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F-35's biggest problems: software and bad relationships
- luriel 14y agoFrom wikipedia: "Unlike previous aircraft, such as the F-22, all software for the F-35 is written in C++ for faster code development." Seems that C++ is fulfilling its intended purpose nicely: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/I_did_it_for_you_all http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/I_did_it_for_you_all Or perhaps Bjarne's real goal was to end all wars ;) Edit: Oh, and it seems somebody has not read The Mythical Man Month: "Because of this delay and the increased complexity of the jet's third and final software block, Lockheed Martin and the Defense Department have added additional resources to fielding Block III software"
- crazypyro 14y agoThat interview was very interesting.... I'm kind of interested what the response to its leak was now though....
- trapexit 14y agoIt's a parody. http://www.snopes.com/computer/program/stroustrup.asp http://www.snopes.com/computer/program/stroustrup.asp
- evoxed 14y agoToo bad, since given the discussion topic here this would have made the perfect pun: "no company in its right mind would start a C++ project without a pilot trial" (emph. added) (rimshot)
- crazypyro 14y agoOkay, I kind of assumed it was a joke, but I'm too young to know all the history. Thought maybe I missed something.... Thanks for the info!
- munin 14y ago"C++ is dying off now," ... 12 years later ... (I know the interview is satire but I don't think that line was wholly satirical)
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoCoincidentally, I haven't programmed in C++ for about 12 years. I'm sure its dead for a large segment of the programming population, and its still much alive for another segment.
- 16s 14y agoThe joint strike fighter (F-35) coding standard is very nice: http://www2.research.att.com/~bs/JSF-AV-rules.pdf http://www2.research.att.com/~bs/JSF-AV-rules.pdf
- 16s 14y agoAn entire squadron of F-22's (non C++) lost all systems when they crossed the International Date Line en route to Japan in 2007. The pilots almost lost control and only survived because they could visually follow fuel tankers back to Hawaii. You can't blame that on C++. All systems have bugs. Source - http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f22-squadron-shot-down-by-the-international-date-line-03087/ http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f22-squadron-shot-down-b...
- smacktoward 14y agoAll systems have bugs. I'm sure that was a great comfort to the pilots in the F-22s.
- WalterBright 14y agoAll airplanes have bugs, too. The F-80, for example, if you flew it too fast (and the engine was powerful enough to do that in level flight) the airplane would suddenly "pitch up", fold the wings back, and crash. There are endless examples of these kinds of "bugs" in leading edge fighter design that have nothing to do with software.
- arethuza 14y agoI was reading to "One Minute to Midnight" about the Cuban msisile crisis and the account of flying a U-2 was pretty scary - at high altitude they had a very narrow range of speeds at which they could fly, fly too fast and the wings come off, fly to slowly and the plane stalls.
- outworlder 14y agoThis is called the "coffin corner". It varies for different aircrafts, but they all have it, including commercial liners.
- arethuza 14y ago
- darkestkhan 14y agoSomeone did persuade them to shelve Ada... and then they get into this mess ;) They are unlucky - there is no better alternative in writing this kind of software than Ada [well, there is SPARK but it is subset of Ada with annotations].
- Cieplak 14y agoI just learned that Ada has higher performance benchmarks than C in many cases, for whatever that is worth. http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming-languages-are-fastest.php http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming-lang...
- 16s 14y agoSoftware issues are common in jet fighter aviation. Here are two little known, but potentially deadly issues: * 1986 F-16 Inversion when flying over the equator - Flying the F-16 in simulation over the equator, the computer got confused and instantly flipped the plane over, killing the pilot [in simulation]. And since it can fly forever upside down, it would do so until it ran out of fuel. Note: some claim this is a myth and to my knowledge, it has never been verified, but I tend to believe it could have happened. Source - http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/3.44.html http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/3.44.html * 2007 F-22 Complete systems failure over International Date Line - At the international date line, 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 fuel tankers. The tankers – they tried to reset their systems, couldn’t get them reset. The tankers brought them back to Hawaii by visual, line of sight flight. Source - http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f22-squadron-shot-down-by-the-international-date-line-03087/ http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f22-squadron-shot-down-b...
- petitmiam 14y agoMy lecturer for 'Software Testing' at uni used to bring up that first issue. He was a total ball-breaker with assignments and exams, but you knew it was for a good reason.
- majormajor 14y agoThe first one, if it's real, confuses me: how does the plane turning upside down kill the pilot?
- noonespecial 14y agoFighter planes are very different than any other craft "driven" by people. They are so fast and so strong that if you give the stick a good yank while flying one, the forces involved will kill you (unless of course good fly-by-wire software knows your limits and intervenes). Its not at all far fetched to assume if the plane suddenly rolled at its maximum rate that it would pull the pilot's spine apart.
- jmount 14y agoCheck out Augustine's laws: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustines_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustines_laws . I believe he said software was a boon as all other ways to add expense to an aircraft eventually are limited by weight.
- dangoldin 14y agoDamn. I can only imagine what a bunch of hackers could do with $1.5 trillion.
- luke_s 14y agoWell, according to wikipedia [1] we could have run over 8 Apollo programs for that cost. [1] : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Program_cost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Program_cost
- luriel 14y agoImagine what Elon Musk could do with that kind of money. Either terraforming mars or we might make it to Alpha Centauri by the next century.
- darkestkhan 14y agoYou forgot about commercialization of fusion ;) and hyperloop... and in his case we would additionally have permanent space colony, on Moon, Mars, deep space and one to be created in Venus ;)
- Gustomaximus 14y ago1970's dollars are not the same as todays. Further down on the Wikipedia page: > In 2009, NASA held a symposium on project costs which presented an estimate of the Apollo program costs in 2005 dollars as roughly $170 billion.
- ladzoppelin 14y agoI can't imagine how hard developing for this must be. Every bug could possibly kill people but the project still has to meet a deadline. Does anyone think it might be to early to integrate this much software into a fighter jet?
- icegreentea 14y agoSoftware has been absolutely crucial to aviation for decades. The last generation or so of fighter planes can only be flown by a computer (they are aerodynamically unstable and require constant feedback and control). And for an idea on 'amount of software', you should give this a look. http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this-car-runs-on-code http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this-car-r...
- eranation 14y ago"...Because of this delay and the increased complexity of the jet's third and final software block, Lockheed Martin and the Defense Department have added additional resources to fielding Block III software..." Adding more people to a delayed software project, now where did I hear that before? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
- randomfool 14y agoGenerals in charge of software projects. I worked at Microsoft, I know how well non-technical overseers manage projects. > "We're gonna find things that we didn't know about and are gonna have to deal with them, but at least this scheduleis laid out to accommodate unexpected problems." Bullshit- they played schedule chicken and got caught. It'll happen again.
- guelo 14y agoThis guy is actually an engineer by training.
- einhverfr 14y agoActually it's worse than that. This is an ambitious project, to build an even more complex and cutting-edge software driven plane. Compare the inflation-adjusted cost of the B52 development cycle with that of the B2 and you will see where this is leading. Similarly between the B2 and the B52 we see a 100x increase in cost per unit, just as we see a similar increase between the F-4 Phantom and he F-22. It doesn't take a technical person to figure it out. I have seen history professors with more sense than the generals here. In another hundred years, i suppose our entire defence budget will be enough to afford one fighter jet, which can be shared between the air force and the navy 3 days a week each, with the Marine Corps getting Sundays....
- masklinn 14y ago> Bullshit- they played schedule chicken and got caught. It'll happen again. Yeah. And it's not just software either, the Osprey had very similar issues with its planning and handling.
- gaius 14y agoA general who has come up through one of the technical branches (e.g. engineering, signals, etc) is going to be as good a "CTO" as anyone.
- caycep 14y agoI think the biggest problem is that it's the pentagon's flagship program, and it suffers from bureaucratic bloat, military-industrial complex crony-ism, and typical pentagon big-project feature creep. Should have been a skunk-works project kept under wraps until as late as possible, a la the F-16...and even that project didn't survive without a little bloat. Like some others have said, drones are probably the equivalent rebel project that the F-16 was back in its day...
- einhverfr 14y agoIt's biggest problem is complexity. Full stop. Any engineer can tell you that. The interesting question will be what hidden problems lie in wait, only to be discovered at the worst possible time.... What people will do to spend more money in order to maintain an image of technical superiority.
- roel_v 14y ago1,5 trillion skunkworks?
- greedo 14y agoThe F-16 wasn't a skunkworks program by any stretch.
- caycep 14y agowell unofficially, at least so they say, in the very beginning, the lightweight fighter program was conceived in secret by 5 guys in a back room in a pentagon - John Boyd, Pierre Sprey of the Close Air Support/A-10 fame, and a couple others known as the "fighter mafia". Much of the specs, requirements, and various aerodynamic parameters were determined before the bureaucratic majors and colonels knew about the project. The prototype aircraft were designed by engineers as side projects at Lockheed and Northrup, more or less under the radar. It probably helped that all the bigwigs were haggling about the F-15 at the time, which acted as a smokescreen. It wasn't until it became apparent that the YF-16 was the real deal and probably going to be successful that it was finally exposed to the Pentagon procurement process, where it started to put on the pounds, and lost a bit of the agility that made the prototype aircraft famous (i.e. it had delta kinetic energy moves that the F-22 and F-35 can only accomplish via thrust vectoring).
- ef4 14y ago> The development of the jet's Block II software is 90 to 120 days behind schedule, according to the two-star general. Because of this delay and the increased complexity of the jet's third and final software block, Lockheed Martin and the Defense Department have added additional resources... 1. If you think you're 90 to 120 days behind schedule, you really have no idea how far you're behind schedule. 2. Somebody forgot Brook's law.
- cubicle67 14y agodave's law - Software development always takes 50% longer than expected, even when you allow for dave's law
- hackmiester 14y ago"The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time." —- Tom Cargill, Bell Labs
- niels_olson 14y ago> Comparing the troubled F-35 program to a massive aircraft carrier that two years ago "was gonna run aground," Bogdan said that F-35 program manager Vice Adm. David Venlet and his team, with Lockheed Martin and with the help of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, "has steered that ship...away from the shoals so it won't run aground." This is a little interesting for me: I worked for Admiral David Venlet's brother, Rear Admiral Doug Venlet, back when he was the skipper of the USS Wadsworth. He was a very cool cat. Went on to carry "the football" for GW. Politics aside, that is a very unique job in the world. Two admirals out of one family. What was dinner like at that table?
- hudibras 14y agoAnother fun fact: David Venlet has an air-to-air kill of a Libyan Su-22 in 1981.
- WalterBright 14y agoMost (all?) military fighter planes have had odd flight conditions where they would get into a fix that would kill the pilot, and it happened often enough. A large part of pilot training is avoiding those conditions. Long before software.
- infectoid 14y agoJesus christ! $1.5 trillion... but... healthcare, education... NASA! And... "ready to go to war by 2015"... guys, seriously... what war will it be? Is it an old one that is still going or an entirely new one that needs to be created to pay for this plane? Sorry. Just ranting. No replies required.
- eckyptang 14y agoI admire your cynicism. It matches mine. We had a similar project over here in Europe (Eurofighter). So far they have been used to annoy Argentina purely through penis-waving and drop a couple of bombs on Libya and that's all. Then they ran out of spare bits and grounded them all.
- gaius 14y agoIt's worse than that. They can only bomb if they have a 70s-era Tornado along to aim for them.
- ungerik 14y agoTry Go, just make sure to use 64bit memory ;-) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3805302 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3805302