Time zone/computer bug affects F-22

slatr

Senior member
May 28, 2001
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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.

ROBERTS: What would have happened General Shepperd if these brand-new $120 million F-22s had been going into battle?

SHEPPERD: You would have been in real trouble in the middle of combat. The good thing is that 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 just don't hear much about it but these things absolutely happen. And luckily this 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, completed their deployment. But this could have been real serious in combat.

ROBERTS: So basically you had these advanced air -- not just superiority but air supremacy fighters that were in there, up there in the air, above the Pacific Ocean, not much more sophisticated than a little Cessna 152 only with a jet engine.

SHEPPERD: You got it. They are on a 12 to 15-hour flight from Hawaii to Okinawa, but all their systems dumped. They needed help. Had they gotten separated from their tankers or had the weather been bad, they had no attitude reference. They had no communications or navigation. They would have turned around and probably could have found the Hawaiian Islands. But if the weather had been bad on approach, there could have been real trouble. Again, you get refueling from your tankers. You don't run -- you don't get yourself where you run out of fuel. You always have enough fuel and refueling nine, 10, 11, 12 times on a flight like this where you can get somewhere to land. But again, attitude reference and navigation are essential as is communication. In this case all of that was affected. It was a serious problem.

ROBERTS: So the fact the computers run so much of the systems on these aircraft, General Shepperd, is the -- is the military at risk of over engineering here so if they did have a problem like that when they were going into a hostile situation, they could be, as you said, repeatedly in real trouble?

SHEPPERD: Well, you have redundant systems but it's just a fact of life in the modern computer age. By the way John, you are going to have the same problem coming up on your laptop computer as we conferred from -- from standard time from daylight savings time to standard time. Your program -- your computer is programmed for one thing and we have changed the dates and you are going to have a problem. It's going to have to be dealt with.

ROBERTS: Do me a favor Don. Make sure I'm not on my laptop computer when I'm flying in an F-22 on that day.

SHEPPERD: Absolutely.

ROBERTS: Appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Still ahead, there are plenty of failures in Iraq but is anyone better off? We've got a surprising look at who is winning.
 

AStar617

Diamond Member
Sep 29, 2002
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A system crash after crossing the int'l dateline isn't indicative a DST bug... all the current DST regulation change affects is what date the DST starts, not how it actually functions. Most computer systems don't even need a reboot once patched.

In fact, they didn't mention DST once in the transcript. A "general timezone bug" might be more accurate.

 

slatr

Senior member
May 28, 2001
957
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You are right, we have dst on the brain here at work.

That is how this article came up.

I will correct it.
 

AStar617

Diamond Member
Sep 29, 2002
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Originally posted by: slatr
You are right, we have dst on the brain here at work.

That is how this article came up.

I will correct it.

Easy mistake. You guys are not the only ones in a tailspin over DST... our clients are averaging an aneurysm roughly daily, mainly because Sun charges $400/system for EOL versions of Solaris ;)

But I digress. That must suck to be stranded in a hundred-million dollar glider. :D
 

FoBoT

No Lifer
Apr 30, 2001
63,084
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fobot.com
here is my high tech way of testing if the OS DST patch is on a box



change the time/date to 11 mar 07 1:59 am


wait one minute and see if it changes to 3:00 am or 2:00 am

if 3:00 am, then the patch is installed and works
 

ForumMaster

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2005
7,792
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this just shows that nothing is immune to human errors. o well. atleast nothing was damaged, the problem found and fixed.
 

jmgonzalez

Senior member
Dec 1, 1999
525
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Originally posted by: AStar617
Originally posted by: slatr
You are right, we have dst on the brain here at work.

That is how this article came up.

I will correct it.

Easy mistake. You guys are not the only ones in a tailspin over DST... our clients are averaging an aneurysm roughly daily, mainly because Sun charges $400/system for EOL versions of Solaris ;)

Where did you get this $400/system cost?

I'm seeing 10k/system on the Sun site
 

AStar617

Diamond Member
Sep 29, 2002
4,983
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Originally posted by: jmgonzalez
Originally posted by: AStar617
Originally posted by: slatr
You are right, we have dst on the brain here at work.

That is how this article came up.

I will correct it.

Easy mistake. You guys are not the only ones in a tailspin over DST... our clients are averaging an aneurysm roughly daily, mainly because Sun charges $400/system for EOL versions of Solaris ;)
Where did you get this $400/system cost?

I'm seeing 10k/system on the Sun site
Not to dig up an old, long-dead horse, but with the cutover days away I figure I'd address this...

The $10k you are referring to is the cost of their "Migration Justification Review" service (if you wanted a large-scale migration from older Solaris versions to Solaris 10), not the vintage DST patches themselves.

At http://www.sun.com/dst/, they make mention of "a fee", but not the exact cost. From the last time I had to open a T&M case with Sun for a client, IIRC it's 400 per box with a site cap in the tens of thousands of dollars (plus migration credit for stuff like that justification review).

 

InverseOfNeo

Diamond Member
Nov 17, 2000
3,719
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Originally posted by: FoBoT
here is my high tech way of testing if the OS DST patch is on a box



change the time/date to 11 mar 07 1:59 am


wait one minute and see if it changes to 3:00 am or 2:00 am

if 3:00 am, then the patch is installed and works

Here's an easier way.

Go to the time settings and under the Time Zone tab, if Tijuana is listed with Pacific Time (US & Canada), then the DST patch is not installed. If it says "Tijuana, Baja California" separate from "Pacific Time (US & Canada)" then the DST patch is installed.
 

jagec

Lifer
Apr 30, 2004
24,442
6
81
Originally posted by: InverseOfNeo
Originally posted by: FoBoT
here is my high tech way of testing if the OS DST patch is on a box



change the time/date to 11 mar 07 1:59 am


wait one minute and see if it changes to 3:00 am or 2:00 am

if 3:00 am, then the patch is installed and works

Here's an easier way.

Go to the time settings and under the Time Zone tab, if Tijuana is listed with Pacific Time (US & Canada), then the DST patch is not installed. If it says "Tijuana, Baja California" separate from "Pacific Time (US & Canada)" then the DST patch is installed.

I kind of like Fobot's method, just because of what it suggests as the appropriate method of testing, say, thermonuclear detonators:D
 

AndrewR

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,157
0
0
From the article:
Any time you introduce a new airplane, you are going to find glitches and you are going to find things that go wrong.

Nothing important here.