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.
±190°????
LOL! Like its never happened to us...
That's the way it always seems with the benefit of hindsight. As was already mentioned, if they cut the testing requirements...
LOL!
Done - probably by Friday.
I stand corrected Schwaeky. Thanks.
If the onboard software uses GPS to calculate local time, that could have a ripple effect. It does seem odd, though, that the subsystem displaying local time -- which is a luxury, not a necessity, as Zulu time works fine -- would be tied to the other code intimately enough to bring critical systems down.
So is the change in start and end dates for DST going to ground the entire fleet?
Seriesly, congress meddling around in things like this are going to be HUGELY expensive...
We've got nearly 200 Windows servers (and one Novell server - that one's going to be trivial to fix) and some 2500 workstations. The servers will be easy, as will about 200 of the workstations. Being in an AD domain, using group policies will take care of it. But the rest of the workstations are at remote sites, and for security reasons are NOT members of the domains... So someone's going to have to run a regedit batch file or TZEDIT.EXE on every one of them! That works out to a whole lot of "No Fun!"
Mark
Question: If the enemy was able to knock out all operating satellites in the area of operations how well would the F22 hold up?
Certainly a lot easier than being in a BC domain. Just try making that switchover with only stone or bronze tools!
If we were fighting an enemy who could knock out all the satellites serving the area. we'd be in pretty deep trouble on a lot of levels. But with, or maybe even without, nearby carrier or AWACS control and coordination, the F-22 can still outfly anything else in the air by a wide margin.
October before last, I went to the Air and Space Museum's new annex at Dulles for the first time. While there, I picked a copy of the museum's magazine. One of the articles was about the first F-22 squadron, which was thrilled that there would soon be a second F-22 squadron it could hold exercises with -- picking off other planes was beginning to bore them.
Get a new job. I worked with that company (those companies) for years and they were always first class.
"'Yep, complete regression testing is an impossibility with systems of any complexity."
Thats not what I said. I said that complex systems frequently have bugs that find their way thru the process.
But I suppose all your code is perfect as written.
"They must have some Microsoft software on the Raptor"
Probably, if it were mac it would only look pretty and throw snide comments about.
Would make it "fun" to have a combat air patrol/dogfight over the Baring (-1, sp) Strait.
In a real war the MSM would still score this a defeat.
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