Why F-22s Cannot Fly Into Tomorrow

The Strategy Page ^ | March 14, 2007 | James Dunnigan

[IonImplantGuru]

Recently, American F-22 fighters were sent, for the first time, across the Pacific, to Japan, for a training exercise. This would be the first time the aircraft would cross the International Date line, where it is tomorrow, and the aircraft's GPS and navigation software would handle the date change.

There were problems.

All off a sudden the software that ran the navigation and communications systems wasn't working too well. Being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, this was a problem. Some of the pilots were able to reboot their software and make the problem go away, but this did not always work, so all the aircraft turned around and returned to Hawaii. Those aircraft that still had malfunctioning navigation software, followed other aircraft back.

The contractor quickly found and fixed the problem (the routines for crossing the International Date Line, and changing the date, were not well thought out and tested.)

To quote Murphy's Law; "Whatever can go wrong, will, and at the worst possible time."

[sbMKE]

Reboots? Time change problems? Windows machines?

[Arthalion]

I'm fairly certain that the first thing China or Russia would do in a war is take out the GPS system.

Incredibly easy to do too. There are only 24 sats on 6 planes, in non-synchronous orbit. Given enough time, all 24 satellites eventually pass over their country. China has recently demonstrated its ability to take down satellites, and the Sovi..err...Russians developed that capability decades ago. Heck, we even publish the orbital information for each of them. Go to heavens-above.com, type in GPS-9, and the website will tell you EXACTLY when it will be "in firing range", and give its orbital data.

[mcshot]

or to try to converse with a customer service rep in India.

[A.A. Cunningham]

No Raptor has yet to be a kill in ANY exercise against America's best - even with lopsided ROEs.

Never, ever drink Air Force kool-aid.

[ThomasThomas]

And I thought it would be the lack of a flux capacitor. Do I need to worry about this if I take my GPS in my car across the IDL? For those with blue water boats is this problem for them?

[silentreignofheroes]

I know what you're saying...Crazy,ain't it..

[Blueflag]

But did it register a kill in the exercise? Or is that just a convenient frame grab from a training video?

It ain't Kool Aid when it's a Red Flag. They fly/fight to win those ACM exercises.

[SquirrelKing]

LOL

Tech Support: "Please for to be rebooting your computer, sir."

[Jonathan]

The US Military cannot get rats out of Walter Reed Hospital.

A backup plan???? For Chinese takedown of our GPS?

It will be called SURRENDER.

We are unilaterally disarming and shipping our military/industial complex to China.

You had better learn Mandarin!

[Blueflag]

HEre ya go ...


http://www.langley.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123041765

http://www.afa.org/magazine/feb2007/0207raptor.html

http://www.f22-raptor.com/media/documents/aviation_week_010807.pdf




The 'kills' the Opfors got were not F-22s. Ya hafta read down deep, but there are no published kills of an F-22 I have EVER seen/read. Only ambitious hangar flying .. about 'the one I got but they wouldn't score it.' ;-)

[CharlesWayneCT]

I was so embarrased about this. I wondered if it was a -180 to +180 problem, not an "international date line" problem.

[Doe Eyes]

I swear to God, who the hell released this type of information?????

The first sentence in the linked article,

"The U.S. Air Force on Tuesday said it is fixing technological glitches in roughly 87 F-22 fighters after several aircraft computer systems were disabled earlier this month during a test flight."

[narby]

Reboots? Time change problems? Windows machines?

Likely crossing from -180 longitude to +180 did the trick.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I still don't believe that it was the international date line, I think it was crossing the -180/+180 degree line.

It's easy to get a calculation bigger than 360 degrees if you don't think about it.

I could be wrong. But the "international date line" isn't a straight line, and absolute time in UTC doesn't change as you fly across date lines.

[A.A. Cunningham]

See that black box in the upper left hand corner? That F-22 is dead.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Claimimg that there are no F-22 kills reminds me of the "F-117 is invisible to RADAR" BS we used to hear back in the 80s. We laughed back then, too.

[wku man]

Work arounds and turning them off help much when they've been blown to bits by ground-based Chicom anti-sat weapons.

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

[aviator]

At 200 V sub C and 179 Kts at 1000 ft range, what's your next plan if you miss?

Is the reticle a hard sight or a CCIP?

If it's a tracking shot, it looks like a miss to me. A snapshot?

[sionnsar]

I see this all the time at NASA. But, it's diversity and process that count now, not how well things work. As long as the software engineer has a bad accent and is not a white male all is good.

My sympathies. I was working there (decades ago) when one of our group's researchers remarked gloomily that NASA had passed a milestone: it had reached the point of having at least one bureaucrat for every scientist.

[GSlob]

GPS will be; china will not.