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They have two armed guards on duty, 24/7, in the missile command centre on the submarine!?

Jesus. That's .. serious.

I come from a Navy family so I love this kind of thing. The pictures of the sub looming out of the fog were particularly cool. But I was surprised by how low-tech a lot of the onboard controls seemed. Or maybe that's just what they want us to think ...




Low-tech? Maybe. One, it takes a long time to design and commission a new modern naval vessel, aircraft, or even a tank. A decade or more. So most on-board electronics, including CPUs and displays will be outdated at any given time — somewhat outdated to possibly very old. (Side note: I've always been amazed at how quickly new ship and plane designs came out in war-time in the 1940s, but they were much simpler then and evolving much more rapidly. Can't really compare a P-51 Mustang to an F-22.)

Two, I don't really want the Navy finding bugs in the latest hardware. Better run an older, well-tested CPU than find a reactor control system crashing because of a f00f bug. :)




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