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.
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.)