German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

summarity 175 points 54 comments September 15, 2026
rheinmetall.github.io · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (14 comments)

j-pb

First I was excited, then I saw that it's based on DDS.

exabrial

I cannot find boomstick anywhere in here

9dev

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?)

alhirzel

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/

karmicthreat

This looks like ROS2 for missiles.

throw1234567891

Nah, they haven't open sourced anything: https://github.com/rheinmetall . They just published the documentation. Really weird, what's the point?

jjmarr

Open the C++ example up and the first thing I see: ```cpp std::cout << "Received ReportCoordinateFrameSettings" << std::endl; ``` Generally, I've heard `std::endl` instead of \n has bad performance because it forces the statement to print immediately. And because cout is guaranteed to flush anyways when the program ends, you're adding a delay for no reason. I wonder if there's something I'm not seeing that led to them adopting this rule. e.g. "abnormal program termination" caused by the weapon blowing itself up circumventing a buffer flush?

Stitch4223

“Hi Codex, please find attached website about the specification of my Battlesuit and use the documented API to create a plugin for Home Assistant that shows groups of sensor data. You are only allowed to use commands that retrieve data, you are not allowed to perform actions on the suit. Treat the suit like its API is not robust and in worse shape than a cheap toy: perform read calls slowly and sequentially with at least one minute in between. If possible please group data in meaningful categories, just like the tank and radar dome. My Home Assistant is the default on the local network, credentials are in credentials.txt. Please send me a text when you’re done. Kthnxbye”

lowbloodsugar

“Fire your goddamned missiles!.json” “Think russian ^H^H^H xml”

adinb

Are they trying to recreate DIS (IEEE1278) and HLA (IEEE1516) — like they‘re replicating the FOM architecture from distributed simulations for their weapons to integrate.

firesteelrain

So like Open Mission Systems (OMS)? https://www.vdl.afrl.af.mil/programs/oam/OMS_Marketing.pdf

jauntywundrkind

Corba never died!!! OMG!!

z3ratul163071

of course the germans would use a fucking open management group academic mastrubation, bureucratic shitshow like dds.

matnosner

They could Just have used ROS...

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