British Royal Navy installs XP on submarines

xp

Citing affordability and ease-of-maintenance thanks to off-the-shelf parts, he British Royal Navy is rolling out a customized version of Windows XP on its nuclear submarine fleet. The move will save UK taxpayers up to $32 million over ten years and has cut installation time down to about two and a half weeks per submarine.

Training time is expected to be much shorter, too, given the prevalence of Windows outside of the Navy. Hacking is a concern, although BAE Systems — the company that designed the setup — claims that things have been modified enough to prevent unauthorized access.

[via CNET]