German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol(rheinmetall.github.io)
79 pointsby summarity2 hours ago6 comments
  • alhirzel21 minutes ago
    Reminds me a lot of the Tactical Microgrid Standard (aka TMS aka MIL-STD-3071) [1], probably just because TMS uses DDS as well. I would really like to know if there is a protocol that functions like DDS but caters to real-time guarantees and prioritizes (at a "simple protocol" level) usability on embedded systems with no dynamic memory allocation. It would also need to be just-as-functional with non-real-time systems. One problem with DDS is that it is too heavy-handed to implement well on an embedded system.

    [1] https://battery.army.mil/system-integrator-hub/tms/

  • karmicthreat11 minutes ago
    This looks like ROS2 for missiles.
  • j-pban hour ago
    First I was excited, then I saw that it's based on DDS.
    • budman1an hour ago
      why the hate on DDS?

      seems like a perfect fit.

      • j-pb23 minutes ago
        DDS is the least bad of the stuff that has come out of OMG, but it's not a nice middleware still. There is no underlying algebra of that composes nicely when compared to Zenoh for example, and the "vendor independence" and compatibility is usually a joke. There's a reason ROS is moving away from it again.
  • exabrialan hour ago
    I cannot find boomstick anywhere in here
  • 9devan hour ago
    Am I just too ignorant of Miltech, or is this that in large parts recreating Standard messaging primitives that other protocols and systems have been providing for decades already (so invented elsewhere?)
    • pixelesque19 minutes ago
      DDS sort of took over from CORBA in the military domain, and the statically-typed IDL was still quite similar to CORBA last time I looked at it, so that takes you back to around 1998 when CORBA was being used a lot in the military in my experience.

      What other protocols and systems were you thinking of that can provide (depending on broker) hard-realtime delivery that can be used in safety-critical systems?

    • essephan hour ago
      Every mil company designs unique bespoke things often with some exceptions, and even the "open systems" mostly aren't open by any stretch of the definition.

      Obscurity is part of the allure, not a repulsive factor.

      You don't want a hostile nation suddenly and easily understanding your systems.

      • smalltorch34 minutes ago
        On the other hand, its good to design systems where it wouldn't even matter if the hostile nation state knows exactly how it works.

        This is a principle in cryptography, but carries nicely to other things.

      • graemep15 minutes ago
        Hat sounds like a particularly weak form of security by obscurity
      • mc3221 minutes ago
        Also you do not want them to benefit from your smart design choices. You want them to suffer from their bad choices and not learn from your success. (Yes, of course you could have bad design choices that you don’t realize someone else has solved more intelligently.)
        • ufocia19 minutes ago
          Bad design choice is probably why they open sourced it.
  • mrhconan hour ago
    [flagged]