Slashdot Mirror
Automagic No-Fly-Zone Enforcement
An anonymous reader writes "SoftWalls is the name of an aviation project at UC-Berkeley that's developing a system for commercial airliners that establishes and enforces no-fly zones. Basically, through GPS, if a plane begins to enter a no-fly zone (eg, around a mountain, or over Lower Manhattan), an alarm goes off in the cockpit. If ignored, the system actively removes control of the plane away from the pilot and co-pilot to steer the plane out of the no-fly zone. The technology is intended as both an accident prevention technique and a deterrent to terrorists planning to ram a building. ABCNews recently profiled the project (with video) and also rode along with a working prototype built by Honeywell that successfully kept a Beechcraft from hitting a mountain."
Few days ago we had a story about the most irritating language in English. Didn't take it seriously because "automagically" wasn't on the list. My all time #1 irritant. It's just a cute way of saying "automatically". Cute language has its uses: it can amuse, satirize, and extend meaning. But this stupid word embodies cuteness for its own sake.
When you can find a way to do it remotely !
...they're going to use software to do what should be done by hardware? Anything this important shouldn't be done by remote software; the potential for abuse or accident is too great. (Remember Therac-25?) Ideally, they should build the technology into the hardware of the planes themselves, retrofitting were necessary. And I doubt that the pilots are going to accept this change.
Slashdot: when news breaks, we give you the pieces.
"Turn 50 degrees east-north-east... you're about to hit another plane!"
"...I can't"
"Sure you can, just turn!"
"NO... I physically CAN'T, the plane won't let me."
BAM.
Taking the control out of the pilots hands is a bad thing.
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
Half these posts will be like, "Well what if they are flying through the no-fly zone to avert danger?? I bet the engineers didn't think of that!" The typical slashdot reponse to new innovations.
Anytime you take away control from the pilot, it is a disaster waiting to happen. What happens if a pilot wants to make a hard left turn to avoid a collision and this system takes over and prevents it? What if terrorists hack into the system and take control of a plane from the ground? Too many questions need to be answered before this is viable
ps: does anyone else hate the word automagic as much as me?
As I recall... The /. groupthink was mostly in agreement that it's a bad idea to take away control of the aircraft from the trained pilot who has cognative reasoning.
Good idea, maybe a different implementation would work...
Except that any terrorist worth their salt will do their homework and just disable the no-fly system, or they will lease/buy a private plane without a no-fly system.
Why wasn't this been implemented before? I don't care a rat arse about terrorists this and terrorists that, but I have lost a few friends in airplane crashes. With these technologies available at least a decade ago (this project is an implementation of a few old technologies) why isn't this a major requirement for all new planes?
A lot of lives would have been saved if a plane would have at least a small database of known mountains in the flight path. Why don't our planes avoid mountains automatically?
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
Except removing control of the plane from the pilot is probably not the way to do it.
Setting up some form of fine system would achieve the desired effect without endangering the lives of thousands or millions of people.
>>The technology is intended as both an accident prevention technique and a deterrent to terrorists planning to ram a building
Why do people seem to think that terrorists are just dumb camel jockeys from the middle of the desert who are easily impressed by internal plumbing? If an al Qaeda operative wants to smash a plane into a building, he'll figure out a way to disable such a system.
Great, one of these is bound to malfunction and plow an airliner into a mountain instead of away from it...
What happens if I'm on a flight that for whatever the reason HAS to land at La Guardia (low fuel) and cannot navigate AROUND lower Manhattan, but instead wants to go over it. And this system won't let the pilot do that, and by steering around, runs the plane out of fuel and crashes it.
So someone says "Oh, there will be an override for situations like that" -- well, why won't that override get used when someone is bound and detmined to fly a 757 into a tall building? At that point its just another warning system, which is fine, but the computer control part scares me. I like pilots in control when necessary.
What happens if the terrorists jam the GPS? or spoof it?
overall the idea seems practical, but I'm sure it would need some kind of overide protection, which completely eliminates any point to the protection.
Perhaps some kind of monitor on the piolet, like a retnakl scan to operate the plane, and measure pulse, so in the case that the pilots heart races (or drops) the plane sends a silent alarm, and can be remotly controlled
"After I'm dead, I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one." - Cato the Elder, aka Marcu
Would a catastrophic loss of the GPS system, render these planes unusable? Also, depending on the accuracy of the system(remember they 'skew' the signal for civilian recievers), it could make the planes a bigger target, for the possibly more accurate GPS recievers on them.
This space intentionally left blank.
Last summer, a dim 22 year old let their dim 14 year old sister slam their brand new volkswagen into the side of my house, demolishing the car, a closet, and a bathroom. I'm sooo damn glad I wasn't taking a crap at the time. That, and I'm glad the dimwit didn't slam into the bedroom 10 feet south of the point of impact where my children were sleeping.
No steering is going to avert the danger if I climb as high as I can and then gun it for the nearest populated landmark. Hell I can even turn the ignition off to countermand the system, right?
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
...we will need something like this to prevent older ppl from driv...err..flying into farmer's markets.
Blarf.
Seems these researchers are in the "Airbus camp", which favors to give the ultimate decision in certain critical situation to the machine, as opposed to the "Boeing camp", which leaves it with the pilot.
Where is aviation headed?
Microsoft "innovations"?
But what if the terrorists get hold of some military equipement to transmit a GPS jamming signal? Sounds maybe far-fetched, but they'll go to any length to reach their goals.
What they really need are top-notch comp.os.linux.advocacy trolls. It's a completely different skillset.
Everybody's thought about automobile systems that drive for you, and I think most of us suspect it will simply be a matter of time before it happens.
Think about it: Doing a similar system in the air is a great place to learn about how to do this with cars...since asside from takeoff and landing, there's a much bigger tollerance for error in the wide blue skys.
--
Written in the name of sacred jihad
The linux hacker
It's called a stinger missle launcher.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Terrorists cause planes to crash due to bogus information sent to the GPS, simulating a no fly zone situation, and causing them to crash into buildings.
The FAA has been reported as saying "Yep, it's doing it's job, we couldn't see such a useful feature being exploited".
The FAA is also considering trained monkeies to replace the crew. Passangers, who will be given shock buttons, seems to enjoy this idea... far too much.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
From the FAQ (warning, PDF).
I hate cutting and pasting from PDF files.
Anyway, the statement Today, that plane would be shot down. to me is a bit absolute... is this really true? IF a pilot had problems, called in said problems to the tower and acted according instructions or his own judgement, would he really get shot down? Additionally, I have a problem accepting that jets would scramble fast enough to be able to do so...
That is unless I guess commercial airlines transmit on L1 & L2 frequencies. Provided of course the military sees fit to allow commercial airlines to use that frequency. Which makes me wonder about what juridstiction the United States would have if say a Japan Airlines plane was using that frequency when it pulled in our airspace... Oh well back to work
MoFscker
but most modern passenger planes are flown by software, most notably the 777.
Lots were learned from therac-25, the ariane disaster, and airbus issues in terms of what needs to be done in regards to safety critical software.
The 777 avionics system for instance, was thoroughly proven with formal mathematical methods and then put through literally millions of hours of simulator testing. They practically redefined the science of how to test software validity with it.
Oh, and it was done in ada, as most safety critical applications are as ada is extremely fault tolerant and requires the same of software written in it.
Such a system wouldn't be allowed by the FAA if it didn't undergo the same type of verification and fault tolerant design from the onset and addressed every conceivable scenario. But I can see these systems enterring use in 10-15 years (about how long it takes make something like this)
-
Currently there are ten (10) TFRs around the US that were enacted soon after 9/11 and/or right before the opening of hostilities against Iraq. There is no need for these TFRs any more, yet the Administration will not instruct the FAA to remove them. The Aircraft Owner's and Pilots Association (AOPA) spends most of their time and money these days fighting the TFRs and ensuring that they are announced with enough lead time so pilots can plan around them and that they are removed in a timely manner. You can read more about it at the AOPA website.
This Administration does not need a technology that would enhance the annoyance they are causing priviate pilots!
A) take gun from air-marshal.
B) kill air-marshal.
C) threaten passengers.
D) enter cockpit.
NEW: E) Disable softwall-thingy
F) take plane wherever I please.
Terrorist: fly over that way
Captain: i cant the plane wont let me
Terrorist: then disable it
Captain: I can't
Terrorist: ok , if you dont find a way within the next minute to turn it off then we torture this 6year old girl slowly in front of you until you do find a way
as airspace is already heavily regulated and there are relatively few aircraft in the skies at any one point which are usually piloted by far more competant people. (compared to say, rushhour where tens of millions of cars are on the road and driven by people of often dubious skills)
There are also generally only a few flight corridors that get alot of use due to popular routes, the earth's curvature and weather patterns, unlike road systems.
-
MPEG1
I assume that the way this would work is that the standard air corridors, as they neared urban centers and military installations and such, would have soft walls preventing course deviations.
So what happens during an emergency mechanical failure when the plane is veering out of the standard air corridor, the pilot's wrestling with the stick to get the nose up enough for a non-perpendicular landing, and the soft wall override kicks in, trying to steer the plane back into the air corridor? Remember, it's not a terrorist preventative if it's easily disabled from the cockpit.
It's easy to imagine that there'd be some sort of cutoff for emergency situtations, just as it's easy to imagine another scenario in which the soft wall override kicks in at the wrong moment, dooming a plane that might have been saved otherwise.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
The core technologies have been around awhile but I think it's important to remember that GPS technology and fast small CPUs are just now becoming "mature", so it's not out of line that these systems are still in the testing phase. Sure, ten years ago maybe you could build such systems with half of the first class section stuffed with hardware...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
A high power transmitter system that blankets a plane's GPS receiver with pre-calculated gps data.
You could effectively take over a plane from the ground by feeding this automated system incorrect coordinates. The irony would be felt by the pilots would be unable to over-ride the system, becuase it has to be terrorist proof....
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
as long as the automatic pilot looks like this one:l ">Automatic Pilot Of The Future</a>
<a HREF="http://homepage.mac.com/joebergeron/hal.htm
I actually currently work on another NASA research project that is taking a slightly different approach. Our model is to not only avoid no-fly-zones but other aircraft (using ADSB reports) as well as bad weather (this relies on weather reports from ground stations.)
The big difference between the 2 projects is that ours only gives possible solution to the pilot and then he has to accept the route deviation rather than removing control from the pilot.
I mean realisticly these solution are bleeding edge and wont make it into service for 20 years. Personally I'd like to see more of a grouund based solution but that probably because my background is ATC systems.
Air disasters secondary to software features are well documented.
I guess, as always, someone is trying to make some dough off this silly scheme, hoping to prey on our "terrorism" fears.
And yes, I know the linked article ultimatley states that the end result of human error, it illustrates a very important point: Either have only the highly trained pilot fly the craft, or have a very thoroughly tested computer fly the craft.
I don't think the 2 mix very well at this point in time.
--
To put this into perspective, it used to be that landing at an airport was a pilot's discretion. That is, an air traffic controller could *advise* the pilot not to land, but it was a decision ultimately up to the pilot to make.
I think there are simply too many "what-if" situations that require a pilot have control over the aircraft to allow such critical remote control. What if the jet runs out of fuel? What if the no-flyover beacon directs the jet into other air traffic or really bad weather.
Moreover, what would stop a private citizen from enabling his or her own no-flyover beacon and causing havoc: From terrorists all the way to folks living next to an airport who deal with turbine noise.
A good idea at first, but with reflection seems to cause more problems than it solves.
-Alex
Never, ever, ever, take control away from the pilot. That's the first rule of air safety. Humans can react to unknown situations in ways that computers cannot.
here, that was me just a few minutes ago. Suck my dick.
It always comes back to the Lone Gunmen pilot (oh! pun!) episode doesn't it?
For those who don't remember: Evil government people used a remote controll device to bypass the pilots and steer a 747 into the World Trade Center...
So, they're going to use it to steer away now?
You can't take the sky from me...
What if the terrorists stole some of the transponders and set them up near an airport?
Right now, terrorism of the skies is pretty much restricted to those groups that have a ready supply of people willing to kill themselves for their cause. Remote control airplanes will open the terrorist industry to technical savvy terrorist groups who like to work safely from the ground.
Best of all, remote control airplanes would allow terrorist groups to work in larger numbers. Right now, terrorist groups are pushed to their limits to take over 4 airplanes. In this new system, a terrorist group that hacks the remote control code procedures for the soft walls project might be able to take take down 20 to 30 planes before the airlines are able to ground the fleet.
The current airline security system pretty much exludes those terrorist groups that have people willing to kill for their beliefs, but not willing to die for them. This will be welcome news to any terrorist organization with good hackers.
As for my comfort flying, the fact that I know that someone can take control of the airplane from the pilot will make me just that much more likely to buy one of those airline insurance policies.
No one building the twin towers said "What if a plane crashed into the building?" when they were building the WTC. I don't see the harm in ensuring safety by asking questions about the technology and making sure it can handle "every" possible situation.
I noticed alot of comments about how the how this is dangerous, how pilots should never have the control of the plane taken from them, blah, blah, blah,
Yet NO WHERE in the article did it say that it was designed to take control away from the pilot, it did say, and I quote: "If ignored, the system actively removes control of the plane away from the pilot and co-pilot to steer the plane out of the no-fly zone." which leads me to the conclussion that the pilot still has control of the plane.
Now I did click the link and didn't find anything that says otherwise.
There was an interesting story on cryptome a few days ago about putting a Phalanx anti-aircraft missle & 20mm machine gun defense system on top of the proposed Freedom Towers. Well, I don't know if a setup like that could effectively disable or destroy a target before it reaches its mark but I have to admit it sounds more viable than the solution describe in the article...
I believe Michael chose the story title just to piss me off!
Doesnt it just seem that the Bush administration is mad with power over just about everything?
Oh my, I think Dave just turned into a bear.
Not to be a troll but does anyone else in here hate words like "Automagic"
Why wasn't this been implemented before? I don't care a rat arse about terrorists this and terrorists that, but I have lost a few friends in airplane crashes. With these technologies available at least a decade ago (this project is an implementation of a few old technologies) why isn't this a major requirement for all new planes?
See, if a computer program somehow fucks this up, and ends up flying right towards the mountain instead of away from it, the pilots would realize that this *can't* be right but a computer wouldn't. I'm sure they have lots of *warning* systems, but up until now I don't think anyone has thought that overriding the pilot was a good idea, since up until Sept 11th noone thought anyone would *willingly* crash the plane. Maybe it'd save lives if the pilot had a heart attack and collapsed in his seat, but it's a stretch.
And another thing - sabotage. If you can compromise this program, you suddenly have the power to crash *every* plane in the air - complete with uber-searched passengers, armed guards and top security clearance pilots. While it is a lot less likely, the consequences would almost be far more catastrophic.
And face it - hi-jackers in control of a plane can crash it where it does a *lot* of damage anyway - even if it's not dead-center in the Pentagon. If nothing else, fly as close as you can, cut power to the engines and drop like a living dumbfire fuel bomb. How far could you get on a 30,000 feet drop? I'm guessing quite a bit into the "no-fly" zone...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The system being discussed here would take ultimate control of the plane away from the pilot. In the century of powered flight we have just completed, such ideas have have always turned out to be the Wrong Thing.
If we could always trust the flight computers and control systems, we wouldn't even need pilots: today's jetliners are smart enough to fly themselves. The problem is that the systems are just not reliable enough, and the system designers are not prescient enough, to handle every eventuality.
For ages, the question has been A modern corollary might be:
When you get right down to it, this idea has some fundamental problems. Would I fly on such a a plane equipped with a system that could over-ride the pilot no matter what? Probably not.
In fact, once you have something like this, why bother with pilots at all? Obviously, the've been declared redundant and useless.
Pick One: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~stremler/sigs/sigs.html (Note - disable Javascript first!)
The RAT is the Ram Air Turbine, a propeller driven hydraulic pump tucked under the belly of the 767. The RAT can supply just enough hydraulic pressure to move the control surfaces and enable a dead-stick landing. The loss of both engines caused the RAT to automatically drop into the airstream and begin supplying hydraulic pressure.
The Gimli Glider used this to survive the loss of both engines.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
SoftWalls was mentioned back in July. I won't cry "dupe", though, since I haven't read this article and it sounds like there's more happening with it now.
This sounds a lot better than getting ass-probed by airline security.
And I don't think it will work. This is the kind of system you'd see on an airbus, and probably not a boeing- unless it could be defeated easily, like all the autopilot-type systems boeing installs.
Many others have posted great reasons why taking control away from a pilot is a bad thing, so you can read them- but if it's terrorists you're worried about, they now have much more to fear from the passengers than from a computer system. The stakes couldn't be higher now for airline hijackings, and knowing the stakes, no US group of passengers will allow any hijackers to carry out their mission. (Flight 93) This, incidentally, is a social solution to a social problem.
Sure, this kind of thing would be great for terrain avoidance. But I wouldn't bet my life on it. Between jamming, spoofing, misplaced confidence, programming errors and the like, it can be quite problematic.
Basically, you're swapping your trust in the pilot for your trust in the programmer. Not necessarily a good trade.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
But at least it's a repost from July and not 3 hours ago like they normally are.
Would people mind eliminating the word "automagic" from their vocabulary? It's NOT A FREAKIN' WORD, OK? The word is: A U T O M A T I C. There's a one letter difference. Is it THAT hard to type "automatic" instead of "automagic"? Sheesh!
Plus, obviously the technology is not based on magic. So it AUTOMATICALLY performs the turn away from the no-fly zone.
Get a white wizard to ride his horse near the infringing flying machines, have him hold up his staff (AKA his bat-signal-on-a-stick) and voila, the No-Fly Zone is enforced.
One has to ask if this idea is truly about safety or about avoiding 9/11. If you have a system in place like this It will have an overide, otherwise you wouldn't have a pilot in the first place. The overide will be easy to implement because first on the list of possible situations it will be needed will be time critical decisions thus a lengthy/dificult invovled overide process will not work.
In the end you can't defend against human decision making unless you remove the human from the process.... which means you used canned human decision making in the form of code which to my knowledge is not and cannot ( to date ) be made self-correcting. Thus if there is an unforseen circumstance for the code to encounter you don't know what will happen. The code can't think on the fly for itself. So choose your poison. A plane that will be consistently flown even if that consistency invovles a bug that flys into the ground given the proper circumstances or a pilot that can think for itself and do unthinkable things such as fly into a huge skyscraper, or come up with an inovative way to control a plane with differential thrust due to the failure of control surface hydraulics ( actual real world example ). In fact both of those examples are being subjected to CODE fixes for making such actions easier or more difficult, this being an example of 9/11 ( or mountain ) avoidence and the new implementation of a backup directional control system utilizing dissimilar engine thrust rates. But its impossible to account for all scenarios and untill code can be sufficiently capable to deal with unforseen circumstances you have an overide. You draw your own conclusions on what a pilot will decide to trust in an odd situation when presented with loss of control of the aircraft. If your response to that is not to allow that decision then why the hell do you have a pilot in the cockpit to begin with ?
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
I think the accuracy issues for civilian GPS systems (on the order of feet) wouldn't really affect a plane going at hundreds of miles per hour.
The random error that gets put into civilian GPS signals does not seem to be that big a deal for general (on foot) use. Yesterday, my dad and I went for a walk out in the woods, and it was off by 20-something feet when we returned. Maybe that's not acceptable for surveyers, but for most purposes (probably even car or air navigation) it's fine.
I, too, am worried about the increasing reliance of so many systems on the GPS network. But in the long term, aren't there multiple (non-American) replacements in the works? I would not be surprised if Airbus were to use the new European GPS replacement that's under development. Surely, manufacturers could incorporate several different [incompatible] navigation systems for redundancy purposes...
No one building the twin towers said "What if a plane crashed into the building?" when they were building the WTC.
actually, the WTC towers' designers *did* consider the possibility of an aircraft hitting the building, and designed the structure to stay upright in the event of such an impact. what they could not design for was the intense heat of a few thousand pounds of burning fuel; it was the fire that brought them down, not the planes.
i recall hearing this in the incessant news coverage at the time, but google corroborates my story.
He gave a link. All is explained.
Yes, but your example is a poor one. Pilots have a multitude of options at their disposal for avoiding collisions. Altitude changes(up OR down! Wow!), heading changes(left OR right!) and speed changes(faster OR slower!)
The real problem is that in almost every plane with an autopilot, there's a Big Red Switch the pilot can press. When I saw this in action, it was on a small(4 seater) single, and pressing the switch caused about 2-3 switches to solidly trip to the off position(think like a circuit breaker) and a loud warning tone. It completely cut the autopilot's control over the plane, and not by software- hardware. Furthermore, guess what's part of the checklist? Setting the autopilot while on the ground, making sure it can manipulate control surfaces cleanly in all directions, and then pressing the Big Red Switch and verifying the AP is dead.
The problem will not, I predict, come from legitimate restricted airspace; restricted airspace is often near legitimate popular routes, but not to the point of concern(and most restricted airspace has ceilings, rarely is airspace restricted to the ceiling airliners cruise at). The problem will come in the following forms:
Please help metamoderate.
What's needed is a set of codes sort of like what Captain Kirk used to take command of Reliant during Wrath of Khan. The codes would be good for one time only, would be input by the pilot on each flight, and only the pilot/co-pilot could fly the plane. If it looked like a terrorist was going to take control, the pilot would put it on autopilot and nothing but the pilot/co-pilot would be capable of taking control of the aircraft back with the right code. The autopilot would be programmed to land at the closest airport able to take the plane. This would probably only be useful on newer planes, but it would take care of the true "emergency" situation.
"Jenkins, did you mount the scratch airliner for this test?"
"No. Why?"
loss.
On small planes the first thing a terrorist would do is learn to disconnect or bypass this system.
On a passenger airliner, there will never be another hijacking, period. The age of "be cool and obey the hijackers" is over-- passengers now will assume they have nothing to lose and will be tripping over each other to disembowel anybody who tries to hijack their flight.
only terrorists will control the flying..
I know, lame joke:)
I was suggesting this to my boss hours after 9/11 happened. Kudos to UCB for actually doing it.
In addition I suggested:
It's a bit like time delay safes. Allow pilots control, just not too much control.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Step one: hack the server housing the database of no-fly zones
Step two: add airports to that list
Done! Leave cleaning up the mess to the gov't.
This is not effective terrorism prevention, merely because there're plenty of planes to steal that aren't commercial-passenger air whales.
This is not effective crash prevention, because the pilots shouldn't be sleeping and/or drunk at the controls anyway.
So what is this?
-----------------------
You are what you think.
Many airline crashes have been averted by the pilot doing something creative and unusual (Sioux City incident, anyone?). Having a system that controls the airplane and cannot be overridden is a recipe for disaster - machinery always breaks down and does the unexpected. Might as well not have a pilot at all if one is going to do that.
This is pretty meaningless for airline since they're talking to ATC almost 100% of the time and may get warnings/updates via many other channels. Whereas a GA pilot flying a little 152--or more to the point--a Lancair PropJet (350+ kt cruise), may be happily flying VFR and suddenly find two F-16's on his wing because he busted a "pop-up" TFR... We need a system of communication and coordnation among ALL aircraft.
including the stoplight changer. I hate those damn airplanes flying over the house. So much noise.
After a zillion bukx and shredding the constitution have they caught one? Isnt this simply a distraction and a re-election ploy? Show us some proof! And lets balance what we do with some consideration of the costs (Judge Hand was a smart dude). A tenth of the money thats been wasted on "the War against Terrorism (c) Faux News" could have done so much good.
You make a good point, but I think you (and others) might be polarizing the issue more than necessary.
I can imagine this being implemented as a restriction of options rather than prescriptive flight path. As you mention, pilots already deal with a myriad of decision factors, and this would act as another. If you need to put your 747 into an Immelmann or Split-S, just make sure you're not doing it into a mountain -- because the computer won't let you. The computer won't dictate what you have to do, just what you can't.
We see these restrictions all around us. Water drums near highway barriers. Curbs on sidewalks. Large rocks surrounding bridge supports. Pilots are just beginning to benefit from the fact that these influences can be virtual.
It all goes downhill from first post
I agree with the others replying to this post in that there would be no doubt that the plane could be destroyed if desired, and little doubt that it would.
However, something I'd like to check - I Am Not An American - isn't the White House kinda surrounded by Washington and lots of people (in a general kind of way). Where do you shoot it down that doesn't do more damage to the surrounding populace? Not all plane crashes end like Con Air.
That's mainly because they are afraid of being put out of a job. But they aren't worried about autopilot doing everything, they are worried about it being done from the ground, like the military UAV pilots. That takes away all their status and sex appeal, and probably cuts their salaries down to what Air Traffic Controllers get. Nothing to sneeze at, but certainly not the $200K plus that the top commercial international pilots receive today.
If there's no way to control the plane from the air, there's not much terrorists could do to redirect it, so long as the ground signal is secure and there isn't any way to bypass the connections to the control surfaces from the plane. To really work, it'd require planes that can fly independantly if the signal is cut off (jammed) But 777s and A320s can already land and take off completely on autopilot, so the software already exists, and would be used only as a backup for the foreseeable future.
I see no way they can stop it, however. The military is going hard this way, I'll bet that the next generation of fighters and bombers are the last ever to be designed with a cockpit. The savings in size, manuverability, life support, safety, etc. are huge, and 10,000 small fast fighters that cost $4,000,000 each are probably much more effective than 400 that cost $100,000,000 each. Even if there is a small benefit from having an actual person in the cockpit in terms of response time, it'd be quickly made up when you can pull 20Gs or more not having to keep a pilot alive and conscious!
It's the beginning of Skynet. Judgement day is coming!!! Good thing Arnie is already busy playing governer.
so like over new york city or any other city, and plane can not fly below 10,000 feet unless it is landing at an airport.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Imagine being underneath the hail of bullets that didn't reach their mark. That is an idea from a certified nitwit.
http://www.phrack.org/phrack/60/p60-0x0d.txt
I suspect this would foil the proposed system as the system would have no choice but to disable itself once the system didn't know where it was.
Cheers... Clark
Yes, just like a catastrophic loss of all the fuel pumps would render them pretty useless. Onboard the plane there will presumably be multiple redundant GPS receivers. As for the satellites... Well, it's always possible that one might fail unexpectedly but there are several of them and a plane is in as good a place to see them as anything. It's extremely unlikely that they'd all fail simultaneously.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
To the best of my knoweldge Gallelio(sp), is the European GPS replacement that they are working on, and from what I heard the US pitched a fit, unless there were a way to disable, or turn it off in time of national(read US) crisis. Although you are correct in the radom data, that is inserted into the civilian system, only causes a small error, wouldn't the increased speeds of the aircraft, versus foot travel, almost require a higher 'resolution'. If so I would find that a bit disturbing, because instead of people hi-jacking airplanes to crash them, they might just be after the 'high resolution(read government spec) GPS reciever, for use in something like a guided cruise missle( which if I am not mistaken, is one of the major reasons why they have the 'civilian distortion' built into GPS int he first place).
This space intentionally left blank.
I'd bet your an artifact/land geek and may have even had mox/sliver decks at one point.
God I wish I had kept those damn cards!!!See here for my response.
The Bush administration is mad with power.
not just tmp flight restrictions
This sounds like a valid technology, but it does scare me. How many of us have had computers not follow our instructions. I would prefer the pilot to be in control. The audio warning would prevent him from makeing an accidental very stupid mistake (which I doubt happens very often, and then there's the copilot).
But if you need a terrorist preventor, how about a button the pilot or copilot can hit when the cockpit is compromised that would engage the autopilot and couldn't be turned off until the plane is on the ground.
Or maybe it would just be better to inconvenience the flight crew and completely separeate the cabin from the cockpit. Give the pilot / copilot a separate enterance from the tarmack. That would cut down on passenger hijacks.
GPS Spoofing Countermeasures, Jon S. Warner, Roger G. Johnston -- Los Alamos National Labs
MoFscker
What's to stop terrorists for distorting the GPS signals and making the plane think that a mountain isn't where the mountain is? And if the terrorist can broadcast multiple spoof signals (spoofing a constellation), they could steer a plane to any location by simply moving the no-fly barrier to herd the plane to the desired (but undesirable) location.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Okay, I think it's an utterly daft idea to strip pilots of control. But...
The Air Force is now flying UAVs over battlefields. You don't think they'd put remotely-controlled aircraft over enemy airspace if they weren't damned sure the enemy wouldn't be able to get control of the things. So there may be technology now where control of aircraft from the ground could be a reasonable last-ditch tool in the case of incapacitated pilots.
technology is a scary, beautiful thing. one needs brain power and material. material costs money, which can come from some very interesting places. brain power can be tracked and developed by some very interesting people. in this respect, is it always comforting to know that someone somewhere is able to control a script of physical control over every jet?
just a thought. nothing more...
How about this one: Radar Detected Airplane before White House Crash
Describing the airplane which crashed into the White House when Clinton was president.
I thought everybody remembered that one.
The WTC buildings were typically modern cheesy minimalistic house-of-cards design. Meanwhile, the Empire State Building withstood a whole goddamn bomber crashing into it in the 1940s. They reopened the damaged floors after only 2 months of reconstruction.
Let me get this strait:
we spen 100 years using Iran/Iraq and crew as our wiping boy the retaleat
we spend millions in doing what out have been down
We instead of getting over it:
1 million to add all the eq
1 million to develop etc "special software"
and now we give these people yet another way to crash and make us a comedic act
What problem?
Imagine if you could extend this idea to the whole US industrial military complex, and prevent them from invading defenseless countries without provocation. Now that would reduce the number of terrorist attacks.
People will believe it actually has deterrent value, and stop being as alert.
Then, someone will smuggle a GPS jammer on board, and because we're less alert, they might be able to fly into something before we figure out that they disabled the system.
In the long run, useless.
Get off my launchpad!
The towers collapsed like an implosion, they were made that way.
Imagine those buildings falling chaotically, the disaster would be much worse.
It's a very good work of engineering.
anyone else think that the fear of terrorism is being taken to far? so what if they implement this system? what won't stop terrorism? i am sure terrorists will find other more complicated (and more destructive too) ways to abuse the system. you cannot make EVERYTHING save.
I'd rather keep the pilot in control and have these sorts of systems only as a warning.
Wouldn't it be better to weld the cockpit door shut and have a seperate door for the pilots from the outside? It may be a bit of a bodge on current aircraft but all new ones could be built like this. Then we wouldn't need overriding computer pilots or (more worringly) armed air marshalls.
Time to re-rent and watch again that ever up-to-date classic : "Runaway", with Mag... er, Tom S.
Buenas Noches,
Soy estudiante Ingles (Frances e Historia a la universidad de Warwick) y quiero entender el punto de vista oficial de la republica Cuba sobre su existencia y su tratamiento por el mundo occidental, especialmente por los estados unidos. He aprehendido el Espanol por algunos anos pero no suficientes para entenderlo totalmente. Existe un sitio Internet para que los extranjeros que no hablan el espanol puedan estudiar para que exista el estado cubano actual?
now instead of hijacking a plane,
all a terrorist has to do is to remotely fool
the GPS into avoiding a mountain while its actually
next to an office building...
If a sytem such as this ever did thwart an attack, the terrorist might very well resort to smashing the plane into the ground. Maybe the ground itself should be a no-fly zone (with the obvious exception of landing strips). We can also assume there would be a contingency in place for emergency landings.
Now you don't even need to sneak a terrorist onto a plane. Just hack the "softwalls" into a tunnel pointing unerringly at the target - and sit back to watch the pilot struggle in vain, and die.
Can you say "stupidest damnfool idea since the u-bend revolver"? I knew you could.
If you find that amusing, then just consider that US Navy ships (ok, IAALL (landlubber)) and US Army tanks run navigation, ractors, C&C(maybe a few more C's, there), threat assessment and firing systems - on NT (and assorted microgoo). That should have you laughing silly all week! :)
:) used to run FORTRAN. Compared to microgoo, those were really "solid" systems.
;)
At least the old F-XIVs, and F-XVs
Can't imagine what Monty (Python) would say.
Is the title meant to read "Automatic", or "Automagic" I thought it could be either - but looking at it now I don't think so.
...but do we really need a system to take control of the plane away from the pilot? Seems to me it would be cheaper and easier to make sure you don't hire martini-drinking idiots. As for the terrorist-prevention angle, airplane-crashing is just one of many ways crap can be blown up. To really make this useful, you'd have to install this technology in cars, buses, boats, suitcase, backpacks...
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Hmm! So all that terrorist now have to do is hack/hijack the GPS grid and they can crash hundreds of airplanes!
I swear some of these guys need to engage the brain.
"ABCNews recently profiled the project (with video) and also rode along with a working prototype built by Honeywell that successfully kept a Beechcraft from hitting a mountain."
:P
woulda been a bitch if the prototype didnt work as planned.
"Folks, this is your captain speaking. I'm having a bit of a bad day, so I've declared an emergency and will be coming through the cabin and killing various people until I feel a bit better and ready to land the plane. Thank you. We are now cruising at 9000 feet."
This was posted to slashdot a long long time ago.
I can't believe people would be soo strong to propose fully computer-controlled airplanes, without manual override, while most of our nations metro systems have drivers.
The factors that affect flight (I'm a private pilot pp-asel) are soo diverse and include decision making far more complex than "should I turn here to avoid airspace xyz". In an emergency - say an engine failure, oil leak, etc, pilots *are* allowed to violate any airspace restriction to avoid injury / deaths. Here are the federal regulations that are pertinent:
FAR = "federal aviation regulations" which comprise section 14 of the Federal Law Registry.
FARs part 91 = General Operating and Flight Rules
* general (non commercial) aviation falls under part 91.
FAR 91.3b = "In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency".
Far 91.141 restricts flight in the vicinity of the president and president's related parties. It is clearly in part 91, and can be deviated from in an emergency.
My flight instructor had a partial engine failure in a twin engine aircraft during training at Oakland - and dealing with the emergency required flying below a the legal 1000' altitude above populated areas. In fact he flew at 500' in the pattern which is below the "500' from people or property rule". If the plane attempted to climb on a partially failed engine, they would have likely crashed and all (3 aboard) perished.
There are 1000s of anecdotes, but feel free to go over to rec.aviation.piloting or r.a.student to read more. Having computers override pilots is a very bad idea - in the minds of virtually all actual pilots.
The likelyhood of true disasters coming from airplanes that take control from pilots is pretty high in my book. The likelyhood of armed terrorists being able to disable such a system also seems pretty high... ever heard of a wire-cutter? How about a gps jammer?
Final note: GPS is not perfect! I've flown two different C172s with Garmin 430 and 530 equipment, and both misplaced class-B (the only airspace below 18000' requiring a clearance to enter) airspaces by several nautical miles. If such gps ever misplaced a mountaintop, or the plane's position by even a couple of miles, it could forcebly cause a crash under near-ideal conditions.
n/t
"Maybe it'd save lives if the pilot had a heart attack and collapsed in his seat, but it's a stretch."
Perhaps a double-override (pilot-computer-pilot) system is needed. If the system automatically takes over in the situation, the pilot could be able to enter a code to deactivate the system. It acts as a safeguard - if the pilot passes out/is drunk/etc., the system kicks in to save the day. If the pilot knows better, they can override. If someone hacks into the system, it's not a big deal, since the pilot has final authority (assuming the override code can't be remotely modified).
In the terrorist scenario, the pilot can "be a hero" and withhold the code under pain of death (and he can't just be killed).
G
John J. Nance has a new fiction book called Skyhook ( ISBN 0-515-13712-X ) that I am currently reading about "a top-secret computer program designed to save planes in trouble."
Amazing that fiction gets closer to reality in increasing shorter time spans isn't it.
Best
TG
That's a nice and fluffy sytem that seems to work. Would anybody care trying to find some flaws in it, because it seems to me to make everybody happy!
All is good.
Camels are not a Microsoft product.
Thank you.
Basically, one uses Inertial Navigation.
We see these restrictions all around us. Water drums near highway barriers. Curbs on sidewalks. Large rocks surrounding bridge supports. Pilots are just beginning to benefit from the fact that these influences can be virtual.
But if you run into a situation driving, one may HAVE to be able to drive over the curb to avoid an accident. The curb doesn't say you can't go over it, you just know you're not supposed. You would have a similar computer in your car.. not telling you what you couldn't do, just not allowing you to go over that curb to avoid, say, a head on collision? You can't restrict that option in an emergency.
TCAS is nice. Ground proximity warnings are nice. But there's one PIC, and it can't be a computer. Your comment stating The computer won't dictate what you have to do, just what you can't. is actually backwards. An autopilot doesn't tell a pilot what the pilot can't do, instead tells a pilot when IT (the computer) can't do what it's been told (i.e. disengages if it can't maintain.
If I'm on a plane and the pilot is going to squak 7700, then he damn well better have ALL options open to him.
Pilots have a multitude of options at their disposal for avoiding collisions. Altitude changes(up OR down! Wow!), heading changes(left OR right!) and speed changes(faster OR slower!)
Hmm? I could understand if you've never been behind the yoke of an airplane, but haven't you ever at least played a flight simulator?
You can't alter one of those three parameters (altitude, heading, airspeed) without simultaneously altering the other two. If you alter your airspeed without adjusting any other controls, your altitude is going to change, for example.
If you need to put your 747 into an Immelmann or Split-S, just make sure you're not doing it into a mountain -- because the computer won't let you.
Fly by wire already does this. The aircraft is actually controlled by the computer. The pilot says 'turn left 10 deg'. The computer actually figures out how far to move the control surfaces, depending on alt, weight, speed, etc. It will not send the a/c into an Immelman.
Fighter aircraft are limited by the FCC in the same way. Limited to a specific turn or G rate depending on the load. An F-16 with 2 ea 2,000 lb bombs on the wing will not turn as hard as an F-16 with only missiles. No matter how hard the pilot wants it to.
It's a perfect reply and the current rating won't do it justice!
Airliners can land by computer, but only at properly equipped airports.
The only way to open the plane is from the outside. Then it's done.
The only way to have a 100% secure aircraft is to treat passengers like criminal. This method simply removes the ability to ram the plane into something, saving lives. This could be done on any moderately recent aircraft.
I have trouble believing this will work everywhere. In San Diego the airplanes have to land by flying over some high-rise buildings. They come within 300 feet, I believe. The system would have to be deadly accurate for this to work in those conditions (or not land on that leg of the airport anymore).
Who moved my sig?
OK, clearly most of the slashdotters don't understand what a system like this would do. First of all it will not (had better not be) connected to the internet. All hopes of crashing a plane remotely are just stupid fear mongering. Sure, a hijacker could I guess disable the system, but that would require a level of competence far beyond anyone but probably a few hundred people in the world (basically those who build and maintain the systems) and would also require a great deal more (probably couldn't be done while plane is in the air, etc....).
This system is not needed to combat terrorists (passengers could probably do that now, provided the plane has passengers and isn't a cargo plane, etc...) but the cost of it is so low that there's no reason not to implement it. If it saves even one plane from hitting a mountain (even assuming it doesn't save any lives) then the cost (400 million for a plane, maybe half a billion to implement the system...) is completely paid for already.
Basically here's what I'm getting at. No operator (of any machine basically) knows as much about the machine as the designers. If an operator tells the machine to do something that will destroy it (and probably kill lots of people) then the machine should refuse. The only possible exceptions are things like military hardware, etc... No civilian machine should ever allow an operator to do something that it knows will kill people, end of story.
Talk of terrorists turning off engines to make it crash, why. If the computer can steer it, it can surely keep the engines on as well. This won't prevent terrorists from destroying planes, that is not its purpose. It will prevent people from using planes as weapons, and much more importantly it will prevent HUMAN ERROR from destroying planes (in most cases). Obvious operator error should not be accepted by any civilian system.
Basically this is just a small part of a larger truth. Since the advent of computers, most machines can and should be smart enough to only operate in safe ways. You probably can't press buttons in an oil refinery that will cause it to explode (shouldn't be able to), and you probably can't redline your car badly enough to make it explode, etc... Basically if the captain of an oil tanker is drunk and thinks it's cool to turn towards a bunch of rocks that will rupture the vessel (exxon valdez) then the ship should simply refuse to hit the rocks. Either turn around them, stop, etc, but don't run aground. It's not complicated, not hard. Simply civilian machines shouldn't knowingly kill people or cause disasters. Simple. Hard to argue.
It's amazing that the same people who think microsoft windows sucks because it doesn't take even the most basic of security precautions (firewall, etc...) think it's perfectly OK for a machine that can kill to have a combination of settings that causes it to fail catestrophically and kill people. Is it ok for a civilian airliner to have a self destruct button that will kill everyone on board? Sure nobody would ever knowingly press it, but I guarantee that somehow, by hook or by crook, that button would be pressed by someone eventually. Why allow it?
-Tyler
tjw19@columbia.edu
How about a one-way switch? As soon as the pilot determines that there are terrorists on board he/she hits a button that cannot be undone. That button removes control from the pilot. So, the pilot retains control under normal circumstances.
Any pilots around here? (personally I would *love* to fly a plane some day, I suppose I dare not have that dream or I'll be considered a bad guy(tm))
How many F16's have been crashed compared to F15's? Remember G limits only matter if you intend to fly the plane again. There have been many military situations where the plane won't fly again but can still get the pilot home.
Not sure what you're asking for here. The restriction exists because otherwise, the wings would bend and ultimately break. If you need to bug out fast, and need max turn rate, you jettison the external weapons and do what you need to do.
Plus, the newer aircraft need to be restricted because they can actually turn harder than the pilot can endure. A unmanned, unloaded, remote control -16 or -18 (if such a thing existed) could probably pull 12 or more G routinely. A pilot cannot do that more than once.
If you're going to crash, we don't want you crashing in a densly populated area.
I think it was an Airbus autopilot that took over an airplane on landing and tried to pull up, ended up killing everyone. It was told to do a touch and go when the pilots were still trying to land.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
feed the dog, right? ;)
As a retired 20,00 hour pilot, and a retired Captgain, I find this dangerous. Let there first be a WARNING, never mind taking control of my aircraft. I recall once losing an engine out of DCA on a fully loaded B-727, and the procedure called for going straight ahead to 800', then cleaning up anfd getting speed before turning, while dumping fuel to get down to landing weight. This took me over the White House, or very nearly over it. I hate to think of what would have happened if my control was turned over to a computer. http://moregleny.com/captainedcartoon.gif
why do we even need the pilots? planes can already take off fly to a destination and land without the pilot anyway. time we got rid of them all together. they are the weak link.
Pilots have already expressed alarm over a system that does not provide a manual override. And of course a system like this doesn't help against terrorism if it has a manual override.
...
Then there is the issue of malfunction without override....
Nothing can go wrong.
Nothing can go wrong.
Nothing can go wrong.
Nothing can go wrong.
Nothing can go wrong.
After reading some (not all) of the posts I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to think about this a bit.
1. Letting autonomous systems take control has some very very important repercussions.
2. Irrespective of those repercussions it's going to happen more and more throughout our society. The longterm advantages are just too useful.
Some interesting scenario's....
Perhaps a software update that enforces no-fly zones in such a way as to force the automatic systems to crash the plane where it's wanted.
Perhaps a device that transmits to the flight controls information that results in the previous example.
Perhaps an external device that can disrupt or worse, control the onboard systems.
Of course, some such dangers are inherient in any fly by wire system. So a balance between the degree of dificulty in compromising such and the increased accuracy, redundancy, and control that fly by wire allows must be made.
Of course having systems that can't be overridden by the "pilot" (legit or otherwise) on site has it's own dangers. A massive software glitch in the systems that may autonomous control... BAD. A purposeful version of such a glitch. And any other outside interferience.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
OK, so the software can turn away a jet travelling 500 mph once it gets into a 1 mile radius of a certain metro area. Will that stop a 747 that's diving from 35000 feet at a 85 degrees down? If the pilot has final authority to push the jet into such a dive, I'm thinking there's not much the software will be able to do once it kicks in automatically. Maybe it'll attempt to pull out, which means the terrorists aim a little lower than their intended target...
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Otherwise, I agree with you, and I'm a CFII/MEI.
Like it or not, the president's administration (no matter who may be in power) has the relatively unchalenged authority to put whatever flight restrictions in place they want, which was clearly demonstrated on the days after 9-11-01 when no private aircraft of any kind could fly.
If the AOPA wants the president to have to be more accountable and timely with actions relating to TFRs, that's an issue that should be brought to Congress. The executive branch can't make laws, only suggest and approve them, and it only has the power to enforce laws on the book. If a law requires the FAA to follow certain rules when issuing TFRs, then they'll have to follow them or have their actions striken down by courts.
Our Constitution is designed to withstand a power-hungry president... simply strip most of his powers away changes to laws. If he's extremely out of line, there should be no problem getting 2/3 of each branch of Congress to create a veto-proof majority.
The white has has been burn to the ground before.
Not to mention besides, unless the pilot was very skilled, he would crash with some other object. High speeds, big bulky craft, small building, lots of other bigger buildings near by.
Here's my design for a Peer-to-Peer "SkyWeb", with communities of pilots and airtraffic controllers collaborating to keep planes on course. Every plane has redundant GPS receivers, registering their location reliably. All planes are linked to airtraffic control centers on the ground, and to each other, via redundant digital radio networks. Each node is a repeater, with satellites, buoys and basestations filling sparsely populated gaps. Every node maintains a realtime map of all the traffic in the sky, updated in realtime. The map is contained in a model of the flightpaths and airspaces, including exclusions for obstacles, weather, politics etc. Flight plans are entered before takeoff, and updated as necessary during the flight. Every node has the entire realtime model "onboard".
:).
Teams collaborate to monitor the flightpaths. Aircraft have 2-person crews which offer personal verification of local conditions they see from the cockpit. Radar and other technologies supplement the GPS and visual data with cross-correlated data - all the redundancy combines to provide a robust, consistent model of the airtraffic across the distributed system. The GUI offers a simple combined view of the actual model, annotated with essential info in colored graphical form to reflect speeds, paths, proximities, altitudes, and any special case info about the objects in the model.
Teams, led by people in the cockpit and supplemented by those on the ground, spend flight time monitoring and revising everyone's flightplans. By default the paths are autopiloted by GPS along the shared flightplan, with override available to either the ground or the cockpit, with final say in the cockpit. Pilots sharing the same zones in the sky collaborate with each other to share the coordination as they fly through it, with conflicts resolved by priority and groundcrews. The network carries the position data as well as other correlated live telemetry and voice/video communications.
For security, there are codes and controls which cockpit and ground crews can use to signal a hijacking of a given flight or other node. Once an aircraft signals it has been hijacked, its override authority vanishes, and it can be controlled only remotely. Heartbeat codes are required to periodically confirm the secure state of each node. Of course, all network communications are encrypted and authenticated for security, using CD-ROMs of onetime symmetrical passwords for the entire trip, burned on the ground.
Now we've got a robust, distributed realtime system for collaborative navigation. Everybody knows when something goes wrong, and anybody can help, according to the chain of crisis command. Air crews are no longer worn out or bored by long flights of monotonous safety, instead collaborating on all the traffic in their zone, and available to take the wheel when necessary. The security protocols allow hijackers to be largely disabled, at least from using the plane as a missile. There's a redundant group of people available to take the pressure off anyone in a crisis, and the data is validated by people with undeniable stake in the model's accuracy: the people in the air. Failover of any part of the system is immediate, whether a person, a plan, equipment, or network segment. In the event of the fewer, but probably inevitable, crashes, the "black box" data, greatly enhanced, is immediately available for review (rather than archaic scavenger hunts). Continuing risks to continued airtraffic can be assessed immediately and resolved more quickly.
The consistent model and communications will even smooth flow through airports, with minimal surprises allowing better routing to gates and taxiways. And backup systems can be located out of the centers of big cities, no doubt lowering costs. If designed and implemented properly, the overall staffing could be reduced to much more productive teams, working in more humane conditions, deserving higher pay for managing less costly, safer skies. The only real question is: "but does it run Linux?"
--
make install -not war
I f*cking hate *automagically* , it's automatically damn it!
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
This is so wrong... words almost fail me. The reasons are almos too manifold to enumerate menaingfully.
The simple version is, well, simple. If you don't know *why* an action is being attempted you have no means to know *if* it should be allowed. For instance, A guy who knows that there is a profound problem with his aircraft or his persion (having a onboard fire or heart attack and cannot safely land plane) decides to point it at that nicly unoccupied mountain so it can crash and burn with a minimal loss of life. Unfortunately once he punches out (or passes out), the "automatic no-fly system" redirects the "obvious pilot error" and safely redirects the plane into the playground or highway or hospital.
"but those places would be no fly too!" Hardly you couldn't cross any significant region of the country if every hospital and playground were tagged "no fly". Don't even get me stared on highways and suburban subdivisions blocking every path.
The VERY LST thing you want is to have a machine wrenching control away from a pilot (or driver for that matter) arbitrarily.
Other scenerios abound. Guy in bad whether blown into nearby no-fly zone. Instead of being able to correct his attitude and exit safely, the autopilot kicks in and executes a control movement that causes the plane to stall. Now you have created the very incident you alledged to want to avoid.
This, even before considering what a black-hat could do once he'd hacked the onboard map. All these no-fly-specks work to funnel a plane off course over/into DC or Manhattin and then leave the "only" valid course one that intersects a significant structure or population.
Nope, wouldn't want to fly into one of *these* "new" programmable bombs. Nosireee...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Today that plane would not have been shot down because that plane turned "before" it would have been in the no-fly zone.
Additionally, the no-fly zones are a lot larger than the "will shoot you down" zones within them. A no-fly zone is not, and could never socially survive being, a wall of death. It just wouldn't work.
[Leastwise not without a lot of automatic lazer cannons, and we saw how well those worked out for the Death Star... 8-)]
Now, if that plane had made that same turn "later" "back then" it might have gotten shot down back then if it had gotten too close to something significant.
Persons who cannot follow arguments to their conclusions, and execute the tasks of basic reason, *are* "entitled" to their opinions, but they should be beaten bloody (at the least metaphorically, but don't let that limit your options 8-) for expressing them in the presence of any equally-undescerning audience.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Gee, that'll stop terrorists. Right up until they pull a circuit breaker.
irb(main):001:0>
Ask the families of some B1 bombers pilots who died in Montana how smart it is when a computer takes over control above the wishes of the pilot. In their case, the f@#king computer decided it was smart to go down into the ground when the pilots wanted to go up. Real nice. I know the stoty personally, and it proves a point.
Sorry, we are not anywhere close to the programming needed to do this. No way. Sounds a warning alarm, but DO NOT yank the control away from a pilot!
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
But I think the idea has been done already ;)
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
It would be unsafe if my greyhound bus refused to speed, or follow any but approved roads. The bus has a human operator, who is trained to do his job, and do it well. Some times, the bus driver needs to take an alternate route. A greyhound bus is easy to take over; I am more than willing to take that risk when I travel. Personally, I'd rather risk a hostile takeover than a bus driver who can't detour in an emergency, or even to take an alternate (faster) route.
While the airplane is quite different, one thing does not change: a human operator is trained and certified in the operation of that aircraft. Electronics can fail, and do screw up. They also have a hard time when circumstances are not normal. I want a real pilot behind the controls of any plane I fly in.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
I wonder how 'safe' this really is ?
In a case the pilot HAS to make an emergency landing/etc. and cannot avoid a no fly zone, it would not be hard for the controllers on the ground to send him either an authorization code (which he punches in a computer) or a radio signal which will tell the computer to disengage auto-override (just like nuke operarors receive the final code before the launch, they never have it on them)......
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
So it should be possible to box planes into a segment of airspace and force them to fly around in circles.
It already has been in development for some time at NASA
I found this on Google: "Egyptian investigators who probed the 1999 crash of Egyptair Flight 990 in which 217 people were killed privately agreed with the U.S. view that it was probably caused by the co-pilot committing suicide, Newsweek magazine reported on Saturday." Sept. 3, 2001
In other news, shipmakers have launched a new 'un-sinkable' ship today, and dubbed her 'The Titanic'...more to come...
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
And, it only applies to aircraft flying over our airspace that they have to apply the limitation.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's not foolproof, but it does provide an extra layer of security. If the system is well designed, an incorrect code will alert the air traffic controllers, military, etc., which means that if the pilot is altruistic, he/she can give a distress code instead of deactivation. The system could even respond with an "overriden" message and allow an extra few hundred/thousand feet of leeway so that hijackers don't suspect anything, while fighter jets scramble, etc.. In fact, a "worst-case scenario" code can also lock up the system so that more codes (including the deactivation code) cannot be input, meaning that the plane cannot be crashed into anything, whether the pilot is tortured or not.
G
I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
They're also kind of important if a) you don't want the wings to break off and b) you want the pilot to not go night night.
Look, the engineers who design these things aren't stupid. Neither are the pilots. Both groups need to stop thinking the other group is out to murder them. This pissing contest does not make any sense.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Umm, 'FCC' in the previous post was referring to Flight Control Computer, not Federal Communications Commission.
So, what happens when it's compromised to not land at its intended destination, but to do a CFIT (i.e., achieve -50 AGL attitude) against a building or something as an avoidance to what it's being flown towards, such as by having a local GPS signal emitter that manages to spoof the GPS-based navigation system to think it is not where it actually is?
While it is peechee-keen and all that, most people don't even try to think like criminals, psychotics, or suicidal bombers, so they don't even start to anticipate negative situations, or accept that perhaps an obvious negative situation like this cannot be dealt with by the system, and it ends up negating the system.
(Hey, this almost sounds like Microsoft software development...)
Would it be too hard to just say F-14 and F-15? I guess that would be too low-brow.
Would the terrorists be dumb enough to believe that after 9-11 several dozen passengers on the plane would be dumb enough to buy the line "do as we tell you, don't fight back, and you'll come home alive"?
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Generally agreed, but the engineer goes home at night if his code kills a pilot. The pilot has a lot more at stake and more motivation for a "successful outcome" than the engineer on the ground ever will, when it comes to the ultimate life-and-death scenarios.
That is the number one reason there will always be a living, breathing, thinking pilot in the cockpit of anything carrying humans or flying above densely populated areas.
+++OK ATH
Well, for one, the aircraft can't if it's heavier.
But all 7.5 or 9G-limited fighters I know of do have overrides with the hard limit being much higher.
Interesting article about automatic terrain aviodance in fighters: F-16 GCAS.
The problem is weather. If you want to get to A, you sometimes point the aircraft at B. The wind plus your heading and velocity will result in a true track.
When you are landing, if you get caught in a microburst or CAT, you may sometimes need to take special actions which require pointing the aircraft in strange directions. This is especcially true if you want to do a 'go round'.
Such systems have been discussed before, but have largely been discounted because of this. I guess someone here is just screwing for pork from the Department of Homeland Insecurity.
GPWS is essentially just a downward and slightly forward pointing radar altimeter. This is the thing that gives verbal warning messages when you are to low but not in a landing configuration. It is more or less useless in mountainous terrain. You are probably referring to EGPWS which has a database of terrain heights and uses your position and heading to say whether you are about to fly into a mountain. The issue is how fine grained it is. The original just divided the world into squares with minimum altitudes). However, this is next to useless with some airports (such as Innsbruck) where the approach is down a valley.
This is by intention and even advertised as they are even advertised as ensuring "the pilot flies with the engine in an optimum configuration for lower fuel and maintenance costs".
Sorry, sometimes you need to get at every bit of power reserve or you need to make a strange manouver but you really don't want the computers to stop them.
Yeah and it would be especially ironic if terrorists had the opportunity to tune the system and have ALL planes fly straight to new "no-fly zones".
Bye bye *tower, *tagon, *
All electrical systems in an aircraft can be powered off by the aircrew. This is a non-negotiable safety requirement. There is no way a system that can control the aircraft will be allowed to be installed without a very quick and very easy way to turn it off. This is a great safety/convenience idea, a totally stupid anti terrorism idea.
Yes, they actually do turn stuff off. I have been in an E-3 AWACS with EVERY electrical system turned off as it filled with smoke. They turn them back on one at a time to see which one was smoking.
Sometimes a plane's GPS may be corrected by ground-based transmitters (DGPS). This transmission isn't 'signed' and could easily provide a path for erroneous transmissions. The encrypted channels that you refer to are reserved for military use. If you have to give them to everybody (at least to all aircraft in the US), you might as well give them to the world. AFAIK, the military system doesn't use a public-key type system and to change it would require major system changes.
Not all aircraft have Inertial Navigation fitted either (the small giros for attitude and heading may not be accurate enough over distance) and many don't have any fly by wire. In which case, the primary means of instrument navigation remains old-fashioned VOR and DME beacons. Localisation before landing can simply be obtained by enabling the transponder (ideally mode 3, that is with altitude info).
Which VOR and DME beacons you use remains soemthing that is set via the flightplan on the FMS. However it can be overriden because at anytime you may choose a different route (i.e., to land because of an onboard emergency). On the systems that I have seen, you can still put in beacon frequencies by hand and set their position (normally it comes from a Jeppson's table but that may have problems).
I smell a scam on the Department of Homeland Insecurity money pile. A better solution would be to simply require transponders to be enabled which would allow the ground to see what is happening.
FWIT, I have worked on avionics (Navigation systems incl. GPS), crypto and can just about fly a light aircraft.
why do you call them piolets when the rest of us use one letter fewer?
What I'm hearing is the difference between what a fighter pilot expects a plane to do (do what I want RIGHT NOW) and what a pilot of a large plane like a commerical or bomber expects (let's carefully plan things out).
:-)
Neither of you is wrong (or right), it's just different approaches to the task of flying a plane.
Chip H. BTW, while I was in the USAF, the closest I got to flying was a couple of hours in a T-38 simulator, and I about hurled (I was too tall and the seat wouldn't adjust down for me, and had to fly crouched down peering out the top 2" of the windscreen). I have the utmost respect for someone who does it well, unlike my 720-degree spins on the grass trying to get the rudder/brakes to respond.
Let the pilots have their manual override, just keep it secret. Let the major pilot's associations publicly oppose no manual override, while secretly knowing of its existence. Even the human factor wouldn't allow a terrorist attack:
...except in the case of "Dr. Strangelove": "What good is a mutually assured destruction deterrent if you keep it a secret? Why didn't you tell the world?"
Terrorist: "Fly this plane into that building or I'll kill you!"
Pilot: "Blow me!"
For all we know, this could already be secretly planned.
Ironically, this is the same deterrent as the nuclear build-up of the Cold War, only instead of advertising its existence, you hide it...
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
Yeah, because most engineers don't take their jobs very seriously at all, and actually sort of like being responsible for the error that killed hundreds of people.
When a pilot makes a mistake, it often kills him. When an engineer makes a mistake, it often destroys him.
Frankly, I'd rather be the pilot. But, I AM the engineer.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Fly the planes with remote and screw the pilots, their unions and the flight attendants. Those pilots and crews are only negotiating points for terrorists anyway. The airline companiess might complain about the cost of this upgrade -- but show them how much they'll save on employees/benefits/training and remind them of the many american taxpayers who are always willing to bailout some Corporation that can't survive in the free market. They'll spring for it then. Now the only problem will be monitoring the evil doers who own Airplanes and satellite technology, but then the current Lushites can create a new federal agency staffed with appropriate numbers from the Airline and Satelite Industry they're going to regulate and mandate some voluntarily regulation system. Afterall look how well this system works for environment, Agriculture, FDA and wallstreet (well, it used to work much better on wallstreet... give it a few more years or until we prosecute that evil ceo who stripped americans of their futures, you know - Martha Steward).
Whats wrong with questioning?
"Destroys" him (or her)? Ever watch "Engineering Disasters" on the History Channel?
The same engineering company that designed the structure that fell down and hurt people usually has a representative standing there explaining how they just had to "learn from their mistakes"... of course the people are still dead... and the company's still around. And the "team" isn't usually fired... that I've seen anyway.
(I know a few "Software engineers" -- I put that in quotes because there aren't any standards for software engineering and certainly it's not up to the level of quality of other engineering disciplines -- who could use a little "destruction" if this were true, since their poor programming has cost others millions of dollars and probably even ruined a few people's lives... and they're till programming.)
As an engineer AND a pilot, I want the guy who's butt's on the line (the guy in the aircraft) to have overall say in where the aircraft goes, and more importantly -- how.
Let's say the aircraft is operating in a non-standard way (already has a failure of some sort) and the automated system keeps the pilot from taking the most direct route (near or past a large building) to a safe landing. No automated system can ever have the big picture the pilot does. There'd better be an override. If there's an override a hijacker would certainly know about it, making the system utterly useless.
All engineers know the rule... "You can't fix a human problem with technology." People who hate others enough to steal aircraft and put them where they put others in danger isn't a technological problem and will never be solved with technology.
Just to be fair, there are bad pilots out there also, but the competition to fly "big iron" is high enough that the vast majority of those are weeded out before they ever get to fly an aircraft large enough to be much of a threat to structures or people, and the majority of aircraft that hit terrain are not air-carrier class aircraft. Yes, there are exceptions to that, but they're exceedingly rare and usually involve other failures (static port covered in Peru accident, controllability problems in Japan accident, etc.).
And finally, the cost of installing such a system in any aircraft pretty much makes the whole discussion moot, anyway. It's only cost-effective to design into a brand new aircraft, retrofitting existing aircraft isn't going to be something the airlines or anyone else wants to pay for.
Unless the "majority" panics, pushes it politically, and refuses to step aboard an aircraft without the technology (isn't going to happen) it's a dead technology before it even leaves the starting blocks.
The "engineering" side of me says "cool", but also very impractical. Definitely fun to think of how to implement it properly, but "not gonna happen". The pilot side of me says "I'll know where the circuit breaker is, and I don't care if it's safety-wired. It'll get pulled at the first sign it's doing something stupid so I can fly the aircraft and ensure passenger safety."
I wasn't trying to insinuate that there aren't good engineers out there, I was simply stating that there will always need to be a cockpit override for such a system and thus, the system would be useless. With the vast majority of the air-carrier fleet not even having Category III auto-land capability (due to costs) it's supremely unlikely that this company will be able to sell anyone on this technology anyway.
I wouldn't recommend anyone invest any money in it, that's for sure.
+++OK ATH
There would be several ways to disable this system. The easiest way would be to just turn it off. All you'd have to do is reach behind you to that big breaker panel and pull the right one. Or disable a system that it relies on, like the autopilot, the GPS, etc. In order for a system like this to be safe, it has to have safe failure modes, which means it has to relinquish control under certain situations.
irb(main):001:0>
Pilot error accounts for far more accidents than it is estimated have prevented. Modern computer-assisted flight has also dulled pilots' skills. There is really no excuse anymore not to take humans out of the loop.
I agree with most of your contentions. I do not agree, however, with your assertion that for all times, in all situations, the pilot is always, always, always, the best way to keep the airplane on course, as it was in the beginning, it now and ever shall be, amen.
Right now, today, there is no better system than a trained, secure pilot. However, assuming that this will always be the case is foolhardy. This soft walls idea makes a hell of a lot of sense. If the system works as designed (yes, that's a big if, requiring big piles of money) it will make air travel safer.
Is it feasible to implement? Dunno. Probably not for in-service hydraulically controlled aircraft. For next generation FBW aircraft? Sure. It's another arrow in the quiver. It's another system to help make people safe and secure in the air. Is it a panacea? No. Will it kill people? Absolutely. Will it kill fewer people than the current system? Well, that's what we're looking into.
The knee jerk "WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING TRYING TO OVERRULE THE PILOT!?" reaction is not productive. Pilots ALWAYS want more control. Most of the time, that's a good thing. Some of the time, it's not. Seems like it would be a good idea to think about the system and help shore up its shortcomings.
Autonomous systems WILL be carrying cargo in the future. In the long term, I wager that there will be an air carrier that flies people without a pilot. It is going to happen. The only questions are: how soon, how safe, how cheap?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I have no doubt that in the future this will happen, however if you look at the average age of the existing aircraft fleet, by the time I'm a very old man (or at least past the age-60 retirement rule for Part 141 air-carrier operations) only 10-20% of the fleet will have been retired. Another 10-20% new aircraft means that less than half the aircraft flying will even have a chance of being retrofitted.
I was taking this into account when I was discussing the issue -- my response was not only a knee-jerk "pilots should have control" response. Autopilots took 1/2 of the time (50 years) that aircraft have been flying to even be invented, and only in the last 1/3 of that time have they become ubiquitous in air-carrier operation -- meanwhile the majority of the non air-carrier fleet has no autopilot capability other than bizjets.
It's going to take a loooooong time to implement and like autopilots, very few aircraft owners will be able to afford it.
+++OK ATH
I don't think the parent was trying to be funny. I can empathise with DJStealth. If there's such thing as a positive karma troll, the parent deserves it!
--- root@127.0.0.1
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There are, and have been for a number of years, panel-mount GPS receivers with RAIM capability, specifically certified to allow the GPS to be used as primary navigation, and to fly standalone GPS instrument approaches. The AIM describes this in several pages of detail:
"(from 1-1-21 (a)) GPS... provides highly accurate position and velocity information and precise time on a continuous global basis to an unlimited number of properly-equipped users. The system is unaffected by weather...
"GPS provides two levels of service: Standard Positioning Service (SPS) and Precise Positioning Service (PPS). SPS provides, to all users, horizontal positioning accuracy of 100 meters, or less, with a probability of 95 percent and 300 meters with a probability of 99.99 percent. PPS is more accurate than SPS; however, this is limited to authorized U.S. and allied military, federal government, and civil users who can satisfy specific U.S. requirements."
In other words, accuracy is no issue.
The AIM also describes in detail how IFR flight can be conducted usiong GPS as a primary navigational aid. Your receiver has to be TSO C-129 certified, and handheld units, at least at this time, don't qualify. We're talking panel-mounts only. Aircraft have to have alternate means of navigation available, but AIM also states "Active monitoring of alternative navigation is not required if the GPS receiver uses RAIM for integirty monitoring. GPS can be used in the US to fly instrument approaches, and under some circumstances can be used to replace or substitute for an ADF and DME.
Dude, why does your car simply buzz for a few seconds, rather than refuse to start, when you don't put on the seatbelt? Why did we spend a couple hundred billion dollars and start two wars in reaction to an incident that killed fewer people than car accidents kill every month?
Answer these questions and you'll realize that the U.S. government is there to govern you, not to serve you.
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