Software Bug Halts F-22 Flight 579
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.
Re:Overflow (Score:1, Interesting)
Unfortunately, its software sounds like it could have stored that day byte (or some other data), somewhere is shouldn't have
Real redundancy (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of the Bismarck (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Real redundancy (Score:2, Interesting)
And just to preemptively debunk bullshit that is always brought up when someone mentions Airbus and computers on slashdot - i.e. the Mulhouse-Habsheim crash of which we've all seen the famous video and which according to the conspiracy theories was caused by a software bug and thus quite an incident since it was the first digital fly-by-wire passenger aircraft (the Concorde was analog fly-by-wire) - at least try to get your conspiracy theory right: If there was a bug in the software, it was the FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control), which failed and that was nothing new. FADEC is pretty much the equivalent of automatic transmission in a car and was common at the time already (in other aircraft as well) and thus (unlike the FBW system) not deliberately programmed to override the pilot (other than to ensure that the engine stays within its correct operating parameters). Any aviation professional can look at the video and tell that the fly-by-wire system was certainly functioning perfectly since you can see the control surfaces well enough. There has never been a crash in which there would be any reason to suspect the Airbus FBW system (well, there have only been five fatal A320s crashes and the rest of their FBW aircraft have zero pax fatality records).
Re:I doubt they lost communication... (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, I'm not sure how this bug would have escaped QA. I mean, it's an airplane. Hundreds of commercial jets fly over that line day in and day out, as do other American military planes. I wonder if the bug also exists at the Prime Meridian?
I hate to imagine what the software patch process is like on a jet. I doubt you can just ssh in and run an svn up
Re:From a 1970s children's song about time: (Score:3, 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.
F16 Software had similar problems (Score:5, Interesting)
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/3.44.html [ncl.ac.uk]
Re:Ironically (Score:3, Interesting)
READ: Get Ready For More (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Real redundancy (Score:3, Interesting)
Once they move, don't aim at the aircraft aim at the atmospheric affect with a big enough war head, and problem solved, and fortunately, modern aircraft are far more succeptable to damage than older aircraft so that war head doesn't need to be all that big.
As for ARM, use multiple digitally encoded emitters (located well away from the receiver and it's payload), all hooked up via fibre optic to synchronise the transmissions.
Re:Don't worry (Score:3, Interesting)
In wargames held in the US with 1 F-22 versus 5 F-15's. 5-0. The F-15 pilots never saw the F-22. Not a fair fight - but then that's the idea.
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Interesting)
The 27th Fighter Squadron (8 F-22s) at Langley AFB, Virginia fought against 33 F-15Cs and didn't suffer a single loss. The F-15's again didn't even detect the F-22's until they were all locked and targeted.
Then some months later during Exercise Northern Edge F-22's reached a 144-to-zero kill-to-loss ratio against F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18s. Only 12 of the F-22's accounted for nearly 50% of all kills for the Exercise.
Millions of lines of code? (Score:1, Interesting)
OK - as a software development major, I have issues with this statement. I'm assuming that this is just shooting from the hip on the part of Don Shepperd, which is understandable. OTOH, if he was somehow involved (which I can't tell from the article) in the project and is stating this as a fact, then I have a bit of a problem with this. I don't know the architecture of the chips they use (motorola, or RISC based, I'd assume), but this seems like quite a bit of code. Once you get this much code, unless it is broken down over the various subsystems very well, you are asking for trouble. The fact that they fixed it in 48 hours might be due to a 'blackbox' log or some way of knowing exactly where the code dumped or that the code is much smaller than Don's saying. Anyways, a few million lines of code is very hard to maintain, (the degree of difficulty is probably a function of the language) and seems like a bit much for a fighter's onboard computers. Even if we take into account the code for handling all the geometry, HUDs, and systems monitoring, it still seems like a lot. Windows 3.1 was 6 million lines of code, according to wikipedia.
I'm only speculating since I have no idea the depth or complexity of the onboard computers. Does anyone have any experience with anything like this? Does this seem like a lot to anyone else?
Re:Website (Score:3, Interesting)
Lockheed Martin is rushing a software fix to Hawaii after 12 US Air Force F-22A Raptors en route to Japan for the stealth fighter's first overseas deployment had to turn back because an unspecified problem with their navigation systems.
well, THAT patch hasn't had much time for a burn-in/test period. how comfy would you feel flying with that in place?
-r (*shudder*)
a bit of nit-picking... (Score:3, Interesting)
not the only problem I read... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB10Ak05
"Keys notes, however, that the electronic spectrum around Baghdad is polluted by the myriad jamming devices that coalition forces primarily employed to thwart remote detonations of the improvised explosive devices that have inflicted 70% of all US fatalities in that war."
"The potential problem was discovered when the first F-22s were operating near US Navy ships off the Atlantic coast. Navy radars overwhelmed the F-22's automated sensors. Even now, larger, multi-station, purpose-built electronic-intelligence-gathering airplanes encounter difficulties around the Iraqi capital because of the extreme density of jamming devices."
2 EuroFighters > 1 F-22 (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is an interesting question.
In a fight between 1 F-22 and 2 EuroFighters, who would prevail? If the F-22 prevails, then the F-22 is an excellent investment.
However, the United States Air Force has never claimed that 1 F-22 can beat 2 EuroFighters. I suspect that the 2 EuroFighters would reduce the 1 F-22 into a pile of smoking rubble.
Re:2 EuroFighters 1 F-22 (Score:3, Interesting)
Mind you, the EuroFighter may greatly outclass an F-15.
Knew someone on the development team (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:BBC Report on EuroFighter & EuroFighter Bea (Score:3, Interesting)
If the Eurofighter's radar can't detect the F-22, multiple Eurofighters won't be any great advantage compared to one.
Re:Overflow (Score:5, Interesting)
As for missiles? First, they fly unarmed on ferry missions because ammo is dead weight that reduces range; and second, even if they were armed, what do you really think would happen if an AMRAAM missile was free launched without being turned on, much less having had targeting info downloaded? Drop like a stone, it would, right into the pacific. Bloop. All gone.
Say it's also a good thing water isn't flammable, otherwise fire trucks would show up to fires and only make the situation worse, right?
Was it running Windows Embedded? (Score:2, Interesting)
F-16 had a similar bug (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cost Efficiency: EuroFighter vs. F-22 (Score:2, Interesting)
The F-117 just went in and knocked out air defenses and communications and maybe a few really crucial surprise targets. That's really its role. Then the bigger bombers can fly in (more) safely.
But it's no fighter. I know an F-117 shot down that President in season 4 of 24, and I've shot planes down in my F-117 on my playstation, but no F-117 has actually shot anything down in real life. The F-22 is so superior to any other fighter because it actually is like a ninja, unseen. The new russian and european fighters are more maneuverable, but they really have no chance when they learn of the F-22 by the missile that's closing in. that stealth and supercruise are worth what we paid. I just hope we don't sell these planes to the extent we have in the past (Iran still has a few F-14's, a very lethal interceptor and one reason we might need a "counter-interceptor").
May not help much in Baghdad, but it makes a difference at the diplomatic table. China, Russia, Iran, France. None of these countries really want to fight the USA, but this sort of thing keeps that proposition safely moot. And that superiority probably saves lives. The US has a lot of detractors in the world, and I imagine our constantly new abilities have prevented at least some conflict.
Re:Cost Efficiency: EuroFighter vs. F-22 (Score:1, Interesting)
Also remember that experience counts. The US Air Force has experience rivaled only by Britain. Our Pilots in our planes would simply not make the mistakes other nations would. When will the eurofighter be flying over the international date line? Never, probably. The US is stretched throughout the world and fighting some hard fights every day. Maybe it's a lousy policy in general, but we work our kinks out of our weapons a hell of a lot faster than most others.
The F-22 is more than stealth. It has the capability of obfuscating radar signals in general, making it difficult for enemy fighters to use their radar at all. They don't know whose their friend or foe, they don't know that a missile is approaching, etc. Few really know the full maneuverability of the F-22, and it has more control surface than the eurofighter or almost any other aircraft save drones so the widespread stories of its low maneuverability are probably not confident stories.
Re:Real redundancy (Score:4, Interesting)
During the Serbian wars NATO was scared shitless off all weather radars and shot at them without any second thoughts even if they were in neighbouring non-combatant countries. Both incidents when missiles hit buildings near Sofia (70km+ outside the Yugoslavian border) were actually firings at the Sofia Airport Gematronic radar system (the same kind some NATO country use).
In addition to that Stealth works effectively only if your receiver is colocated with the transmitter. It is easily defeated by decoupling them. There is a host of technical problems in doing this, but nothing that cannot be solved with enough software analysis of the reflected signal. It is only a matter of time until all "rogue" countries possess the relevant signal processing tech to do that.
So as far as AAA is concerned Stealth is a technology which is dead on arrival.
Re:Cost Efficiency: EuroFighter vs. F-22 (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anyone seen the results of exercises btn the F22 and Eurofighter? I thought not. Most of the combat exercises people have mentioned have been btn F15s and F22s, and even then under test conditions. Give it a more agile opponent, the F16 or a more modern opponent, and a mixed-mode operation.
Remember, expensive is not always better, specs don't always relate to combat. Interesting that the Eurofighter's turning circle is tighter, but the ability to sneak up is good. Costing less is also good, as are the training costs. With extra fuel and more weaponry - always an addition in war - I reckon the stealth capabilities will be shot. I suspect there will be difficulties with maintenance as well, particularly with repair facilities operating at a war-time standard, sometimes %50 of peacetime. Stand-off is *BAD* as IFF is always assumed to be good - which it never is - so the F22 could end up a friend-killer if used as stand-off. Politicians always see missiles as a cost-saver, which they never are, so I'm thinking most of the figures I've seen as responses are DOD-minted bullshit. I figure close-combat (the place where fighters are judged) is this aircrafts weak point.
Given that, after 25 years of development, the USAF and their contractors failed to foresee cross the meridian as a problem - yuck, yuck, yuck. The Chinese Airforce must be pissing themselves laughing. This from the only world super-power?
Re:2 EuroFighters 1 F-22 (Score:3, Interesting)
Right as of yet no one has figured out a way to beat stealth.
When they do the bar will be raised.
Until then the F22 is invisible to radar.
And as far as a missile failing fine the pilot of the F-22 just slides in below and behind and hits with a simple AIM-9 from it optimum position.
Kill ratio 90% or better when fired like this.
And even if by some chance it misses or fails you have enough time for a follow up shot before retreating out of LOS to take another shot. Not sure on how many 90% or better shots you are trying to say MIGHT miss.
As of right now on one can beat stealth and you can't hit what you can't see.
It really is that simple.