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Software Bug Halts F-22 Flight
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Feb 25, 2007 07:35 PM
from the dare-you-to-cross-this-line dept.
from the dare-you-to-cross-this-line dept.
mgh02114 writes "The new US stealth fighter, the F-22 Raptor, was deployed for the first time to Asia earlier this month. On Feb. 11, twelve Raptors flying from Hawaii to Japan were forced to turn back when a software glitch crashed all of the F-22s' on-board computers as they crossed the international date line. The delay in arrival in Japan was previously reported, with rumors of problems with the software. CNN television, however, this morning reported that every fighter completely lost all navigation and communications when they crossed the international date line. They reportedly had to turn around and follow their tankers by visual contact back to Hawaii. According to the CNN story, if they had not been with their tankers, or the weather had been bad, this would have been serious. CNN has not put up anything on their website yet." The Peoples Daily of China reported on Feb. 17 that two Raptors had landed on Okinawa.
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Technology: F-22 Raptor Cancelled 829 comments
BayaWeaver writes "Slate reports that the F-22 Raptor has been cancelled by the Senate. At an estimated price tag of $339 million per aircraft, even the powerful military-industrial-congressional complex couldn't keep this Cold War program alive in these hard times. They look very cool though and have appeared in movies like Hulk and Transformers. But not to worry too much about the future of the military-industrial-congressional complex: the F-35 Lightning II begins production next year!
As a side note, in 2007 a squadron of Raptors became deaf, dumb and blind when they flew over the International Date Line."
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Real redundancy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Real redundancy (Score:5, Interesting)
NASA do not fly the space shuttle during 31 Dec -> 1 Jan [newscientist.com] as
they are not confident of what would happen. Better just
to avoid the problem.
That was one of the pressures to getting the Dec 2k6 flight off the ground.
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Re:Real redundancy (Score:5, Funny)
But they fly over the international date-line every 90 minutes or so with no problems
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Re:Real redundancy (Score:5, Informative)
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crash narrowly averted (Score:5, Funny)
I've heard of a software glitch causing a crash before, but this is ridiculous.
Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)
Source code... (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of the Bismarck (Score:5, Interesting)
Gotta know your limitations... (Score:5, Informative)
Some exaggeration in the story, I suspect (Score:5, Informative)
Design? Lack of foresight? (Score:5, Insightful)
Design problem? Why should navigation software require "local time"? They knew they were crossing the international dateline, so they must be linked to GPS timing systems... why not just use GPS' universal time? (Sure, you want local time eventually for your displays but that's a "view" calculation, not one intrinsic to the navigation software)
Bug tracking problem? Did the testers not think of testing about a time zone change? Did they assume the above that everything would be on a universal time and therefore didn't see the need for crossing time zones?
Why wasn't this a stock reusable code module in Lockheed Martin's labs?!?
(And for a media look at this issue, check out the anime Geneshaft or the movie The Pentagon Wars)
Were they running Windows? (Score:5, Funny)
Ironically (Score:5, Funny)
I got to thinking if we had any decent alternatives (at least in C++). And yes there are alternatives and all of them looked equally bad to me. Looks like the F22 guys might have had the same problem finding and using a robust fault tolerant time library.
So... (Score:5, Funny)
Actual dialog message... (Score:5, Funny)
F16 Software had similar problems (Score:5, Interesting)
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/3.44.html [ncl.ac.uk]
Microsoft? (Score:5, Funny)
READ: Get Ready For More (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Overflow (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not the first time this bug has shown up. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.f20a.com/f20ins.htm [f20a.com]
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Fixed (Score:5, Informative)
>> 25 Years from development to deployment, the F-22 Raptor is the most advanced fighting machine in the air. 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 that's at home in the cockpit. Retired Air Force General Don Shepperd. Let me set the scene, Don. These F-22s, headed from the Air Force base in Hawaii to an Air Force base in Japan. They were approaching the international date line, pick it up from there.
>> You got it right. You want everything to go right with the frontline fighter. $125, 135 Million a copy. The F-22 raptor is our frontline fighter, air defense, air superiority, and it can drop bombs. It is stealthy and fast. You want it to go right. On the international deployment to the pacific, it didn't. At the international date line, whoops. All systems dumped. When i say all systems I mean all systems, navigation, part of the communications, fuel systems, and they were -- they could have been in real trouble. They were with their tankers. The tankers -- tried to reset their systems. Couldn't get them reset. Tankers brought them back to Hawaii. This could have been real serious. Certainly could have been real serious if the weather had been bad. Turned out okay. 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.
>> This is almost like the feared Y2K problem that happened to these aircraft. We should point out, the computer problems in 2000. The computers absolutely went absolutely haywire and became useless?
>> Absolutely. When you think of airplanes from the old days, with cables and that type of thing and connects between the sticks and the yokes and the controls -- not that way anymore. Everything is by computer. When your computers go the airplanes go. You have multiple systems. When they all dump at the same time, you can be in real trouble. Luckily this turned out okay.
>> What would have happened if these brand-new $120 million F-22s had been going into battle?
>> You would have been in real trouble in the middle of combat. The good thing is we found this out. Any time -- before, you know, before we get into combat with an airplane like this. Any time you introduce a new airplane, you are going to find glitches, and you are going to find things that go wrong. It happens in our civilian airliners. You don't hear much about it. These things absolutely happen. And luckily had 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, and completed the deployment. This could have been real serious in combat.
>> You had these advanced air -- not just superiority but air supremacy fighters in there, up there in the air, above the Pacific Ocean, not much more sophisticated than a Cessna 152 with a jet engine?
>> You got it. They are on a 15-hour flight from Hawaii to Okinawa. When all their systems dumped, they needed help. Had they gotten separated from their tankers or weather gotten bad they had no reference and no communications or navigation. They would have turned around and could have found the Hawaiian Islands. If the weather had been bad on approach there could have been real trouble. You get refueling from your tankers and you don't run -- you don't get yourself where you run out of fuel. You
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Moderation? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:UTC (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:first post to say.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I would not want to be him. (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to defense contracting, you must be new here.
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