
, a joint venture of BAE Systems. In 2002, it was proposed to convert SMCS to run on standard PC x86 hardware, albeit in rugged industrialised form, for naval command systems. The SMCS project started to develop SMCS-NG ("Next Generation") as SMCS running on PC hardware. The plan was to convert the SMCS infrastructure and applications to run on the Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating system.
However, some software engineers had misgivings. In April 2002 Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
, appearing in his capacity as Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, had given sworn testimony under oath to the US Courts. Gates' testimony included statements that Microsoft Windows was indissoluble and could not be created in cut-down form. Paragraphs 207 to 223 of Gates' testimony indicated that Windows had an entangled monolithic structure, rather than a structure organised in modular fashion. Assuming Gates' testimony to be true, these 'pro-UNIX' engineers felt that open source UNIX rather than Microsoft Windows should be used as the foundation of future naval command systems and circulated their concerns within the company.
SMCS-NG as first deployment of "Windows for Warships"
Despite the concerns of some engineers, SMCS-NG was created as a port to Microsoft Windows of the SMCS infrastructure and applications, a move which some commentators have termed "Windows for Warships". The UK's Defence Ministry later gave assurances, through questions in the UK parliament, that this is a low risk use of Microsoft Windows. However, some other suppliers have taken a different path. The consoles for the new Sonar 2076Sonar 2076
Sonar 2076 is a submarine sonar detection system designed by Thales for the Royal Navy.The system comprises an integrated suite of active and passive sonar systems including bow, fin, flank and towed arrays...
supplied by Thales Underwater Systems
Thales Underwater Systems
Thales Underwater Systems , formerly known as Thomson Marconi Sonar, is an international defence manufacturer specialising in sonar systems for submarines, surface warships, and aircraft as well as communications masts and systems for submarines. TUS is a subsidiary of Thales Naval, part of the...
for the Astute class submarines, and which may be retro-fitted to other classes, are built as PCs running Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
rather than Windows.
Having developed SMCS-NG as an internal project, BAE Systems
BAE Systems
BAE Systems plc is a British multinational defence, security and aerospace company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, that has global interests, particularly in North America through its subsidiary BAE Systems Inc. BAE is among the world's largest military contractors; in 2009 it was the...
independently proposed to the MoD that the original SMCS equipment be replaced by its own, newer, version. After sea trials in HMS Torbay
HMS Torbay (S90)
HMS Torbay is a nuclear submarine of the Royal Navy and was the fourth vessel of her class.Torbay was the first vessel to be fitted with the new command system SMCS-NG , which meant that she was also the first Royal Navy vessel to put to sea under the "command" of the Microsoft Windows operating...
, the MoD awarded contracts to BAE Systems for refit of SMCS-NG into most RN submarines, including the Vanguard fleet. Although the Defence Minister Adam Ingram
Adam Ingram (Labour politician)
Adam Paterson Ingram is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow from 1987 to 2010.-Early life:...
told the UK Parliament in October 2004 that no decision had been made about conversion of the Vanguard fleet to run SMCS-NG, the MoD placed the contracts the following month.
Unlike with previous versions of SMCS, the software is supplied as a single-fit release which is intended to be configured for the sensor and weapon fit of each submarine.
External links
- The Register: Royal Navy adopts "Windows for Warships"
- The Register: UK Ministry of Defence okays "Windows for Warships"
- Linux Format magazine article about "Windows for Warships", March 2005