Posted on 03/08/2016 5:07:09 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
The much maligned F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has yet another problem with its software: the radar stops working requiring the pilot to turn it off and on again.
The Lockheed Martin plane, which has been in development since 2001 and is the most software-driven warplane ever built, has experienced several failures and setbacks that have seen its cost balloon and its delivery delayed. Each jet is now expected to cost about £100m.
From structural problems that made it vulnerable to lightning strikes – ironic given it’s called the Lightning II – to weight issues, bugs within its software and its complete lack of cyber security testing, the plane has caused concern among the UK, US and other buyers. And now a glitch with the radar, which appeared late last year, could potentially hinder its performance against less developed fighter jets.
US air force major general Harrigian told analyst firm IHS Jane’s: “What would happen is they’d get a signal that says either a radar degrade or a radar fail – something that would force us to restart the radar.
“Lockheed Martin discovered the root cause, and now they’re in the process of making sure they take that solution and run it through the [software testing] lab.”
The bug fixes for the planes are expected to be delivered to the USAF by the end of March. But others, including Keith Joiner, who is responsible for evaluating the plane’s performance for the Australian defence force, are looking to stop or delay further orders.
Joiner told Radio National Background Briefing: “Some systems like the radar control are fundamentally worse than the earlier version, which is not a good sign.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Win10
They overtaxed the radar’s basic functional timeline, probably because of exhaustive recognition and processing schemes they thought were fast enough but aren’t. This is poor overall system engineering.
Government contractors AKA big campaign fund donors reaping their harvest.
this thing is developing into a very expensive piece of junk
I appreciate All of your very informative miltary aircraft posts.
It may be just me, but I wonder why the hell the Pentagon paid defense contractor would permit any of a plane’s vulnerabilities and faults to be leaked?
Transparency is a good thing unless it enables your opponents to gain combat advantage.
Sure, it's a big, complex program with lots of features. But with modern software engineering principles and tools it really isn't that hard. (don't tell my management I said that ;-) I read the -35 has something around 24 million lines of code now. Ok, fine. I've worked on systems that had 40+ million lines of code (more than 15 years ago) without the improvements in tools and techniques. We had one customer for that big system that rebooted once a quarter - as a matter of company policy, not due to any need to.
My point is, being big and complicated is no excuse. The tools, techniques, and processes to manage that complexity are out there and are well known. The software problems they are having aren't software problems - they are project management failures.
It turned out that they wired the prototype directly into the power bus, rather than through a circuit breaker, so every time the prototype needed to be rebooted, the pilot had to throw the main circuit breaker, which shut down everything (including the engines).
The first time they did it I nearly soiled myself, but by the end of the flight, having all the instruments and the engines suddenly die was no big deal.
Nothing on a commercial flight ever bothered me again.
The IT Crowd. That show is hilarious.
This is not a vulnerability ...
This is normal developmental testing. Fly, fix, fly ...
They must have had the same engineer that worked on the 98 Ford Contour. It had a solenoid to jack up the idle speed when the air conditioner kicked in. It was driven directly by the car’s computer. Its failure mode was a short. Fortunately the computer’s fuse protected the computer, but the car would not go anywhere. Except for that, it was a good car. Five speed stick shift - got nearly 40 mpg at freeway speeds.
Try telling the enemy you have to reboot.
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