Asklemmy

what OS do they use in the military?

It depended on the function, but most computers were Windows. Historically, Windows has had the most versatility with other common file systems that we and our allies/enemies used, plus it was easy enough for any service member to pick up and use with minimal training.

However, we always had custom-configured Windows images; we didn't just install a blank copy. Like I mentioned, our systems were severely locked down, so there were plenty of registry configurations and custom software suites that would take us a few days per computer to install manually. So we would build one that met our requirements, then create an image of it and copy that to every other computer in our unit.

Depending on the unit, there might be custom software builds to meet a particular mission requirement, so there were always several images ready to be pushed to specific computers.

they believed that the best security was older systems that had been thoroughly tested for vulnerabilities

Oh no 😅 I am not a cyber security expert but that seems to me like a recipe for a disaster

It worked well enough for a while, but computer technology kept evolving, so we were constantly playing catch-up.

For the first half of my career, we were always at least one OS behind the civilian sector. When I joined in 2002, we were just phasing out Windows 95/98 and replacing it with Windows 2000.

Then in 2008, we were on Windows XP and Microsoft was trying to get us to upgrade to Windows Vista. Vista was a terrible OS, so we decided to just skip it and go for the new Windows 7 that was supposed to be coming out a year later.

Then Microsoft announced an end to support for Windows XP in a few months. We can't have an OS without any support, so we quickly signed a contract to upgrade to Windows Vista. Before the ink dried on the new contract, Microsoft announced that they would be extending support on XP for 4 more years.

So we got suckered into a Vista contract, and as soon as Windows 7 dropped, we switched to that. We stayed mostly caught up ever since, although it could take up to a year before we switched to the latest OS. Our own cyber security teams did their own vulnerability assessments before pushing out a new OS across the Air Force, and that could easily take them months of testing and research.

In the last few years before I retired, the Air Force started testing the concept of handing computer support functions over to civilian companies. This was something they had been talking about long before I joined the military, but they were finally pushing forward with it. My last base was one of the test beds in the US, and AT&T took on the contract at that particular site.

Our base-wide IT unit had to hand over administrative access to our unclassified network to them, and as the civilian company took charge of more functions (and had security clearance investigations completed), we started handing over classified networks too. Which seemed wrong to me; we had always kept our classified networks secure by managing them ourselves, so handing it over to a civilian company felt like trouble.

It was even worse when Trump became president the first time and started discussing classified operations on Twitter. Dude had no concept of security protocols and messed up a lot of missions we had overseas, putting our members' lives at risk so he could brag about secrets he knew.

He ordered us to give security clearances to a bunch of civilians whom we had already refused in the past for being a threat to national security. But you don't say no to the president, so we started handing over classified access and before long, a bunch of our foreign operations started getting compromised. It was an absolute clusterfuck.

Things mostly went back to normal under Biden and I soon retired. I can't imagine how messed up my old career field must be now, since Trump got back in office. All I can say is I'm glad it's not my problem anymore.