Lockheed's F-22 Raptor Gets Zapped by International Date Line

DailyTech LLC ^ | February 26, 2007 | Brandon Hill

[narby]

somebody let an IT monkey

I'm betting it's the switch from -180 to +180 Longitude. I've written several moving map programs, and mine don't handle the situation either. They're for land use, so it's overhead I don't need.

(said some stupid stuff above, like reversing longitude with latitude and 190 degrees instead of 180 - yeah, I do this for a living - sheesh)

[Thumper1960]

I thought it was the Metrosexual Algorithmic Calculator.

[StockAyatollah]

You said yours were for land use. (I hope neither you nor your company are selling any of these map programs as a reusable component.) Anyway, the F-22 avionics systems would (should) have had a requirement for crossing the IDL as well as functioning at all Lat/Longs and altitudes. If the testing phase was allocated enough resources, which almost never happens, this might have been avoided. Although now I see other replies which doubt this really ever happened. Maybe this story is just another "tech journalist" getting the details wrong, which almost always happens!

[RFEngineer]

"There is a story about the F16 flipping to inverted flight after crossing the date line from years back."

It's usually the equator, caused by a sign error. I've personally seen it before (caught in testing though!), but not on the F-16

[phantomworker]

You're right.

[Cogadh na Sith]

See this link for the Air Force story

The Air Force briefing by Air Force officers on an Air Force base about this incident did say the glitch occured due to crossing the International Date Line.

It's not that surprising. You'd be amazed how often this kind of thing happens on new systems....

[Professional Engineer]

I haven't seen any of those blue screens since 1998.

You've been robbed.

[Cogadh na Sith]

Sure, maybe there's a ~clock~ display that can have a local zone adjustment, but beyond that there's no purpose to it.

It might not have anything to do with the date, it could be a glitch in the navigation system that has trouble handling the '180 deg' meridian....

Or, it could be that the system requires a hard start every 24 hrs and when the date rolled over, it checked its log, restarted and came up in a limited mode....

It's not hard to imagine at all how this could happen. I take it you don't work with complex SW systems.

[Cogadh na Sith]

I'm betting it's the switch from -180 to +180 Longitude. I've written several moving map programs, and mine don't handle the situation either. They're for land use, so it's overhead I don't need.

That's my guess as well.

[hattend]

So that's where the Y2K bug went.

[phantomworker]

Not sure I buy it either. Only this obscure newspaper got this unusual story? Won't believe it until I see it on TV. (LOL)

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20070223-033200-7513r

[GATOR NAVY]

I'm not seeing it either. I can't speak for comms or other systems, but for navigation, every GPS system I've seen gets its date/time stamps from the satellites, in GMT. The Date Line doesn't mean squat when you're using GMT.

[bmwcyle]

I wonder if they installed the new DST patches yet.

[Garvin]

"When the group of Raptors crossed over the IDL, multiple computer systems crashed on the planes."

[weaponeer]

Uh... this sounds like an urban legend to me. The dateline appears on maps, not in the air.

I can't see how it would have any effect whatsoever.

Upon crossing the IDL your GPS is going to give you a big jump in time and the longitudes may change signs. I can see a glitch in there.

[nepppen]

Commerical airliners have never crossed the international time line? I don't buy this. Unless it is April first

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

I could see that happening.

The computer nav. systems track Global locating Satellites as well as ground based Military Loran systems. There could easily have been a program glitch when the nav systems told the computers that the day had suddenly began all over again.

They obviously couldn't handle the fact that all the 24 hour data already stored for the day had to find room for a 48 hour day.

Or something like that.

[Mr.Unique]

One of the first things the Air Force test pilots tried on an early F-16 was to tell the computer to raise the landing gear while standing still on the runway. Guess what happened? Scratch one F-16. (my friend says there is a new subroutine in the code called 'wait_on_wheels' now...) [weight?]

Weight on wheels (WOW). I worked for GD back in 86-90. I've never heard such a thing. WOW is an interlock for the gear on all aircraft.

[Former Proud Canadian]

ping

[Vince Ferrer]

I probably speak for a lot of the computer programmers reading this thread when I say I read this article thinkng, "Thank God it wasn't my code."