Blast from the Past. 
Posted on 03/15/2007 4:35:28 PM PDT by IonImplantGuru
Recently, American F-22 fighters were sent, for the first time, across the Pacific, to Japan, for a training exercise. This would be the first time the aircraft would cross the International Date line, where it is tomorrow, and the aircraft's GPS and navigation software would handle the date change.
There were problems.
All off a sudden the software that ran the navigation and communications systems wasn't working too well. Being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, this was a problem. Some of the pilots were able to reboot their software and make the problem go away, but this did not always work, so all the aircraft turned around and returned to Hawaii. Those aircraft that still had malfunctioning navigation software, followed other aircraft back.
The contractor quickly found and fixed the problem (the routines for crossing the International Date Line, and changing the date, were not well thought out and tested.)
To quote Murphy's Law; "Whatever can go wrong, will, and at the worst possible time."
Worth every penny? Hardly. F-22 and -35 Joint Strike are dated today and obsolete the day after tomorrow. Any strike craft that carries a pilot is limited by its pilot. Maneuver, payload, range, and endurance are all compromised when the "platform" is occupied by a passenger/observer.
Because they lost communications as well -- according to the report. Prudent thing to do was go back to Hawaii.
It's not the Iranian aircraft, per se. It's the advanced SAM systems that the Russians have been feeding them.
Must be runnin' Windoze Vista.
"If it can't be flown via needle, ball and airspeed, it is a platform, not an airplane."
LOL
Since I'm not a pilot, I can only assume that those refer to basic instruments. I tried to enlist right out of college (Nam years) with a promise of flight school, but the physical disqualified me for being a pilot - they required uncorrected 20/20 vision ( no worse than 20/40 in one eye). Broke my heart that I couldn't fly like my old man, so I just told them I'd wait until I was called. I would have flown anything they had, haha.
BTW, I don't think they had much instrumentation in those old bi-planes, but those guys could sure make flying look easy, even the stunts they did. I know, I know - it was most likely very dangerous and difficult, but what the hey - I'm a romanticist at heart, LOL.
;^D
Why does a plane need to know the local date?
An "old FR hand" is both a compliment and a slur! Sir!
Sorry for the crankiness. Lot of flak on the board, sir!
An old F4U corsair bit the dust a few weeks ago in an air race. One of the last of 4-5 left. No computers. No nav system. Just flamed out and augered in.
God rest "her" soul. I hope the new girls have as much heart.
Count me as a little "veklemt" (sp?) -and- a little defensive.
Thank you
I don't know. Perhaps modern pilots do not know how to use sextants? (Man, you have to take me with lots of salt. Don't take me seriously or you will go nuts.)
Dumb question here. Why do military aircraft care what the local time is? I thought they operated on Greenwich Mean (Zulu?) time.
Even if they do, the software must be able to cope with the change of day that occurs in crossing the international date line. Apparently not all of the software had been tested at this boundary (which is where a lot of software bugs hide - - - at the boundaries of problem domains)
The GPS satellite information about which ones are (supposed to be) where are kept as an "almanac." If your GPS doesn't accurately know which one is supposed to be visible and where, it can 1) spend a whole lot of time looking for its signal, and/or 2) if it is receiving a given satellite's signal, but be incorrect about where it thinks that satellite is, it might "think" you're somewhere inside the earth or in outer space, or spend a lot of time thrashing through irreconcilable information about the postulates of where the GPS device might be located.
HF
Think how long and hard it was to get B-29s that flew right. Then we had to figure out HOW to use them.
From your link:
http://www.afa.org/magazine/feb2007/0207raptor.html
In Red Flags, Bergeson said, “you have a great day if you lose only 10 percent of your forces.” The massively lopsided victory for the stealthy F-22-led force was unprecedented.
“They [the Red Air adversaries] couldn’t see us,” Tolliver said. This was true even when the opponents were assisted by AWACS. “And that’s what makes the F-22 special,” Tolliver went on. “I’m out there and I have weapons like an F-15C or an F-16, but ... I’m basically invisible to the other guy’s radar.”
The 241-to-two record was amassed over two weeks of air engagements. Tolliver noted that, in such battles, Red Air units were allowed to regenerate and return to the fight, but lost Blue forces could not. Even with such handicaps, in the largest single engagement, F-22-led forces claimed 83 enemies to one loss, after facing down an opposing force that had generated or regenerated 103 adversary fighters.
And what about the two losses?
“If you see numbers where you never have a loss, I don’t think you’re training to your full ability,” Tolliver said. “If you don’t, at some point, have that simulated loss, we’re not going to push ourselves to be as capable as we are.”
Lt. Col. Dirk Smith, commander of the 94th FS, said that these aircraft losses stemmed from the aggressiveness of pilots, which was a good thing.
It's funny, I guess I just totally overlooked that you said sextants. I was thinking compass.
Satellites will need defense systems to keep them safe.
40 years ago the 'common wisdom' was "... you better learn Russian ..."
20 years ago, it was "... time to figure out Kanji characters and learn Japanese ..."
Right now, here in Southern AZ the mantra is "... it's time to take New World Spanish lessons because ..."
Screw Chinese!
Blast from the Past.
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