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

DailyTech LLC ^ | February 26, 2007 | Brandon Hill

[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.

[Zeroisanumber]

Does Russia still produce MIGs with vacumn tubes in the circuitry? The idea was to keep the fighters airborne in case of EMP.

You know, I have no idea. I can sometimes identify a jet on sight, but when it comes to how they're built I'm about as helpless as poor Homer.

[RightWhale]

Sure, but there is still the International Date Line.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

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

Early versions of the F-16's software would have caused it to invert when it crossed the equator. The problem was discovered during simulations.

Considering it this was once a pretty famous "bug" - it was cited in a lot of presentations about software quality assurance - one can only conclude that a new generation of software engineers had never heard of it.

-------

The F-16 was also supposed to have been the aircraft with the almost-as-famous in the software industry "wheels up" programing error:

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/3.44.html#subj1

[Cogadh na Sith]

I do not believe this quite

It's true as written.

I work for the Air Force. I am a Software Safety Engineer (on a different program I hasten to add!).

We are now trusting SW produced by industry by 'Extreme Programming', or 'Scrum' techniques to perform safety critical functions. This is what happens.

The FAA has lots of SW design and test stipulations to prevent this on commericial planes, but the military went to a 'best industry practices', vice tight SW design/test regs under 'Acquisition Reform'.

This kinda thing happens occasionally and will get more frequent....

[Tribune7]

My bet is that it's BS.

[KarlInOhio]

what's next? The new daylight saving time zapping them?

[geopyg]

Back when Amelia Earhart was flying around the world, the island she was trying to land on (Howland Island) was on a 1/2 hour shifted clock. The Navy ship a few miles off Howland was using a clock referenced to Hawaii time and was on an hour shift. (Ship time was 1100, island time 1130 or something). I forget what clock Earhart was using, but it was an hour shifted - perhaps referenced to Papau New Gueani (sp) Time

The ship had higher freq. communications and would attempt to contact Earhart at 15 min. and 45 min. past the hour, while the island had low freq. communications and would try contacts at the hour and half hour.

Earhart had to switch between the frequencies at the proper times, plus trying to use a tracking beacon frequency..

They figure the miscommunication of the time was one of the numerous problems that led to Earhart missing Howland Island. Based on the investigation of the Earhart disappearance everything military and shipping, etc. went over to GMT.

[LasVegasMac]

now that was good!

[BurbankKarl]

uh....I dont believe this story at all.

[USNBandit]

There is some coating on the canopy of newer tactical aircraft that doesn't allow the use of hand held GPS units.

I used to use one all the time flying F-14A's because our INS was so bad.

[JRios1968]

[Cogadh na Sith]

See my post above. It's true.

[miliantnutcase]

"What's a MAC, by the way?"

It's a fad that will hopefully die out soon along with the company.

[Paleo Conservative]

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/3.44.html#subj1

[LasVegasMac]

Something to do with sat data feeds, GPS maybe?

just swinging the bat......

[SubGeniusX]

Thanks for the confirmation ...


bet you have some "nifty" little anecdotes ...

[supercat]

Although most of them aren't going to be as critical as an aircraft control system, there are probably many programs and systems that have been broken as a result of Congress' [bleep]ing decision to change around daylight saving time rules.

Although UTC is used in a lot of places to report things like timestamps, some places use local time. Because neither Windows nor any other system I know of has a time-zone structure that allows different rules to be applied in different years, the change in daylight rules will cause a retroactive change in timestamps for some files dated in late March or October, or early April or November. This may in turn wreak havoc with configuration management systems, makefiles, etc.

Did anyone in Congress even think about any such issues!?

[LasVegasMac]

I used to use one all the time flying F-14A's because our INS was so bad.

That as bad as when F-15 pilots were using radar detectors - from Radio Shack - in the cockpit.

Forget what the deal was, certain band, etc. I do know that I found a few and had to stop by OP's, "who owes me beer?" lol

[doorgunner69]

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.

Whether they returned to Hawaii for this exact problem or not, fact it they did have to return for some software glitch.

The dateline has exact latitude/longitude coordinates, which the GPS and (if the F-22 has it) inertial guidance would feed into the system. I can see this event actually happening.

[AppyPappy]

Two words: Production Testing