Posted on 02/26/2007 2:47:19 PM PST by SubGeniusX
Six Lockheed F-22 Raptors have Y2K-esque glitch of their own over the Pacific
Lockheed’s F-22 Raptor is the most advanced fighter in the world with its stealth capabilities, advanced radar, state of the art weapons systems and ultra-efficient turbofans which allow the F-22 to "supercruise" at supersonic speeds without an afterburner. The Raptor has gone up against the best that the US Air Force and Navy has to offer taking out F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18 Super Hornets during simulated war games in Alaska. The Raptor-led "Blue Air" team was able to rack up an impressive 241-to-2 kill ratio during the exercise against the "Red Air" threat -- the two kills on the blue team were from the 30-year old F-15 teammates and not the new Raptors.
But while the simulated war games were a somewhat easy feat for the Raptor, something more mundane was able to cripple six aircraft on a 12 to 15 hours flight from Hawaii to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. The U.S. Air Force's mighty Raptor was felled by the International Date Line (IDL).
When the group of Raptors crossed over the IDL, multiple computer systems crashed on the planes. Everything from fuel subsystems, to navigation and partial communications were completely taken offline. Numerous attempts were made to "reboot" the systems to no avail.
Luckily for the Raptors, there were no weather issues that day so visibility was not a problem. Also, the Raptors had their refueling tankers as guide dogs to "carry" them back to safety. "They needed help. Had they gotten separated from their tankers or had the weather been bad, they had no attitude reference. They had no communications or navigation," said Retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd. "They would have turned around and probably could have found the Hawaiian Islands. But if the weather had been bad on approach, there could have been real trouble.”
"The tankers brought them back to Hawaii. This could have been real serious. It certainly could have been real serious if the weather had been bad," Shepperd continued. "It turned out OK. It was fixed in 48 hours. It was a computer glitch in the millions of lines of code, somebody made an error in a couple lines of the code and everything goes."
Luckily for the pilots behind the controls of the Raptors, they were not involved in a combat situation. Had they been, it could have been a disastrous folly by the U.S. Air Force to have to admit that their aircraft which cost $125+ million USD apiece were knocked out of the sky due to a few lines of computer code. "And luckily this time we found out about it before combat. We got it fixed with tiger teams in about 48 hours and the airplanes were flying again, completed their deployment. But this could have been real serious in combat," said Shepperd.
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)
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!
"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
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....
You've been robbed.
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.
That's my guess as well.
So that's where the Y2K bug went.
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
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.
I wonder if they installed the new DST patches yet.
"When the group of Raptors crossed over the IDL, multiple computer systems crashed on the planes."
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.
Commerical airliners have never crossed the international time line? I don't buy this. Unless it is April first
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.
ping
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."
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