Microsoft Corp will today trumpet the signing of a deal with US Air Force Electronic Systems Center to begin converting US Air Force command and control Unix applications to run on Windows NT. It’s supposedly the first time the US Defense Department has signaled an intent to move C2 class military applications (nothing to do with the C2 Orange Book security specifications) from Unix to NT. It follows an April 14 Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between federal and non-government organizations to collaborate on technology transfer projects. Electronic Systems Command is the Air Force’s C2 systems development center and has a budget of more than $4bn. Decision Science Applications Inc, Intergraph Corp and Softway Systems Inc will join Microsoft on the CRDA project, which will also produce cost data to show savings that can be made moving to NT. The ESC says the idea to test the performance viability of NT in C2 environments. The use of NT in defense applications is still at the early evaluation stage and the partners aren’t expected to make any money out of the project. They’re talking about moving maybe up to half a dozen of the Air Force’s 200-off C2 programs to NT. The Air Force’s systems center supposedly has as many as 100 programmers working on each application. Microsoft will provide development tools and NT software and consulting; DSA brings control and command (C2) applications skills; Intergraph the hardware and Softway Systems the OpenNT Unix-on-NT middleware. Other US Defense agencies, including the US Navy, are evaluating the use of NT alongside Unix.
