The Royal Navy has upgraded the command system of its fleet of Vanguard ballistic missile submarines to operate under Windows.

If they weren't armed with 16 Trident II missile carrying up to 8 MIRVs each we would find the affair quite amusing. The prospect of thermonuclear annihilation is everything but amusing. Hopefully, Gordon Brown doesn't run on Windows, and Gene Hackman won't be put behind the helm of a British SSBN.

The Navy is also upgrading its Type 45 destroyers and Astute class attack subs to the new system. This is equally worrying, as a number of failsafes are used on strategic units, but commanders of tactical units such as destroyers exercise much more discretion when deploying their weapons, due to the fact that they don't carry nukes and can't exterminate a continent.

It's quite possible the Argentinian Navy will ask for a rematch and try to avenge the General Belgrano, preferably using something with a Linux-based fire control system.

More here.