CNN: F-22 Raptor - All Computer Systems "Dumped" at International Date Line

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0702/24/tww.01.html

...

ROBERTS: Twenty five years from development to deployment, the F-22 Raptor is the most advanced fighting machine in the air. But it was no match for a computer glitch that left six of them high above the Pacific Ocean, deaf, dumb and blind as they headed to their first deployment. So what happened? We turn to a man who's at home in the cockpit, Retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd. Don, let me set the scene. These F-22s, eight of them, were headed from Hickam (ph) Air Force base in Hawaii to an (INAUDIBLE) Air Force base in Japan. They were approaching the international date line, pick it up from there.

SHEPPERD: You got it right Don. You want everything to go right with your frontline fighter, $125, $135 million to copy. The F-22 Raptor is our frontline fighter, air defense, air superiority. It also can drop bombs. It is stealthy. It's fast and you want it all to go right on your first deployment to the Pacific and it didn't. At the international date line, whoops, all systems dumped and when I say all systems, I mean all systems, their navigation, part of their communications, their fuel systems. They were -- they could have been in real trouble. They were with their tankers. The tankers - they tried to reset their systems, couldn't get them reset. 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. 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.

ROBERTS: This is almost like the feared Y2K problem that happened to these aircraft. We should point out that computers control almost every aspect of this aircraft, from their weapons systems, to the flight controls and the computers absolutely went haywire, became useless.

SHEPPERD: Absolutely. When you think of airplanes from the old days, with cables and that type of thing and direct connections between the sticks and the yolks and the controls, not that way anymore. Everything is by computer. When your computers go, your airplanes go. You have multiple systems. When they all dump at the same time, you can be in real trouble. Luckily this turned out OK.

...

[TomInTib]

1. Reboot...

at Mach 1.2...

[Gman]

6. Control-Alt-Delete

doesn't work very well at Mach 1.2...

[nebenaube]

2. hmm... something like this?

try {

doSomething();
}

catch(...){
//TODO:
}

[merwin]

3. More like

try {
ChangeTimeZone(Today, -1);
} catch {
Application.Exit();
}

[OKIsItJustMe]

21. Interesting, but I don't think so...

My guess is that real time clock worked just great, and there were a whole bunch of routines that were supposed to activate on small intervals of time.

repeat
    wait (tiny_interval)
until ((time_now - time_then) ≥ interval) OR
      (((time_now - one_hour) - time_then) ≥ interval)

Cross the international date line, and everything waits for a day before doing anything more.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. whar the heck are they running?

VISTA?

My lord, this is actually funny to a point

Boss... comptuer went down.

Kick it!

Yet it happened for real

[Pavulon]

14. That was sop in the f4

kicking the computer seemed to "fix" it. Can't remember who told me that, but I remember it was an ex f4 pilot.

[kestrel91316]

22. My dad flew F-4s (back seat)...........I don't recall him mentioning anything like this

but then I was a kid.

He test flew them after them got shipped back from Nam in pieces and rebuilt, so we could resell them to the Germans.

[FarCenter]

15. Each new design is developed from scratch

One of the reasons that military stuff costs $135 M / copy is that it is re-developed from scratch and hand built again and again. Probably the F22 has new avionics computers, with new instruction sets, new operating system, new compiler/assemblers, and new everything above it.

So instead of reusing a proven time algorithm, someone develops the code once again from a set of requirements, also undoubtedly written from scratch a decade or two ago, and which might not have mentioned the International Date Line unless someone happened to think of it in one of the interminable requirements-gathering committee meetings.

But it keeps the military-industrial complex employed.

[OKIsItJustMe]

19. "Kick it!" or "Boot it!"

The computers in these beasts are built to take the high G's of aerial dogfights. I don't think a pilot's going to impart all that many G's by kicking them.

[The Stranger]

20. Careful, one time someone mentioned linux or o/s or something, and the computer people flame warred.

The thread exploded, worse than anything I had ever seen before. I didn't even know what they were talking about, but I still jumped in here and there, with some program numbers or something (I had no idea).

Just so as not to be left out.

[SayWhatYo]

29. I eat linux users for breakfast...

Window users too.

GO BSD!!!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. this is not the first time this has happened

either the carrier version of the F-14 or the FA-18 had a glitch where the plane on autopilot would flip over when they crossed the equator. They kept that one pretty quiet.

On the civilian side of things, there was a buick model that would surge the engine at low temps and low pressures. Like mountain driving in the winter.

[jody]

7. The F-16 had a software glitch causing the aircraft to go inverted as it crossed the equator.

I believe it was caught during a session on the F-16 simulator but it could have spoiled a pilot's day if it happened during a real mission.

No source, just a factoid remembered from "Communications of the ACM" (Association for Computing Machinery).

[DemoTex]

8. Sounds like the old Doppler radar navigation system's End-of-the-World problem.

We had to compensate for the End-of-the-World (EOW) problem on missions to the west of Viet Nam (Cambodia & Laos at 106E and beyond). Fortunately, it only involved navigation and a precise position could be derived using a mathematical formula. For the life of me, I cannot remember why the EOW was at 106-degrees E! Our aircraft with the Litton inertial navigation systems (INS) were fine.

[MaineDem]

9. Love that plane!

Off topic, I know, but have you ever read "Coffee on the Wingbeam"? It was written by a P2V driver from Washington state. I bet you shared many of the same stories.

My husband was an ECM guy.

[DemoTex]

11. I'll have to find that book.

You actually had to slide across the slick metal surface of the wing beam to get from the forward cabin (mission area) to the aft cabin (galley, head, and "lounge" chairs).

[ohio2007]

12. The Neptune, a morphing precursor to the S-3 Viking

AT least in the carrier based ASW role. Now the Vikings are being shelved.Rather short life imo. I guess the cost didn't justify the deck space they took up.

Alas, I fear they have gone the way of the F-14 Tomcat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1QWtUxdIrY&mode=related&search=

[DemoTex]

17. The Lockheed P-3 Orion is the ASW workhorse (land-based).

Around since 1959, the P-3 variants are derivatives of the Lockheed L-188 Electra.

[ohio2007]

10. Few jets perform flawless every time out of the box and crossing the

international dateline I'll bet is more of a coincidence.
but it makes for interesting reading.
Airbus had major software flaws in their fly by wire A-300 series. MAJOR flaws.

[BlueCollar]

13. fly by wire...

call me old fashioned...but cables and boost packages make the most sense

[alfredo]

16. I wonder how well the electronics are shielded from counter-

measures and from the dreaded EMP from a nuke blast? How do they test for EMP?

Still, without fly by wire, the F-117 would never fly. Stability and high performance don't always mix.

[SKKY]

18. Fuckin' Vista!

[Hand]

23. OUTSTANDING! nt

:rofl: :yourock:

[LibertyorDeath]

24. induced data failure...maybe....

A STRATEGIC THREAT

During the US China Economic and Security Review Commission Hearing held in Washington D.C. last year, John Tkacik, Jr., a Senior Research Fellow in Asian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, pointed to Defense Science Board report on "High Performance Microchip Supply" issued 13 months before, which called "the strategic threat to the United States" in semiconductors "significant" in two ways:

1) The globalization of the microchip supply chain is draining production capacity from the United States and in a crisis it would be difficult to ramp up domestic output.

2) There is a real threat that microchip supplies from overseas-particularly from China-would be untrustworthy; that "opportunities for adversaries to clandestinely manipulate technology used in U.S. critical microelectronics applications are enormous and increasing."


Testifying on March 17, 2006 Tkacik went on to remark, "Not only is the Pentagon finding fewer and fewer sources for application specific integrated circuit microchips for highly classified defense applications (such as signals processing, encryption, guidance systems, etc.), but the U.S. military already relies heavily on China for the bulk of the nervous system of our network-centric warfare doctrine."

Pointing to a "global supply-chain" delivering Chinese chips everywhere, Tkacik asked, "How can saying that the United States simply won't buy Chinese-made chips for its military be sufficient? "

As microcircuitry architecture continues to shrink, becoming "orders of magnitude denser," this expert warned, "it becomes ever easier to hide lines that serve as Trojan Horse circuit designs, radio-frequency receivers and other 'backdoors' to circumvent encryption, muddle signals, induce data failure"- leaving supposedly "hardened" circuits vulnerable to EMP.

"Are Chinese semiconductor firms capable of such chicanery?" Tkacik asked the U.S. government panel. "There are already several hundred semiconductor design labs in China-sponsored and paid-for by foreign firms including America's top microchip corporations."

[B3Nut]

26. Gotta love Republican outsourcing

It's biting their favorite pet military-industrial complex in the ass finally!

Nincompoops.

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[semillama]

25. What ariplanes from the old days are they talking about?

"When you think of airplanes from the old days, with cables and that type of thing and direct connections between the sticks and the yolks and the controls"

I assume they mean The Flintstones.

[northzax]

28. these, I think

[AngryAmish]

27. you said dumped

he...heh-heh...heh