The computers fail, and they call it "ALT+CNTRL+DEL".
Also, awhile back an F-22 pilot was trapped in the cockpit on a hot summer day. The canopy would not open and they had to literally cut him out of this $339 Million Dollar aircraft.
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.
Tacoma-Narrows Bridge wasn't in CA.
Simply...
Wow.
Zulu time (and date) is the same on one side of the IDL as on the other. But if there is a feature to translate Zulu to local time, then you could have a problem.
Oh, yeah I know the GPS will know about the dateline, I just have a hard time believing that it would cause a system crash. It's not all that different than crossing a time zone, only in magnitude, and they would have done that several times already.
For that matter, there'd be no particular purpose in adjusting the time zone each time a boundary is crossed. The only relevant zones are the one you started in and the one you end up in. For the actual time tick, Zulu time is all that matters and it doesn't change. The only thing that changes is the zone, and that's normally only for display purposes.
I'm just not buyin' it yet.
Like someone else above - its is stunning that there isn't at least a rudimentary set of analog backups on the F-22. But then, your have to assume they would be useful by the new breed of pilots - I wonder if they have the training to fly anything but a computer controlled, glass cockpit rocket!!
Look'ie there Flash, that dial is round
"Don't the varsity of the story, but it's certainly been told a number of times."
Did you mean, "Doubt the veracity...?"
It's been said a lot of older pilots had a deep mistrust for the new "fly-by-wire" systems of the F-16 and -18. You have to wonder what other "gotchas" might lurk in the code.
At least they still had flight control...........
They are scum.
Yeah but some software test manager somewhere was relieved that the verification schedule was met.
Nope. :-)
Daily Tech LLC got the story from CNN, which broadcast it on Saturday (according to the transcript). That's not a great recommendation (IMO) but make of it what you can.
"The more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
Commander Montgomery "Scotty" Scott
USS Enterprise - "The Search for Spock"
I'm not a pilot, but I have breakfast at a joint about twice a week with a founder of the Top Gun school at Miramar...a former F-4 naval aviator in Nam.
I'm confident he'll turn pale when I tell him this story.
My deep distrust of running computers without backup comes from starting in the computer business in 1962 with IBM and, after 11 years there, competing with them in the computer business for another 18.
I also have coffee with a 80 year old former NW pilot...he might have a heart attack if I tell him!!!
Computers don't quite work that way. If you're not careful, an error in even an unimportant part of the program can crash the whole system.
I would LOVE for you to follow up with his reaction and insight after your next breakfast ....
would that be possible?
Kinda like dry water..... heard about it. Never seen it. (mepis linux and loving it)
The computers fail, and they call it "ALT+CNTRL+DEL".
Also, awhile back an F-22 pilot was trapped in the cockpit on a hot summer day. The canopy would not open and they had to literally cut him out of this $339 Million Dollar aircraft.
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