B-2 Stealth Bomber Gets Upgrade, Joins the '90s

WmHBlair writes "Flightglobal has a report about the upgrades being made to the B-2A Stealth Bomber, which include Pentium class processors, JOVIAL code rewritten in C, and fibre channel hard drives. The Register, as usual, makes light of this event with a tongue-in-cheek news item noting that the upgrade drags Stealth Bomber IT systems into the '90s."

Comments

I hate to break it to anybody

[Anonymous Coward]

but microprocessors that are designed to handle a nuclear EMP aren't blazing fast. But they are definitely not 90s technology.

I think the B-2 bomber will be fine unless its pilots require the extra computing power to play "punch the monkey" or the South Park Lemmiwinks game.

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[Nyckname]

I think the B-2 bomber will be fine unless its pilots require the extra computing power to play "punch the monkey" or the South Park Lemmiwinks game.

Hey. It gets boring on twenty hour flights.

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[EdIII]

Dude, there is a toilet and a bed on those planes. PSP? DS? I am sure I could think of some things to do.

It sounds like if you brought a PSP on the flight that it would have more processing power than the plane itself.

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[Profane MuthaFucka]

>South Park Lemmiwinks game.

The B-2 is operated by the Air Force. Surely you must have been thinking of the Navy when you wrote that comment.

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[EdIII]

Well said you magnificent bastard! Well Said :)

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point - a PSP isn't designed to never have a bug during a nuclear war...

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[Oktober Sunset]

Punch the monkey will be used to get the pilots aiming skills to peak on the way to the target, at when he reaches the target, the monkey will be replaced by a command bunker.

The lemmiwinks game will keep the pilots alert and ready to manoeuvre their plane, once they reach enemy territory, their lemmiwinks instincts will help them navigate around SAM sites, enemy spotters and RADAR towers, (and of course the dreaded wind turbines), allowing them to safely reach their target, where they punch the monkey and head home, where the trajectories they learned playing Bat the Penguin, will help them land ok.

Of course this gives away the US plan to demoralise the enemy by replacing all fighter pilots with pizza faced 13 year old n00bs.

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[Nethemas the Great]

They were playing "Global Thermonuclear War" back in the early 80's on much less than Pentiums...

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[mrmeval]

Intel allowed the government to have a no-fee license to produce a radiation hardened Pentium chip. The article has some details on radiation hardening.
http://www.sandia.gov/media/rhp.htm

I've built replacement keyboard assemblies for one of the systems on that. Not sure which. It was a rf and fluid gasketed oversized heavy aluminum box. The actual keyboard was made by Cherry. I was so disappointed. It's like finding a Yugo engine in a Corvette. http://www.cherrycorp.com/

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[afidel]

Cherry used to make the ultimate datacenter keyboard, it included a shrunk 104 key beyboard and trackball that was small enough to fit it a rackmount tray. Today that's pedestrian but back in the day it was a big deal.

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[NateTech]

Yeah if you call a port-a-potty a toilet and a cot from WalMart a bed.

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[Shakrai]

Port-a-potty: check
Cot from Wally World: check
One .45 caliber automatic: check
Two boxes of ammunition: check
Four days' concentrated emergency rations: check
Antibiotics: check
Morphine: check
Vitamin pills: check
Pip pills: check
Sleeping pills: check
Tranquilizer pills: check
Miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible: check
$100 in rubles: check
$100 on gold: check
Nine packs of chewing gum: check
One issue of prophylactics: check
Three lipsticks: check
Three pairs of nylon stockings: check

Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[NateTech]

Sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than posting on Slashdot. Too bad I'm too old.

Maybe these guys would take me: 809th Fighter Squadron, Raging Peckers

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[default luser]

It sounds like if you brought a PSP on the flight that it would have more processing power than the plane itself.

Hey, it's not such a big deal when you consider the plane's mission. The plane is not to be seen. The plane is to drop a GPS-guided bomb over a target identified by GPS and visual verification.

The usual consumers of processing power on a high-end military aircraft are radar signal processing and targeting of enemy aircraft, neither of which is going to be a priority with this plane. Honestly, they're probably only doing this because the JOVIAL compilers are impossible to support, and the processors are custom and expensive.

Now, on the converse, the F-22 is finally getting an upgrade to the 1990s itself, replacing the custom CIP processors with more powerful, cheaper COTs processors from the F16 Block 60. Among other things, this will finally give it the power to perform SAR mapping. This is a very welcome upgrade, but unlike the B2 upgrade, this one has been in the pipeline for years.

(Psst. Yes, I work in the industry)

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[oiron]

One PSP: check One '90s tech processor designed to withstand thermonuclear EMPs: check

Re:I hate to break it to anybody

[mrmeval]

I suspect that was probably better made than this. We had about 20 percent fall out on them during testing. The testing was pedestrian compared to a full thermal shock and vibration test some of the stuff called for.

If you want your company to survive forever, get a your product into some weapon system. The military can't substitute some other vendors product without at minimum a metric ton of paperwork and money.

Bitchin'

[Etrias]

Can't wait to see it fire up and have the screen print out: It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Re:Bitchin'

[Atario]

More likely "It is pitch black, which is correct for a Stealth Bomber.".

Re:Bitchin'

[mangastudent]

Nah, even more likely:

It is pitch black. You are the grue.

Re:Bitchin'

[Eli Gottlieb]

I'm sorry, but I believe the scientific name for that species is vashta nerada.

Re:Bitchin'

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely:
It is pitch black. You are likely to eat the grue.

Re:Bitchin'

[LordAlced]

The bees are disappearing.

Re:Bitchin'

[patio11]

In Soviet Russia... well, good thing there is no longer a Soviet Russia, because otherwise this grue being in it would mean the end of the world no matter who gets eaten.

Re:Bitchin'

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction.

You are Richard B. Riddick.

Re:Bitchin'

[tigersha]

Fortunately, since you are in a stealth bomber the gtue can't see you and is in for a multi-megaton surprise.

Don't you mean?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

...upgrades ... include Pentium class processors ... "drags Stealth Bomber IT systems into the 90s"

89.999997612?

Re:Don't you mean?

[owlnation]

who modded that offtopic? It's clearly funny.

Re:Don't you mean?

[weetabeex]

Probably all those who wish to understand the joke.

I would, very much, like to. :-(

Re:Don't you mean?

[everett]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug

Re:Don't you mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

300lb dick? You'd need to be Paul Muad'Dib[1] to ride that motherfucker.

[1] The dude wears a gimp suit all the time. Get with the program.

Re:Don't you mean?

[balbord]

This is /.
There is no need to explain the bug! ...I think!

Re:Don't you mean?

[BigGerman]

No, they just put stickers on after upgrade: "Intel Inside - Don't Divide".

Re:Don't you mean?

[chrispatch]

I am Pentium of Borg. Division is futile! You will be approximated.

Re:Don't you mean?

[nmb3000]

Haha.

I swear, if I ever work at Intel I'll be digging up the PaintShop Pro file for the Intel poster I made a while back and printing it full size.

Although I imagine it's something of a sore subject, so maybe not a good idea :)

Re:Don't you mean?

[ben(zen)]

This is madness!

THIS IS /.!!!!
(I'm sorry.)

Re:Don't you mean?

[WingedHorse]

This is /. There is no need to explain the bug! ...I think!

I think you were joking... Perhaps? Not sure. But just generally on this subject...

There are a lot of people here who wouldn't know about those bugs. I personally study computer science (Or well, I'll start studying it in two months when the school starts again.) but have mostly done webmastering, PHP coding, Search engine optimization (as a job)... I would have no idea about some Intel Bug from the year 1994. For the record, I was 5 years old at the time.

So the audience of /. is a lot wider than many people assume and at this time of the internet, a lot of people are good in some aspects of computers (I am rather pleased in my skills at web developing) while having no clue about others (namely, hardware).

That said, ofcourse the point could could be made that if people just don't get a joke about old processor bug, they don't need to get it and it doesn't need to be explained...

Re:Don't you mean?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

That's wicked funny. How long have you been saving that?

Re:Don't you mean?

[NateTech]

You must be new here.

Re:Don't you mean?

[MyLongNickName]

I would, very much, like to. :-(

Why do I get pictures, in my head, of William Shatner, acting, when I read this?

Re:Don't you mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if that's original to you but it's funny as hell. Kudos.

Re:Don't you mean?

[tigersha]

Sir! We successfully attacked Moscow!
No you idiot! There is a mushroom cloud over Los Angeles!
But, the computer INSISTS it is Moscow!
Oh shit!

There's a Reason for That

[hardburn]

While the headline might be good for a light giggle, there's a good reason why it's 10 years behind. Airplane avionics systems must be free of bugs, or people die. That especially goes for a plane that uses a flying wing design (which are historically hard to stabilize without computer control), and potentially carries nuclear warheads.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Etrias]

Gah. Spoilsport.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[tzhuge]

In this case...

avionics systems must be free of bugs, or people don't die.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[WolverineOfLove]

Funny, while the pilots ejected, it looks like there were already some errors in the code.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[aurispector]

Not only that, though that's the main reason - The important parts are the sensors and the software. So long as the rest of the system works within spec it doesn't matter.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[ArsonSmith]

"Ultimate reliability" and "Pentium class from the 90s" just doesn't really go well together.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

More than that. Aircraft, especially military aircraft that fly at the altitudes the B2 does, also require "hardened" electronics, capable of handling much larger temperature ranges and higher electro-magnetic interference. That means the processors, while they may be Pentium class, are not Pentium's. They may even use ceramics for the ICs, but either way the new electronics would require a much larger feature size, and therefore less performance than the current cutting edge electronics.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it kind of "raison d'Ãtre" for bomber to make people die? :)

Re:There's a Reason for That

[masdog]

Yeah..because they haven't had 10 years to fix any bugs in the designs.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[CheshireCatCO]

Exactly, you beat me to the punch. The same is true in spacecraft components, which is why the computing power and other parts always seem to be so pitiful compared to current technology. (Well, plus the lag between design and actual appearance in space.) Sad, but it's most likely the best way. It's not quite as clear that the military should be quite as far behind as NASA, though.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Xiaran]

Not just avionics. Ive worked on SCADA and other mission critical systems(fire control and stuff like that). And people outside those industries are always harping on about how "backward" it all seems. If I had a penny for every dopey half wit manager type asked me why we didnt just upgrade everything(usually to Windows... windows 3.1/95 no less) Id have £56.34. Fine. If the 95 box freezes and knocks out the fire alarms reporting and evac alarms then I hope you all burn :)

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

10 years behind... err what exactly, or is the B-2 actually far ahead of other combat aircraft?
I'd like to see how many decades this is more advanced than say, the MiG-21, the most produced jet aircraft made. How many decades behind are Russia's strategic bombers?

Re:There's a Reason for That

[QuantumRiff]

I do believe they have some other exotic things, like Sapphire coatings for additional EMP protection. Stuff that is crazy-expensive!

Re:There's a Reason for That

[NETHED]

The version I heard was that there was water in a sensor that fooled the avionics computer.

Where I got the info
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/06/video-stealth-b.html

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

"pentium class", not pentium. It's actually an ARM processor (better tolerance to heat, radiation, environmental extremes, etc).

Re:There's a Reason for That

[xSauronx]

Fix it? The parts were bought from random people on craigslist ;)

Re:There's a Reason for That

[oh_my_080980980]

Right and that explains the crashes....the system was not free of bugs. Which also explains why they used a programming language called JOVIAL. Nice jobs Northrop. I guess they expected the Bomber to be retire long before the language became obsolete!

Re:There's a Reason for That

[B3ryllium]

... or the wrong people die.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly is your point?

The US Air Force, like the rest of the US military, is under the control of the civilian government of the US. Presumably, if a B2 has been tasked with blowing up some stuff, it is in accordance with the orders coming down from above. So, you would prefer the B2 to crash and kill the Air Force guys on board so it can't finish its mission? If so, why? If not, why your comment?

Perhaps you just wanted to make a random clever witticism? If so, oh wow you are so clever, I've never seen that joke before, well done you.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[shicaca]

What's a BSOD between friends?

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Free the Cowards]

It seems pretty crazy to bring down a $2 billion aircraft because a single sensor was fouled. What happened to cross checking and redundancy? Free of errors it may be, but it's certainly not as resilient as I would expect.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[halivar]

No, the GP is correct. As Patton once said (paraphrasing), "the point is not for you to die for your country, but the make the other poor bastard die for his."

Re:There's a Reason for That

[UncleTogie]

Right and that explains the crashes....the system was not free of bugs.

Was it the system, or the sensor? The article points to the sensor, and like most systems, GIGO...

Re:There's a Reason for That

[trb]

Airplane avionics systems must be free of bugs, or people die.

While I agree that the the avionics system must be safe, your statement implies that these military avionics systems are old, well-worn, and safe. But the article quoted (from The Register) notes:

A recent B-2 crash shortly after takeoff at the Pacific island of Guam was caused by a false sensor data feed into the OFP, resulting from an airspeed measuring device being affected by tropical moisture.

So moist sensors can crash a $2 billion B-2, but upgrading a 1MHz 25kB processor is too risky. I think you need to base your risk assessment on facts and statistics, rather than on black and white statements like old time-tested systems are safer than newer ones. It's possible that a newer system would have safety advantages from more modern language technology, like more type-safe, better error checking and handling, faster control loops, harder real-time, better simulation tools, etc.

I am aware that conservative groups like military ones are often more comfortable with "the devil they know," but they might not always be right.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

You must remember that weapons are not supposed to kill just anyone, just the people you want dead. An important distinction.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

... or not enough people die.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[icegreentea]

It got into 3 of 24 sensors.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[91degrees]

The other factor is that if a Pentium is fast enough, then there's no need for a faster processor. Real planes don't suffer from frame rate issues.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[fyoder]

Oughta run the latest version of Ubuntu on the latest processor from AMD. Going with OSS, if there's a bug which causes a nuclear disaster, the open source community will have a patch out within 24 hours.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[element-o.p.]

Ideally, the existence of the weapon is enough to make it unnecessary to kill anyone.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[lostguru]

How many years is it behind the strategic bombers that our enemies, the "Terrorists" have?

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Free the Cowards]

3 of 24 airspeed sensors, or 3 sensors out of 24 varied sensors for different things?

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Metasquares]

Ideally, we wouldn't even need weapons for people to avoid killing each other, but I suppose that's unfortunately impractical for a number of reasons.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[jrumney]

Being 10 years behind does not guarantee that its free of bugs if the technology has never been used in a similar scenario. How many 10 year old Pentium PC's have had to cross the date line and keep running?

Re:There's a Reason for That

[magarity]

a plane that uses a flying wing design
 
The B2 is a blended wing body, not a flying wing. For an example of a flying wing, see the YB-49.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[element-o.p.]

Point taken -- your ideal is more ideal than my ideal :)

Re:There's a Reason for That

[megaditto]

Are you sure about that? Field artillery fire control software definitely runs on windows, and from the looks of (of this I am not sure) it's a VB app.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[EdIII]

You don't NEED weapons to kill anyone. Just an XBOX, Halo 2, and a hysterically laughing room mate while you get continually "pwned" from high up with a sniper rifle. Then it just takes your hands.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

I think people tend to forget that there is more to computing usefulness than just a processors ability to think faster.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[NeilTheStupidHead]

Also, many military electronics systems use RISC processors (RADAR, SONAR and comms off the top of my head) which are hardened against EMR. More importantly: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Military tech follows a general rule: If it's built today, it was designed ten years ago, using proven tech from ten years prior.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Dewin]

I'm pretty sure a flying XBOX controller aimed precisely at your roommate's head would classify as a 'weapon'.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[couchslug]

"How many years is it behind the strategic bombers that our enemies, the "Terrorists" have?"

Do note that our conventional overmatch is one reason that our opponents are forced to fight us differently, and so far in ways that have resulted in very few casualties compared to conventional war.

Stealth aside, building large bombers has worked very well. From the classic B-52 onwards, they do useful things like haul large quantities of high explosives other systems cannot match. Improvements in tactical control mean the folks on the ground can call in tremendous force when needed.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Xiaran]

I think we are talking about different fire control systems. THo if field artillery systems are run by a VB app this might explain friendly fire incidents :)

Re:There's a Reason for That

[snilloc]

As long as it's not running win9x that should help quite a bit.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

Military strategy has come a long way in the last 70 years. The US doesn't benefit from foreigners dying:
  it erodes the political viability of the successor state
  it erodes the economic viability of the successor state
  it costs time and money to kill people and deal with the revenge
  it erodes the political support for our actions in the US

We practice "violence management." The goal is to kill people who will escalate violence, and leave everyone else alone. Certainly, its physically easier to kill everyone - but morally and politically less useful.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[bagsc]

We don't have so many "countervalue" nuclear weapons anymore. Why bother nuking a tyrant's city, when that city could rise against the tyrant? Countervalue threats only work when a government really cares about its people, and that's when the US is statistically least likely to attack it.

"Counterforce" on the other hand, is literally about protecting the American people by destroying threats.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

ie. white folk, instead of brown folk.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

they're niggers!

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

I have sold 486 class equipment to the railroad industry within the last 2 years. The reason as stated by parent and grandparent is reliability and heartiness. The 486 has been out for decades all of its critical flaws have been know for more than half that time. 486s (depending on speed) can run without heat sink (though not suggested). When millions of dollars of equipment and liability for lost life. Slow and secure is the way to go as long as it meets all technical requirements.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[HJED]

That's why they should use Java
then when the program crashes they can restart the JVM instead of the physical hard ware that would be much, much safer! :-)

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Josh Booth]

While the headline might be good for a light giggle, there's a good reason why it's 10 years behind. Airplane avionics systems must be free of bugs, or people die. That especially goes for a plane that uses a flying wing design (which are historically hard to stabilize without computer control), and potentially carries nuclear warheads.

You mean like this?

Re:There's a Reason for That

[icebrain]

3 of 24 air data sensors... which measure (among other things) pressure and temperature. You can't have a regular airspeed sensor (which is really just a glorified pressure sensor) because the hardware sticking out would ruin the stealth characteristics. Therefore, you put several pressure sensors flush with the skin in different areas, and use the various readings to figure out airspeed indirectly. You can see some of the ports for the air data system as little circles in front of the cockpit on the B-2.

For similar reasons, this is why new prototypes always have a big boom out in front. Any sensor close to the aircraft will get interference from other airflow, so you put one way out front (to get undisturbed air) and use that to calibrate your data.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt the extra lag is due to DoD "Black Program" overhead.

I used to work at NASA - we deployed hundreds of 64-bit servers and workstations in 1993 - well before the reset of the world. I did some clearance work while there - the extra overhead of that work when compared to non-clearance work was not insignificant. DoD requirements add overhead - real overhead to hardware and software projects.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Free the Cowards]

Then I have to wonder why the thing even has 24 sensors if it can be taken out by screwing up 3 of them. As I said, surprising lack of resiliency.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Nutria]

ie. white folk, instead of brown folk.

You must not realize how many brown folk live in the US.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[hardburn]

Oh, god, I can just see Clippy trying to help out:

"It looks like you're trying to barrage the enemy line. Would you like to read historical documentation on battles involving barrages?"

Or maybe UAC will kick in:

"Howitzer is trying to launch a shell. Allow or Deny?"

Re:There's a Reason for That

[ari_j]

I'm very comforted to know that the military is just as far behind as NASA, actually. Of course, that's what they want me to think. ;)

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Christopher_G_Lewis]

I posted this below:

http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN12-18-98/intel_story.htm

1998 Intel and the US Gov starting working on hardened Pentium CPUs.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Cjstone]

well before the reset of the world

Wait... They reset the world? Why wasn't I informed?

Re:There's a Reason for That

[TapeCutter]

Once the plane is up in the sky nobody will ever rewrite the whole system, Critical systems are built via evolution not revolution. Fixng the moisture bug on a 'time tested' system is not only safer it is infinitely more efficient than rewriting the code and suffering the cost and time of retesting everything in order to reduce the number of bugs in the new system.

"So moist sensors can crash a $2 billion B-2, but upgrading a 1MHz 25kB processor is too risky."...and expensive.

Yes, the moist sensor thing is a bug in an otherwise very stable system. The bug could very easily turn out to be a bug in sensor maintenance or production procedures, 3/24 is a very high failure rate for such an important part of the system. The application itself is probably running as specified (ie: the MTBF for the sensors would be specified such that the odds of 3 bad sensors are theoreticaly minute but non-zero), the result of that long shot eventuating results in a GIGO problem.

"I think you need to base your risk assessment on facts and statistics"

When lives and/or billions of dollars are at stake engineers do just that, (politicians have a different way of thinking). Age alone is not an indicator of stability but by definition a stable system is one that has run for a long time with few problems, ie: longer up-times between bug reports can only be demonstarted for a 'time tested' system. No system capable of flying a plane is foolproof or bug free but statistically they are safer than driving a car. These statistics are based on emprical evidence from the system in production therefore any replacement system you can possibly dream of can only be demonstrated to be safer than the old system by becoming 'time tested' itself.

Discaimer: In the early 90's I witnessed a completed 2yr/$20 million telco project get permenently shelved because of a dispute over a single feature that was not included in the new system. The problem was a financial 'mexican stand off' due to bad requirements gathering, the customer insisted the feature was part of the project and wanted it for free, the vendor insisted it wasn't requested nor was it in the old system, they wanted an extra $250K to implement it. Ego's took over and rather than split the difference lawyers and accountants were brought in. Pilot turned into an arse covering beauracracy dedicated to recording who spent time on what, contract developers scattered to more sane employers, pilot shutdown, the net result was $20m worth of coding/testing to build a still born system.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Zymergy]

Actually, the B2 has been retrofitted (sans rotary munition magazine) to hold a really really really big *something* supposedly called the 'M.O.P.':
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1915871/posts
Excerpt: "$88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP. The MOP is the the military's largest conventional bomb, a super "bunker-buster" capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground."
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/7/26/212543.shtml

I can see Kucinich running around screaming 'the sky is falling' and 'Impeach' in the same sentience... (Personally, Mr. Kucinich, I am not too keen on Iran *EVER* having *ANY* nukes, despite potential for local Iranian nuclear contamination to their environment!!! The idea is to to keep the radiation contained OVER THERE not to have a big boom OVER HERE!! ). http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/1108-21.htm

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Dun Malg]

...From the classic B-52 onwards, they do useful things like haul large quantities of high explosives other systems cannot match. Improvements in tactical control mean the folks on the ground can call in tremendous force when needed.

As a dirt-eating infantry guy, this is a pet peeve of mine. I feel a rant coming on...

The trouble is, the contemporary battlefield doesn't need the "tremendous force" of 38 tons of bombs, from 35K feet, that'll be here in 14 hours (B-52 from Diego) or worse, 40 hours (B-2 from freakin' Missouri!). There isn't a bunch of factories with static GPS coordinates that can be preloaded by ground crews into GPS guided weapons. It's largely just guys like me, calling on a radio, asking for a couple 500 pounders on the ridgeline 3 klicks away, to get two dozen guys with RPGs and machine guns, NOW!. The B-52, B-1, and B-2 just don't fit into that equation.

Modern air-to-ground warfare doesn't need "big" strategic bombers like that. For the last 50+ years, the US Air Force has been living in a fantasy world, a sepia-toned universe where it's perpetually 1950, where bombers were the strategic "big stick" that brought down the Nazis, and were the Alpha-to-Omega of nuclear weapons delivery. The trouble is, the former is a self-delusional lie, and the latter keeled over with the ICBM and finally died with the USSR in 1990. The Air Force mythology of strategic bombing is based on the largely pointless high-altitude mass bombing of Europe in WW2. The Key West Agreement of 1948 which separated the Air Force as its own service, separate from the Army and forbidding the Army to operate aircraft, centered heavily on the "success" of the strategic bombing of Germany, particularly the crippling of the German ball bearing manufacturing. Funny thing is, decades later when Albert Speer was asked about this, his reply was (paraphrased) "They were trying to bomb our ball bearing factories? If so, we had no idea."

The practical upshot of all this is that the Air Force was founded on a fantasy which continues to hamper its effectiveness to this day. Granted, my view on the subject is heavily colored by my 16 years as a lowly grunt in the Army, hiding in holes trying to get effective close air support from those guys; but I think my view is pretty accurate. There aren't any more superpowers to mount a credible air defense, to put up a serious opposition. The one thing that we really need from the Air Force is the one thing that they've consistently tried to get out of providing: Close Air Support. Air Force brass had the unmitigated gall to try to retire the A-10 in the 90's and "replace" it with the F-16! They constantly push for more air-superiority and high altitude bombing assets when the cold hard reality is that we don't need that. Contemporary warfare is non-linear, against small bands of irregulars operating in primitive conditions. As infantrymen, what we need from the Air Force is all-weather, low-altitude, precision ordinance delivery, but we hardly ever get it!. If I had a nickel for every time I saw the Air Force drop in the wrong place, or worse, "call in sick" because of bad weather, I'd have a hell of a lot of nickels. The military has always been a hotbed of backstabbing, featherbedding, and general power politics, and the Air Force continuing live in its glory days of WW2 is a prime example (don't even get me started on the Navy, they're even worse). The Army has managed to fill some of its air needs via helicopters--- and getting the Air Force to let us have those was a fight--- but helicopters are lightweight, short range assets. We need fixed wing air support, particularly in Afghanistan where altitude and weather make helicopter operations near impossible. Personally, I think the Air Force should turn over the A-10 and AC-130 assets to the Army and let us do our own close air support, and they can go sit around in their giant strato-bombe

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Dun Malg]

The B2 is a blended wing body, not a flying wing.

Actually, it pretty evenly straddles the line. It has a distinct "body" structure like a BWB, but the "body" is not particularly prominent and it doesn't have distinct and separate wing structures. The B-2 is generally considered a hybrid flying wing

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

You were, before the reset.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Hal_Porter]

What if the US has to fight China over Taiwan? Or support Japan being attacked by China? Or anywhere being attacked by China.

Then I'd say you'd need all the carpet bombing and nukes you can get. More to the point if the US has the capability to do this stuff, the Chinese will most likely not start the war in the first place.

The great irony of your post is that if policy makers listened then in 20 years time I'd be reading similar posts from US soldiers fighting in some big conventional war complaining that the only available weapons systems were designed for use against a few poorly armed insurgents in house in some third world shithole, not armoured battalions and hostile navies built by large industrialized state bent on occupying a US ally, when if the US had ignored you they would most likely not have had to fight at all.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

That especially goes for a plane that uses a flying wing design (which are historically hard to stabilize without computer control)

The Horton brothers seemed to manage ok...

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Nossie]

The sad thing is ... USA would never attack China... Would never support Taiwan, and would never return to N Korea...

BUT... the Question is, would China take that bet? and is there any oil where China is likely to invade?

America, as long as they are backwards we can bomb them further back.

Face it, if America had any interests outside of its own greed S. Africa & Congo would be showering you all in thanks.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[CmdrGravy]

Or in the case of the B-2 BOMBER things go wrong and people don't die.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[CmdrGravy]

I made the same comment as the parent poster too.

So, you would prefer the B2 to crash and kill the Air Force guys on board so it can't finish its mission? If so, why?

Yes, since I am not an American I think it's probably preferable for the crew of the plane to die than for them to complete their mission and, for example, kill hundreds of women and children attending weddings. They have after all chosen to fight for their country and accepted they may die whereas their innocent victims have made no such choice.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Hal_Porter]

The sad thing is ... USA would never attack China... Would never support Taiwan, and would never return to N Korea...

BUT... the Question is, would China take that bet? and is there any oil where China is likely to invade?

America, as long as they are backwards we can bomb them further back.

Face it, if America had any interests outside of its own greed S. Africa & Congo would be showering you all in thanks.

I'm in Taiwan now and the the US sent to aircraft carriers to patrol off Taiwan last time there was an election here. And actually if the US hadn't regularly sent an aircraft carrier or two when there was an election Taiwan would likely have been swallowed up long ago and there wouldn't be any elections here.

And back in Cold War I'm pretty sure the US would have fought the Russians if they'd have invaded West Europe even if that have ended up in a full on nuclear exchange. And then there's the issue of the US slogging through France to get to Germany in WWII, or planning to invade Japan. Basically, as Patton put it, all real Americans love to fight. And the US's foreign policy and military capability reflect this. Even when they're not fighting, the fact that they could tends to force their opponents to shelve their plans for conquest.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[donscarletti]

Why bother nuking a tyrant's city, when that city could rise against the tyrant?

Because it will probably rise against the WRONG tyrant.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[bloobloo]

Most likely (IANAB2E) the calculation degrades. With all 24 sensors in operation, you will get A% accuracy. With 23 sensors you will get A-B%, 22 sensors you get A-B-C% etc.

At some point the accuracy will drop to a low enough level that if it happens in the air you will probably be okay to land, but you don't want to take off again until the problem is resolved.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[advocate_one]

Bzzzt... wrong... they do suffer from "frame rate" issues. The mission computer of the system I work with automatically removes the low priority symbols from the HUD and Multi-Function displays if there's not enough time to draw everything in the cycle time allocated. ie, it draws them last normally and if there isn't enough time left, it doesn't bother drawing them and starts from the high priority ones first again.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[getuid()]

... or the wrong people die.

There's no right people when it comes to death by thermonuclear bomb.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[greyhueofdoubt]

Your ideas are all well and good right up until war is not based on tactical ground actions any more. I am in the air force and I agree that our role is ridiculously inflated, but we do play a role. I do not see, however, what would be gained by rolling the air force into the army or vice versa. The AF has lots of ground troops and frankly I don't see them ever because I work on jets. If we were in the same branch, you wouln't ever see me because when I'm in Iraq, I spend most of my time working in the HAS's on our jets or sleeping. If the army took over our c-130 assets, they would belong to an 'army aeronautical division' or something and functionally would very closely resemble the current situation.

Unless your idea is that 11 bravos would fix, fuel, load, and direct their own aircraft. That's not much different from the air force saying that IT ought to just have a private army of its own that understood the strengths and limitations of air power, etc. We do aircraft and airfield security, you guys go outside the wire. That's just the way it is. Aircraft maintainers don't go outside the wire- it's not a place where we're useful. You could train us to be ground troops but that completely negates the advantages of division of skilled labor where you get really good at shooting people and I get really good at keeping jets from falling out of the sky.

And btw the A-10 is not retired. If you can track down a copy of the july-august Airman magazine, A-10s in afghanistan are the cover story. I personally work on f-16s and my base is one of only a few with some very advanced targetting systems and the pilot training to match. I would put our 16s against vanilla a-10s any day for recon and bomb drops. For close-in ground support the army DOES have its own aircraft, they're called ah-64 gunships and they're everywhere in iraq. Those things will end a party like no one's business and that's why YOU HAVE THEM. And so if you want to get mad that your close-in air support sucks, talk to your apache pilots.

Maybe we'll run into each other over there- I'll buy you a NA beer.

-b

Re:There's a Reason for That

[AP31R0N]

There was a time when the USAF decided that all air to air fighting would happen via missiles, and so, left out guns in the fighters. Korea showed that to be wrong thinking. While our current conflicts are low intensity and door to door, that doesn't mean that an old school throw down will never happen again. It would be naive to get rid of heavy bombers. Some day we might have an actual war to fight.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

i gave you the flamebait; criticizing the other branches for their service to the country is really tacky; you have some valid points, but you descended into some real BS too. Honestly, I'm in the USMC and you should see yourselves from our eyes (assuming you want to continue being viewing each other with closed minded stereotypes)

My wifes in the Navy, have had uncles in the Army and National Guard, a father in the Air Force, and cousins in the Coast Guard; everyone does what is right for them. Your complete lack of respect for others services flat out sucks.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[B3ryllium]

I just meant "not the pilot(s)". Heh.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Hyppy]

That depends on the severity of the nuclear disaster. All the Hot Pockets and Jolt Cola in the world wouldn't provide enough radiation immunity to be able to churn out a stable system before death.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Free the Cowards]

I understand that, but 3 out of 24 seems like it's way too early to get to the "you will crash and burn" stage. Especially since the 10-knot speed difference should have been easily detected on the plane's INS and GPS systems, and the erroneous pitch attitude should have been easily detected based on the internal gyroscopes.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[downhole]

Agreed. It may be true that Mr. Dun Malg and his buddies deserve better close air support than they're getting, but we also have to keep in mind that this is unlikely to be the last war we ever have to fight, and the next war won't necessarily be the same as this one. Given that the world-class B2/F22 aircraft take decades to develop and any future major war is likely to be a matter of months or maybe weeks, I'd rather have the high-end stuff around now, in case we need it later. Not to discount the courage and sacrifice of our current soldiers in this war, but it'll all look like pocket change if another major war happens, especially if we don't have the right gear to fight it when it starts.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[ChrisA90278]

"The trouble is, the contemporary battlefield doesn't need the "tremendous force" of 38 tons of bombs, from 35K feet,"

You are wrong about that. The war in Bosnia was ended by a single large bomber mission. Prior to that mission close air support aircraft were attacking single vehicles one at a time. Then the Serb army massed for an offensive but before they could launch it a b2 was re-directed in flight. They lost about 250 men in that one B2 attack. This caused the Serb army to rebel against their government, saying in effect we are not going to fight any more.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[RocketRay]

It's largely just guys like me, calling on a radio, asking for a couple 500 pounders on the ridgeline 3 klicks away, to get two dozen guys with RPGs and machine guns, NOW!. The B-52, B-1, and B-2 just don't fit into that equation.

Beg to differ on the B-1. The B-1's current mission in Afghanistan is to loiter in the area, waiting for a call for support from the ground. They can deliver weapons to the target in 10 to 15 minutes. Here's an example: http://youtube.com/watch?v=qXR3nEFAok4

Re:There's a Reason for That

[XDirtypunkX]

That and it takes that 10 years for the specifications to seep through the military bureaucracy when the plane already "works".

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

based on the internal gyroscopes.

Gyroscopes? Welcome to the sixties, pal.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Free the Cowards]

Please tell me, then, how do you maintain orientation without outside references?

And don't even think of telling me about ring-laser gyros, that's just a solid-state gyroscope.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Agripa]

EMP protection is fairly straightforward compared to radiation hardening since you can use faraday shielding and circuit designs tolerant of EM overload although the semiconductor process itself may place some limitations on the later.

For radiation hardening, shielding is often secondary to the semiconductor process since in some cases it just makes for a larger cross sectional target. Early IC processes used junction isolation which is very susceptible to radiation induced carrier generation. Dielectric isolated processes are inherently much more radiation resistant and silicon on insulator ones should be even more so. Silicon on sapphire shares the same advantages as silicon on insulator. None of the later though with the exception of silicon on insulator are really commodity processes.

Forgive me if I got some details wrong. It has been a few years since I read my Harris Radiation Hardening handbook. :)

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

And we thank you both for what you're doing, Army and AF.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[couchslug]

I do think the Army should shitcan the Key West agreement and get its own smaller CAS/BAS birds, but it seems like no one wants to risk pilots so they are moving to UAVs.
Recon and strike with UAVs gets rid of airborne FACs
and doesn't require expensive SAR assets since there are no downed aircrew to rescue.

"Personally, I think the Air Force should turn over the A-10 and AC-130 assets to the Army and let us do our own close air support, and they can go sit around in their giant strato-bombers and hyper-sonic stealth fighters and have a good ol' circle jerk while we get the warfighting done."

Get leaders who want that, and also buy some propeller-driven attack aircraft so you get better loiter time and combat performance at cheaper flight hour cost than helos. The Army should never have dumped the Mohawk.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Dun Malg]

Your ideas are all well and good right up until war is not based on tactical ground actions any more.

Sorry? I thought my entire point was that contemporary warfare is almost entirely tactical in nature.

I am in the air force and I agree that our role is ridiculously inflated, but we do play a role. I do not see, however, what would be gained by rolling the air force into the army or vice versa.

I never suggested that. My half serious, half facetious suggestion was that if the Air Force is so fixated on strategic bombing and doesn't want to provide CAS, maybe it ought to turn over its CAS assets to the Army, which has a strong personal interest in CAS and will make good use of those assets.

The AF has lots of ground troops and frankly I don't see them ever because I work on jets.

Indeed. I worked closely with several Air Force forward air controllers in Afghanistan. My views on the problem with CAS and the Air Force are derived mostly from their complaints about their own service!

If the army took over our c-130 assets, they would belong to an 'army aeronautical division' or something and functionally would very closely resemble the current situation.

Well yeah. The Army already has substantial aviation assets. My arguments assume nothing unusual.

Unless your idea is that 11 bravos would fix, fuel, load, and direct their own aircraft. That's not much different from the air force saying that IT ought to just have a private army of its own that understood the strengths and limitations of air power, etc.

Well no, it's distinctly different. The Army already has aviation assets in the CAS role, and the advantage of that is obvious to anyone who's ever seen an AH-64 or even an armed OH-56 in action. Again, I think you've misunderstood my point. The Air Force as described by the 1948 Key West Agreement is so strongly tied to the vision of its de facto founder, Curtis LeMay, that to this very day its leadership has difficulty seeing aviation in terms outside of strategic bombing. The trouble this causes with the Army is that the Air Force is also supposed to provide CAS for ground forces. Being a separate service, the Army has limited means to affect the direction the Air Force goes when questions of budgetary priority come up. CAS assets are routinely marginalized, while strategic assets of questionable necessity are emphasized. The reason the Air Force doesn't need "a private army of its own that [understands] the strengths and limitations of air power" is that the Air Force isn't interested in ground warfare, and that's the problem!

And btw the A-10 is not retired.

Friend, re-read what I wrote. I said they tried to retire the A-10 in the 90's. They were not successful, largely because their "replacement"--- the F-16--- was totally unsuited to the role.

If you can track down a copy of the july-august Airman magazine, A-10s in afghanistan are the cover story.

I don't need to. I watched three of them fly a racetrack pattern around a ridge in Paktia in SE Afghanistan, putting down ordinance. It's very impressive.

I personally work on f-16s and my base is one of only a few with some very advanced targetting systems and the pilot training to match. I would put our 16s against vanilla a-10s any day for recon and bomb drops.

See, this is the exactly the problem I'm talking about. Much of the Air Force leadership doesn't seem to understand what constitutes good CAS. It's not putting an Mk82 inside a 10' painted circle on a dry lake bed outside Nellis from 5000' AGL at 600 knots using CCIPP. Good CAS is being able to stay on station for a long time until a "bad guy" finally groundhogs up, at which point the FAC gets on the radio and say, "second ridge, 100 meters above th

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Dun Malg]

i gave you the flamebait; criticizing the other branches for their service to the country is really tacky

Oh, come on, you're reading too much into my rant. My complaint is with the feudalistic, dog-in-the-manger attitude of the military leadership, not with the level of service provided by the real military folks, the enlisted, NCOs, and junior officers of all services that have to do the real work.

Honestly, I'm in the USMC and you should see yourselves from our eyes (assuming you want to continue being viewing each other with closed minded stereotypes)

Shrug. I know what the USMC (stereotypically) thinks of the Army in particular, and the rest of the military in general. Some of it's true, and some of it is bullshit. I have nothing bad to say about the Corps that applies to the rank and file on the front lines. My criticisms are pretty much confined to the actions of gerneral staff, the pencil pushers. I understand that the USMC values its history very highly, even to the point of some members threatening physical harm to anyone who dares suggest that perhaps the United States shouldn't have two separate sets of ground forces. I know it upsets them, but the fact remains that the USMC is administratively and historically a part of the Navy, and that the modern Corps is the result of a pissing match between the Navy and the Army in WW2. The Navy didn't want to just be a "taxi service" for the Army, and managed to divide the pacific theater in two, expanding the Corps in the process to fill the new ground warfare role they'd created for themselves. If you can step away from the personal investment in it and look at it rationally, it's pretty clear that having the Navy run its own miniature army is irrational.

My wifes in the Navy, have had uncles in the Army and National Guard, a father in the Air Force, and cousins in the Coast Guard; everyone does what is right for them. Your complete lack of respect for others services flat out sucks.

You need to separate out my narrow-focus logical arguments from your preconceived prejudices. I challenge you to quote where I disrespected in any way whatsoever the enlisted, NCOs, or junior officers (i.e. the REAL military) of any service. I did not. This is not a case of the usual parochial interservice rivalry, a la "jarheads suck, hur hur hur", or "air force is lame". Sure, I said the Air Force and Navy brass have their collective head stuck in their glory days of WW2. Sure, I said the USMC might be better as part of the Army rather than the Navy. But these are exclusively criticisms of the decisions of fruit-salad and scrambled eggs uniformed jackasses in air conditioned offices in DC. Hell, I could go on at length about the ridiculous bullshit foisted upon the ranks by the Army leadership as well: ACU uniform "here I am!" camo pattern, MOLLE-II, Stryker--- the list goes on forever.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Dun Malg]

Beg to differ on the B-1. The B-1's current mission in Afghanistan is to loiter in the area, waiting for a call for support from the ground. They can deliver weapons to the target in 10 to 15 minutes.

Point taken. It fits the general theme, though, as the B-1 is a strategic bomber pressed into service in a role it wasn't designed for. Also, putting Mk84's on ANYTHING is stretching the definition of CAS. I wouldn't want to be anywhere "Close" to a 2000 pounder.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Dun Malg]

"The trouble is, the contemporary battlefield doesn't need the "tremendous force" of 38 tons of bombs, from 35K feet,"

You are wrong about that. The war in Bosnia was ended by a single large bomber mission. Prior to that mission close air support aircraft were attacking single vehicles one at a time. Then the Serb army massed for an offensive but before they could launch it a b2 was re-directed in flight. They lost about 250 men in that one B2 attack. This caused the Serb army to rebel against their government, saying in effect we are not going to fight any more.

That's not the "contemporary battlefield" I'm referring to--- that's a strategic target. They also hit several bridges. Bosnia is an example of an appropriate application of strategic assets. The fact that they were initially attempting to treat Bosnia as a tactical situation when it wasn't has nothing whatsoever to with what ground forces in contact with the enemy need in terms of Close Air Support. A B-2 at 30K feet is not an effective CAS asset. I'm not saying that there's no mission for strategic bombers, I'm just saying that CAS isn't it!

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Dun Malg]

Agreed. It may be true that Mr. Dun Malg and his buddies deserve better close air support than they're getting, but we also have to keep in mind that this is unlikely to be the last war we ever have to fight, and the next war won't necessarily be the same as this one. Given that the world-class B2/F22 aircraft take decades to develop and any future major war is likely to be a matter of months or maybe weeks, I'd rather have the high-end stuff around now, in case we need it later. Not to discount the courage and sacrifice of our current soldiers in this war, but it'll all look like pocket change if another major war happens, especially if we don't have the right gear to fight it when it starts.

I agree completely. I think there's a definite need for air superiority fighters and strategic bombers. I also think there's a definite need for dedicated close air support aircraft, and in my experience that's where the Air Force brass have a blind spot. Being an Air Force, they repeatedly fail to look at things from the perspective of the ground forces. It's a classic case of "when all you have is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails". The trouble with that is, the Air Force seems to have an institutional hammer fetish, when what the Army needs from them (and is legally prohibited from procuring for themselves) is a screwdriver!

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Dun Malg]

The great irony of your post is that if policy makers listened then in 20 years time I'd be reading similar posts from US soldiers fighting in some big conventional war complaining that the only available weapons systems were designed for use against a few poorly armed insurgents in house in some third world shithole, not armoured battalions and hostile navies built by large industrialized state bent on occupying a US ally, when if the US had ignored you they would most likely not have had to fight at all.

Yet another failure of reading comprehension, putting words in my mouth. Read my post for content again, please. I never once called for the elimination of strategic air assets. Strategic bombers and air superiority fighters should remain part of the Air Force. My complaint is about the Air Force's apparent distaste for providing Close Air Support and maintaining in inventory aircraft capable of filling that role, which is part of the Air Force's job.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Nimey]

Er, no. Vietnam showed that the all-missile fighter was a mistake. Korean War-era fighters were all-gun and later on ours had unguided air-to-air rockets that were radar-triggered.

Early Vietnam-era fighters, such as the F-4, lacked guns because the brass thought the days of guns were over. Fairly quickly they were augmented with gun pods like the SUU-16 and -23 (inaccurate and draggy), and later on internal guns were brought back in the F-4E. Communist MiG-17s, slow and maneuverable, would close into gun range to engage our fighters, who could of course not fight up close like that.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Dun Malg]

i gave you the flamebait

I would also like to add the following advice: it is not enough to check the "post anonymously" box. Your "flamebait" mod disappeared when you posted, regardless. You need to actually log out to leave your mods in place and post too.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Dun Malg]

I do think the Army should shitcan the Key West agreement and get its own smaller CAS/BAS birds

I have no doubt they would, if they could. Unfortunately, Key West is essentially an iron collar on the Army's neck, and the Air Force holds the leash.

"Personally, I think the Air Force should turn over the A-10 and AC-130 assets to the Army and let us do our own close air support

Get leaders who want that

Easier said than done. You'd need leaders in the Air Force willing to "sell themselves down the river" by giving up big swath of their responsibility--- and budget. It'll never happen.

and also buy some propeller-driven attack aircraft so you get better loiter time and combat performance at cheaper flight hour cost than helos. The Army should never have dumped the Mohawk.

Damn straight. The Mowhawk was the Army's first attempt to take back CAS, but the Air Force cried and had it relegated to corps or higher use, where it was essentially unusable for anything but observation duties. The Air Force, of course, didn't fill in the gap it created by neutering the Mowhawk. Just another case of petty politics trumping military need. The AF is famous for its dog-in-the-manger approach the CAS, much to the dismay of those who depend upon timely CAS to survive...

Re:There's a Reason for That

[shutdown -p now]

The USSR is gone, but China is here to stay.

Keep your stategic bombers, you might still need them. If only solely as a deterrent.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[erple2]

Communist MiG-17s, slow and maneuverable, would close into gun range to engage our fighters, who could of course not fight up close like that.

Almost. The main reason things were so wacky was because there was a requirement that you have visual confirmation that the blip on the radar was, in fact, a bogey. Visual range for positive ID isn't all that far, maybe a couple of miles. At that range, you're now in gun range, which, when you lack a gun is like the old adage:

"Never bring a Intercontinental Ballistic Missile with Nuclear Warheads to a Knife fight"

Re:There's a Reason for That

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we're the poor bastards that are dying for someone else's country.

Re:There's a Reason for That

[couchslug]

The Marines also killed their Broncos, due to paranoia at losing a couple of them during Desert Storm.

The USAF FAC community died out as the Bronco and Skymaster were surplused (Broncos are still flying counterdrug ops, the airframes weren't worn out) and the OA-10 designation was created as a sop. (I worked OVs at Sembach, and was later stationed at Shaw as they and the 0-2s were boneyarded.}

"Unfortunately, Key West is essentially an iron collar on the Army's neck, and the Air Force holds the leash."

The Army isn't exactly tugging on that leash. It's more like mutual rice bowl protection.

The mandatory comment

[MaulerOfEmotards]

Is that enough to run Linux on?

Re:The mandatory comment

[aardwolf64]

Well, considering they can get Linux to run on a toaster, you'd think that would be a no-brainer...

Better functionally quaint than gee-whiz and oops

[ScentCone]

As was recently discussed about the current Mars lander mission, it's really just fine if something built to do a very specific job doesn't have support for this week's gamer-friendly video board, a hacked Wii controller, bluetooth, and a dozen USB ports. Hardened, reliable hardware and bug-free seems better than, say, some of the misadventures that some IT-intensive commercial aircraft have suffered over the last few years. It's OK to be one notch less cool when you're flying around with large weapons.

Not surprised, even if I am amused

[Duncan Blackthorne]

Having worked for a defense contractor (non-weapons, mind you) for 6 years, it doesn't surprise me at all that the technology for such things are at least 10 years behind state of the art. It takes so long to fully satisfy the requirements of a military contract, then it takes at least as long to fix all the little bugs that inevitably pop up after delivery; then there's the military amending their requirements halfway through the project, sometimes resulting in having to go almost all the way back to square one in the design cycle. Oh, and don't even get me started on requirements that belong in cartoons and comic books, not the real world of engineering.

Re:Not surprised, even if I am amused

[ckthorp]

Oh, and don't even get me started on requirements that belong in cartoons and comic books, not the real world of engineering.

You make me want examples. Something to brighten up my week.

Re:Not surprised, even if I am amused

[ArsonSmith]

Yea, at least dealing with the private sector and private contracts you don't have to worry about any of those issues.

Re:Not surprised, even if I am amused

[Anonymous Coward]

At least dealing with the private sector you can deal with the usual bullshit without having to worry every night, just before you fall asleep, how many people you're killing.

Re:Not surprised, even if I am amused

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard a rumor that the entire thing was built with Microsoft Access. Sexy

Re:Not surprised, even if I am amused

[AbRASiON]

"Oh, and don't even get me started on requirements that belong in cartoons and comic books, not the real world of engineering."

So you bait us with some potentially interesting and funny stories but tell us not to get you started?!
Come now cough up on the idiocy, it sounds fun.

Re:Not surprised, even if I am amused

[linzeal]

Those people are not armed with nuclear weapons and prisons.

Re:Not surprised, even if I am amused

[tinkerghost]

Oh, and don't even get me started on requirements that belong in cartoons and comic books, not the real world of engineering.

I recall spec testing a label that was supposed to go on a part in an Abrams tank .... seems the spec was written for an aluminum part on an older tank. They had a hissy fit when I returned a puddle of congealed plastic with a label sticking out of it.

Re:Not surprised, even if I am amused

[WhatsAProGingrass]

I've worked on weapons systems for the past 6 years now also. Everything is 10 years behind because of paperwork, lack of motivation, easy money for doing nothing, having 10 bosses. I work on equipment that is 30 years old and I find 100's of bugs in the software still. I find software that does not even come close to meeting the hardware specs. I find software tha is asking for more accuracy than the physical device can even achieve. We are 10 years behind because we can afford to pay all these people to maintain such crap.

Re:Not surprised, even if I am amused

[TheStonepedo]

+1 Insightful
-1 Funny
I recently completed an HVAC/Plumbing design project with a dozen distinct areas of work spread across a dozen sheets only to have it canceled, reincarnated as a "limited" project with only two of the original areas of work, then expanded to have all but one of the original requirements.
The people doing work rarely know and even more rarely need to know exactly what their clients have in mind; it may cause a few hours to be billed for work re-done, but far more hours (at more dollars per hour) would be wasted if a project manager/supervisor had to describe in detail that project's requirements.

Re:Not surprised, even if I am amused

[Duncan Blackthorne]

Strangely, I did post some examples, but they mysteriously didn't show up here. When I have some time I'll write them up again.

Security by oldness

[Plazmid]

This is an interesting approach to security, use machines so old that no one can crack. Maybe that's why the Russians still use vacuum tubes in MiGs.

Re:Security by oldness

[Darkness404]

Or, it can be used to strip things down to the bare minimum to decrease vulnerabilities. For example, is a server powerful enough to run X? Yes, but using X adds more problems and security holes. Same thing with this.

Re:Security by oldness

[boa]

This is an interesting approach to security, use machines so old that no one can crack. Maybe that's why the Russians still use vacuum tubes in MiGs.

Maybe, or maybe they do it to protect their planes from EMP? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_bomb#Effects

Re:Security by oldness

[TeknoHog]

This is an interesting approach to security, use machines so old that no one can crack. Maybe that's why the Russians still use vacuum tubes in MiGs.

When the only tool you have is a hammer, every cracking problem looks like a vacuum tube.

Re:Security by oldness

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an interesting approach to security, use machines so old that no one can crack. Maybe that's why the Russians still use vacuum tubes in MiGs.

Only if you count "toast the computer with a nulcear EMP" as cracking. Vacuum tubes are much less vulnerable to this then transistors.

Re:Security by oldness

[Eil]

Maybe that's why the Russians still use vacuum tubes in MiGs.

Even the mighty U.S. has a few planes flying with vacuum tubes. I worked in a Air Force avionics shop 6 years ago and the oldest system we maintained was a C-130 autopilot. The whole thing probably had around 25 tubes.

The newest system in the shop was the INS (intertial navigation system) for the MH-53J (in fact, it's likely that I worked on the very aircraft pictured). This was a rather elaborate system, so our troubleshooting was mostly limited to "yep, this unit is bad, order a new one." The computer that ran the test bench was an original IBM with an 8088 processor.

I'm an I.T. guy now instead of an airman, but I still sometimes miss getting to play around with solder, o-scopes, and servos...

Re:Security by oldness

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a pretty loose interpretation of "still use". Are there planes the Russians own that use vacuum tubes? Yes, there are still some Mig-25s around. Have they been used since the late 70s? No.

Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[The Ancients]

Naturally the stealth bomber's software has to be rewritten for the new platform, in particular the operational flight program (OFP) - the app which lets the ungainly plane fly, rather than lurching out of control as it would without constant computer assistance. (A recent B-2 crash shortly after takeoff at the Pacific island of Guam was caused by a false sensor data feed into the OFP, resulting from an airspeed measuring device being affected by tropical moisture. The duff data fooled the OFP app into wrecking the $2bn bomber - while the pilots were unable to do anything to stop it.)

Brilliant!

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[mikeabbott420]

And the pilots that run the USAF stil can't get behind the UAV revolution. The meat becomes a fragile, expensive, heavy, low range liability in combat. I worry about a sky filled with cheap UAVs expediting a taiwan strait crossing and leap frogging a meat boat USAF in technology. On a more positive note I hope the US army keeps its own UAV group.

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[drinkypoo]

if you're going to fill the sky with cheap UAVs, why not just build buzzbombs?

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the state of the art, that sky filled with cheap UAV's facing off a small squadron of fighters would considered to be a large assortment of target drones and the situation a "target rich environment so sweet, I think I've just sprouted another joy stick" by the pilots.

They ain't there yet.

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[cowscows]

Buzzbombs were basically just missiles, which are pretty cool, but lack some of the features that an aircraft (piloted or UAV) can provide. One being the ability to loiter over the target and do surveillance instead of attacking, another being the ability to fly back home and land safely if the target unreachable for whatever reason.

I guess there's the potential for a middle ground, sort of like a kamikaze UAV, but that sounds unnecessarily expensive.

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[Guysmiley777]

Hey, a Hellfire or a Maverick is basically a UAV with a warhead. And they're not exactly state of the art tech anymore.

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[putaro]

UAV's are great for fighting an unsophisticated enemy. However, the current crop is remotely piloted and not suitable for air-to-air. I think a sky filled with UAV's over the Taiwan Strait would rapidly become the Taiwan Strait filled with with crashed UAV's once some broad spectrum jammers were turned on.

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[mcsqueak]

Brilliant!

This is horribly offtopic, but Guinness' marketing has just worked too well on me. Whenever I hear or read that word, I think of the jovial cartoon characters from their TV ads here in the US. The thought of them on a tropical island, watching a Stealth Bomber crash shortly after taking off, clicking their glasses together and exclaiming "brilliant!" is just too funny.

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[wasted]

Hey, a Hellfire or a Maverick is basically a UAV with a warhead. And they're not exactly state of the art tech anymore.

Some versions of the Predator UAV carry and launch Hellfire missiles.

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[afidel]

Yeah because jammers work so well against things like 80's cruise missiles....

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[Orion Blastar]

Ah yeah like those old 1980's space shuttle O-rings. Don't stop the shuttle launch, we got a schedule to keep, this is reliable technology and we trust the engineers more than we trust the 8 bit Commodore 64 that says something is wrong with the O-rings. Just reboot it, and launch the shuttle.

LOAD "ORINGTEST",8,1
SYS 65535

Look, the problem went away, all lights are green. What is the worst than can happen?

Windows 95/98/ME ran on 1990's Pentiums and used C code as well. It worked rather well according to Microsoft. But I doubt anyone here would use it in a B-2 Stealth Bomber before replacing it with at least Linux.:)

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[putaro]

Cruise missiles aren't the same as UAV's. They fly to a preprogrammed target, don't take evasive action, don't drop bombs and then come around for another pass, don't have surveillance cameras, etc. They are certainly not air-to-air fighters and they're not even as capable as currently remote-controlled UAV's.

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[afidel]

The Predator already runs most of its missions in semi-autonomous mode, it's not hard to believe that an attack could be formulated using some limited AI for target acquisition as they already use something similar to notify operators that an individual UAV has spotted their target, just switch from notification to attack.

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[putaro]

The technology will get there, but it's not there yet. There are a couple of steps between "it's not hard to believe..." and "here it is".

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[bloodninja]

Naturally the stealth bomber's software has to be rewritten for the new platform, in particular the operational flight program (OFP) - the app which lets the ungainly plane fly, rather than lurching out of control as it would without constant computer assistance. (A recent B-2 crash shortly after takeoff at the Pacific island of Guam was caused by a false sensor data feed into the OFP, resulting from an airspeed measuring device being affected by tropical moisture. The duff data fooled the OFP app into wrecking the $2bn bomber - while the pilots were unable to do anything to stop it.)

Brilliant!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_ZCp5h1gK2Q

Re:Favourite quote from El 'Reg:

[Guysmiley777]

That was really my point... :)

cue the fpu jokes

[grocer]

Anyone have an over/under on how many Pentium FPU jokes there will be? Although I would think they would be smart enough to write the code around that particular bug causing a fatal error in the flight control computer.

More seriously, any large, complicated project is straddled with technology it's designed with to some extent, especially something that has lead times measured in years or decades, like warplanes. I would think that the B-2 is now not far from being equal to any other modern plane in avonics.

Re:cue the fpu jokes

[FishWithAHammer]

You...do know that they fixed the FPU bug in later releases, right? "That particular bug" is no more.

Re:cue the fpu jokes

[Dogtanian]

Anyone have an over/under on how many Pentium FPU jokes there will be?

Exactly 24.9999998999997...

Sorry, but you walked into that one :-P

element of surprise

[roman_mir]

imagine that in the future the enemy (whoever thinks they are the enemy and the others, who are not even aware that they maybe the enemy) will never know when they will get their shit kicked out of them due to a possible Pentium FDIV error or a buffer overflow of some sort. Let's just hope that any security bugs will be dealt with promptly, cause if they can hack into a computer because of some CPU errors by using java or javascript through a browser, the will certainly be looking for a way to control some more exciting equipment.

Re:element of surprise

[toleraen]

Yes, because B-2 pilots surf random links posted on message boards mid flight all the time.

Re:element of surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Pentium class, not pentium. It means that it will have the speed and shit of a pentium, but will do other crap that the military needs, like with stand EMP.

BTW, they probably won't be using a browser on it, unless mabye they use it to find gays by looking at the history.

Re:element of surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting this from my B-2, you insensitive clod.

maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[speedtux]

I'm not sure that replacing JOVIAL code with C code is actually progress. If JOVIAL is anything like ALGOL 60, it's arguably a better programming language than C.

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[Fear the Clam]

If JOVIAL is anything like ALGOL 60, it's arguably a better programming language than C.

It's HAPPIER.

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[merreborn]

I'm not sure that replacing JOVIAL code with C code is actually progress. If JOVIAL is anything like ALGOL 60, it's arguably a better programming language than C.

I'd imagine it's a lot easier to find experienced C developers than it is to find experienced JOVIAL developers, however.

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[sconeu]

It essentially is Algol. JOVIAL stands for "Jules Own Version of IAL". IAL was at one point the name for Algol.

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[hax4bux]

I used to code NELIAC (another DoD ALGOL derivative) for several years. Perhaps C isn't the best next step but I am all for retiring the old tool chains. IMO, there is nothing inherently wonderful about ALGOL syntax and modern development tools should be a big improvement.

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[godIsaDJ]

I'm not sure that replacing JOVIAL code with C code is actually progress. If JOVIAL is anything like ALGOL 60, it's arguably a better programming language than C.

Man I second that! Cheaper workforce, but they are getting themselves from a circle of hell they know to a brand new circle of hell !

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[mangu]

It's HAPPIER.

Well, for sure this :C looks very sad, but I fail to see why JOVIAL should be so happy. If at least it were the J:) language...

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I still write in ALGOL, you insensitive clod!!

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[AbRASiON]

I think your joke is gay.

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[Anonymous Coward]

JOVIAL -> Jules Own Version of International Algorithmic Language.
IAL -> similar to ALGOL
Jules Schwartz

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[daffmeister]

Damn. I just took JOVIAL off my CV, after 15 years of "what on earth is that?"

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[shutdown -p now]

If JOVIAL is anything like ALGOL 60, it's arguably a better programming language than C.

Sir likes his call-by-name (by default, too), typeless function pointers, computed gotos, and passing labels as arguments?

Alright, alright, I'm getting off your lawn already...

Re:maybe they should have stayed in the '60s

[Anonymous Coward]

Some idiot moderator missed the joke, clearly.

Re:Better functionally quaint than gee-whiz and oo

[SomeJoel]

It's true, if some guy's carrying around a large handgun on his hip, you're less likely to comment on his mullet.

90's IS cutting edge for that stuff.

[deft]

What this article seems to overlook is that they DONT WANT new computers and new operating systems, new languages. They want older, stable, rpedictable, thoroughly vetted technologies.

They dont need a super computer to fly these, but what they do need os to know every quirk, every instability, and already have dealt with it so that NOTHING even remotely suprises them.

Thats why moving to C is a big step.

it may seem silly to us because we run all sorts of new stuff on our computers designed to run many things we may never use; These are VERY purpose built, need very little flexibility outside its designated purpose, and doesnt need to be overdone.

I may buy a PC system anticipating programs down the road that might be expanded, but for an aircraft, missiles, sattelites, even the space shuttle which runs EVRY old code, they just need it to do exactly what it needs too, and if that works fine with 256k, then thats what it will get, as long as its stable as all hell.

Re:90's IS cutting edge for that stuff.

[LWATCDR]

You left out that the Pentiums are probably radiation hardened as well.

Re:90's IS cutting edge for that stuff.

[DontBlameCanada]

I've worked on military CPU replacement in the past for a subcontractor. We were upgrading an early 60s avionics set built from, get this, AND, OR and NOR gates. The most complex part was a 4 bit shift register - pretty wild. So I know a bit about this.

The major problem with using components newer than the mid-90s is that they are so sensitive to radiation. Not EM, but Alpha particles and other cosmic rays. Its prohibitively expensive to rad-harden (radiation harden) sub-100nm chips and when that is achieved the yields are so low that the cost balloons even more. Radiation hits my cause the rare BSOD for you, on a nuclear armed aircraft its may show up as a MCOD - mushroom cloud of destruction.

Re:90's IS cutting edge for that stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wrote JOVIAL for 5 years, yes it's an old language, but it did have some quite neat features for accessing data really fast (memory overlays for example). NAS (National Airspace System) is written in JOVIAL and it does its job well enough. It's a good langauge for small memory footprints and usually all variables are global. I can't see what they are winning really rewriting it in C apart from introducing new bugs. There are JOVIAL to C preprocessors out there but they tend to produce sucky non maintainable code of course.

http://www.jovial.hill.af.mil/

Re:90's IS cutting edge for that stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

They dont need a super computer to fly these

A B-2? Actually those do, at least by 90s standards. Remember that Apple's G4 had export restrictions when it came out in '99.

But yes indeed you're essentially correct. Stuff has to be tested to the nuts, though not just military. Anybody have a good link to a Jane's style summary of what's normal for aviation computers these days? Nothing in the airlines is as computer dependent as the unstable flying wings, but it'll give us a baseline to compare.

Re:90's IS cutting edge for that stuff.

[ady1]

They want older, stable, rpedictable, thoroughly vetted technologies... but what they do need os to know every quirk, every... do exactly what it needs too, and if that works fine

You do know that the pentium in your bomber is not to be used for posting on slashdot, right?

Re:90's IS cutting edge for that stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Faster chips are more sensitive to EM too, but they have less emissions.

Re:90's IS cutting edge for that stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't you just have redundant hardware? Kind of like a RAID but for CPUs?

Have 5 CPUs, 3 of them run the code you want to run in parallel (so they should be doing exactly the same thing). These CPUs each have their own RAM.

The other 2 are independently monitoring the memory bus activity from the CPUs (e.g. STORE and FETCH instructions) to ensure that they are performing exactly the same.

Just like RAID, you can correct for any single failure. If you see both checkers agree that one of the CPUs is behaving differently than the other two, you replace the CPU that went bad. If one checker reports an error while the other does not, then you know you have a bad checker CPU.

I'll just pull some numbers out of my ass to give an example of how much of a difference this would make...

So, say the odds of any particular instruction getting a cosmic ray are 10^-10. Running at 1 GHz, that would mean 1 error every 10 seconds from a single CPU with no error correction. The odds of two simultaneous errors would be about 10^-20. Running at 1 GHz, that would be 1 error every 31,688 years.

Re:90's IS cutting edge for that stuff.

[deft]

I assure you, that was pilot error.

now where do you live? GPS coordinates will be fine.

Re:90's IS cutting edge for that stuff.

[dargaud]

Why C ? I thought Ada was supposed to be the language of choice in the aerospace industry ? Don't get me wrong, I'm a C developer by trade, by I know how unsafe it can be...

Re:90's IS cutting edge for that stuff.

[Jhan]

...The major problem with using components newer than the mid-90s is that they are so sensitive to radiation. Not EM, but Alpha particles and other cosmic rays...

I've heard this argument again and again and I still don't really buy it. If the new chips are suspectible to rad, encase them in lead, problem solved. Is it the weight penalty?

Yes but.........

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the embedded ME OS that keeps it cutting edge.

what's next?

[Speedracer1870]

Great! Now if they could only drag the drone planes and tanks out of the 70's they'll be getting somewhere...

So what?

[JesseL]

That just means their development & testing cycle runs about 15 years. That doesn't seem terribly unreasonable given that reliability is paramount for a billion dollar piece of equipment.

I work on brand new industrial controls that are still using Z80 processors.

Re:So what?

[fishbowl]

>The demands of military grade computing are VERY different from the demands of your typical desktop/server.

I can only think of a slashdot poster from some years back who wrote about how he had to keep an ordinary Compaq desktop machine going, in soggy mud, with electrical cables arcing all around him...

Pentiums are well suited to a stealth craft

[Anonymous Coward]

Pentium 4 chips and Athlons just get shot out of the sky by heat seeking missiles.

Your Federal Tax Dollars At Work:

[Anonymous Coward]

Fight BushCo's private wars.

Cordially,
Filipino Monkey.

Come on, the original Pentium bug isn't offtopic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good grief.

Great...

[pwnies]

"...which include Pentium class processors" Just what we need - script kiddies being able to access our B-2 bombers.

space shuttle runs on 1970s computers

[peter303]

With one MEGABYTE of ferris-core memory. Five redundant computers. The shuttle prgram was late getting started and they didnt want to changes the software.

"And they made fun of vacuum tube computers in MIGs."

Re:space shuttle runs on 1970s computers

[VAXcat]

Ferris core? Is the memory arranged in a big wheel, where the bytes ride up and down in little swinging seats? Or, maybe you meant ferrite core...

Re:space shuttle runs on 1970s computers

[Sponge Bath]

With one MEGABYTE of ferris-core memory.

Bueller?... Bueller?

Re:space shuttle runs on 1970s computers

[RobinH]

Pretty sure the GP meant ferrous. I'd always heard it called magnetic core memory but ferrous works too.

Re:space shuttle runs on 1970s computers

[couchslug]

"And they made fun of vacuum tube computers in MIGs."

Not while I was in Comm/Nav in the Air Force. We understood that tubes aren't bothered by radiation. :)

Re:space shuttle runs on 1970s computers

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean ferrous-core?

Re:space shuttle runs on 1970s computers

[Anonymous Coward]

The ferris core memory was taken out of the shuttles before I started working there in 1989. I do recall the major upgrade from 108K of ram to 256K in the early 1990s and how that messed with all the compilers and all the audits we needed for pointer-based stuff.

Use of pointers were frowned upon unless you needed to trick the compiler into allowing a larger than supported array. In 5 years programming in HAL/S, I only used 1 pointer - a "named" variable in the language. During the code reviews, I recall having to remind all the other reviewers what that was. It violated programming standards, as I recall.

In the shuttle code, we used global variables rather than using the stack to pass variables to functions. The stack was deemed as slow, at least that's how I remember it many, many years later.

Re:space shuttle runs on 1970s computers

[DerekLyons]

space shuttle runs on 1970s computers With one MEGABYTE of ferris-core memory.

You're nearly twenty years behind the times - the AP-101B computers were replaced (upgraded) with the AP-101S in 1991 and (among other things) the core memory replaced with solid state memory. (As part of the general electronics upgrade to allow for the installation of the glass cockpits.) In fact, practically every piece of major electronics on the Shuttle was upgraded in the 1990's.
 
 

The shuttle prgram was late getting started and they didnt want to changes the software.

Huh? At the time the Enterprise and Columbia were built, the AP-101 was top drawer kit. Without going to custom hardware you simply couldn't buy any better off the shelf. (The USAF thought so - it was the main computer on the B-52. The USN agreed and used them on F-15's.)

Re:space shuttle runs on 1970s computers

[clickclickdrone]

>Ferris core? Is the memory arranged in a big wheel
No, it's named after Ferris Bueller - inventor, teen-hero and all round great guy.

Re:space shuttle runs on 1970s computers

[icebrain]

Nitpick: USN has never operated the F-15.

Free of BUGS?

[itsybitsy]

That's not likely in C.

C plane fly.

C * pointer to freed structure.

C plane drop nukes.

C plane crash.

C plane die.

C pilots die.

C nuke detonate.

C city die.

C retaliation strike fly.

C missiles fly.

C missiles detonate.

C human species - not so wise - die.

C earth reborn anew without humans.

C rise of dolphins.

C rise of dolphin archeologists.

C dolphins discover C.

C repeat above, pick next species...

Re:Free of BUGS?

[WGR]

I could see converting the code to Ada, which is designed for reliability and safety. But to C, which is a language designed for efficiency, not correctness?

That is going backwards from Jovial, which at least is simple enough to make it easier to write code that is less likely to crash.

Re:Free of BUGS?

[Anonymous Coward]

See also: ISBN 0060892994

Re:Free of BUGS?

[gbjbaanb]

Are you sure? Software tends to be written by developers, and its the quality of them, their ability to work to quality standards and basically take their time to get it done right that matters. All that C code you've seen crash - it'll be because someone hacked it together, no-one tested it thoroughly enough, and no-one took the time to do it right. C is even easy to code reliably if you impose some restrictions on yourself (or use some libraries/routines that you can't easily take shortcuts with - eg if you can pass a pointer to a routine, you're going to pass a bad one one day, do some wrong arithmentic on it, etc. If you pass a strict fixed-size buffer, then you're much less likely to get an error. Just a simple example).

The point is you can write bad software in any language, the new C# stuff at work crashes all over the place and is slow. The old C code from 1984 is still working fine. Its not these languages that had anything to do with their relative quality.

eg. Spacecraft are written in C, and they've worked better than anyone expected:

The only reason I brought that up is because one of my editors said, Oh look, they have Java on this thing.

Oh, Java. Well, we have Java in the ground system not onboard the spacecraft.

Right. That's what it's starting to sound like.

That's right. Yeah. The spacecraft software is entirely in C.

C? Really? That surprises me a little bit.

Yes. It's entirely in C.

I thought Lockheed Martin was a big ADA shop for this sort of thing.

ADA is used largely in military applications, but JPL at any rate has moved away from ADA. Cassini, I believe, would be the last JPL mission that used ADA. And that was largely due to the success of the Mars Pathfinder in the mid-nineties. And as I said, these missions are to a large extent all derived from Mars Pathfinder.

After that successful mission, you say, Hey, we could do it in C now. That's not as scary as everybody thought?

Yeah. Right.

Re:Free of BUGS?

[4D6963]

Kids these days.. scared of pointers and memory allocation. Competent C coders hardly ever meet such problems. After a few years of C coding you know how to make sure you never refer to freed memory, or let something leek. Surely it may be nice not to have to worry about such things as that, but when the language won't catch your mistakes you learn how to not make any.

If a car analogy is really necessary, you can compare that to the difference between learning with manual and automatic clutching on cars. People who learn how to drive on automatic cars may find that manual clutching is mad/arcane, but when you learn with it you just find that it's a normal part of driving.

Re:Free of BUGS?

[X3J11]

Kids these days.. scared of pointers and memory allocation. Competent C coders hardly ever meet such problems. After a few years of C coding you know how to make sure you never refer to freed memory, or let something leek. Surely it may be nice not to have to worry about such things as that, but when the language won't catch your mistakes you learn how to not make any.

Leek? What does a vegetable have to do with C? Sure, some C programmers are very much like vegetables, but...

And you forgot to mention garbage collection. "Oh boo hoo, I don't want to have to free my allocations when I'm done with them."

Kids these days indeed. Uphill, both ways and all that.

Re:Free of BUGS?

[Abcd1234]

The point is you can write bad software in any language

Well, of course that's true... only an idiot would suggest otherwise.

That said, only an idiot would claim that the language *doesn't* have an effect on errors rates or code quality. The fact is, give a developer more rope, and he/she *will* hang themselves eventually, no matter how good they are. "Safe" languages are just that *because* they take away some of that rope, either by eliminating unsafe features (eg, pointers), providing safe alternatives (eg, a proper high-level string type in lieu of null-terminated character arrays), or introducing new features that improve safety (eg, DBC).

Now, there may be other, very good reasons they opted to go with C instead of a different, safer language. But make no mistake, in doing so, they made a conscious tradeoff between safety and those other requirements.

Re:Free of BUGS?

[raddan]

The interesting thing about that interview is that they say that their major restriction is no dynamic memory allocation. This obviously makes C a lot safer, but it also makes it much less flexible. I would have liked to hear more about why they moved from Ada, because I was under the impression that Ada was specifically designed to deal with these kinds of issues-- so if Ada isn't working, why? At the very least, we could use that information to inform future safe-language development.

Re:Free of BUGS?

[BrotherBeal]

I'm not sure I agree with you completely. Yeah, C has its rough edges and pitfalls, but those difficulties aren't exactly specific to C - they're part of the wider problem domain of getting a machine to do things safely and predictably. It may not make sense for most application programmers to manage memory directly, and so they might use Java for its garbage collector and the "safety" that comes with it. However, going with a "safer" language is a form of passing the buck - memory management, pointers and the like haven't disappeared, someone else has just handled them for us. What if there's a serious problem with the garbage collector, in some corner case that's exercised extremely rarely? That may very well cost billions of dollars if it brings down a B-2. $JAVA_USING_ORGANIZATION can't exactly audit Sun and demand explanations or fixes - so, wherever possible, they roll their own to maintain strict accountability and to reduce the "black box" factor to an absolute, singular minimum.

Re:Free of BUGS?

[Abcd1234]

However, going with a "safer" language is a form of passing the buck - memory management, pointers and the like haven't disappeared, someone else has just handled them for us.

And that someone has had *far* more hours being exercised than any solution you or I could roll together. Rolling your own just gives you the illusion of safety and accountability, because you believe you can trust yourself above a vendor. But all you're really doing is reinventing the wheel while vastly increasing the chances that you do it wrong.

Besides, GC is but one small example of a whole host of mechanisms that higher-level languages provide to make software development safer. Strong, static type checking, hand-in-hand with generics, design-by-contract, and a wide array of other compile-time features can make for code that you can actually guarantee doesn't have certain classes of bugs. How is that *not* better than C, if what you're shooting for is reliable, bug-free code?

Re:Free of BUGS?

[gbjbaanb]

A lot of people forget that C has very strong typing (that you can get round it with a cast doesn't detract from that fact that *you* have to perform that cast, you cannot accidently pass the wrong type in)

Some 'safer' features, such a GC to name a fashionable one, only shift the source of errors to a different place - GCs happily use up lots of memory, happily hang the system while they collect, and often you end up (like the Princeton DARPA team) assuming things are dealt with when they get 'stuck' in memory because there's a reference hanging around somewhere). I mean, a GC is fine for most things, but I'd still want a better form of memory management to be used first, and I certainly wouldn't want a GC used in a nuclear bomber. At least Sun's Java licence knows to make that explicitly clear.

The biggest problem with C is dynamic memory allocation. The way to fix it is, simply, not to use dynamic memory allocations! You can easily write C/C++ code where everything is on the stack, everything is a local variable. Ok, the other problem with C is array bounds checking - especially C-style strings, but you can still use fixed-length types and your own non null-terminated copy functions.

Modern, easy-to-use languages give you the illusion of safety - but really they just sweep the problems under the rug so you don't notice. Even some things that are designed to make your code safer, often require as much care as before

In short, it doesn't matter what you use, you have to think about it and you should never, ever assume someone else has fixed all your problems for you.

Re:Free of BUGS?

[4D6963]

Leek? What does a vegetable have to do with C? Sure, some C programmers are very much like vegetables, but...

Give me a break, I'm French. At this point you should be amazed I'm even capable of not sounding like one.

And you forgot to mention garbage collection. "Oh boo hoo, I don't want to have to free my allocations when I'm done with them."

What do you think I was refering to by leek? However I forgot about exception handlers. "Whaaaaa, Whaaaaa, I can't be arsed to fix my mistakes so I just put something on top of them that makes it about right".

And for Christmas we only had an orange and we didn't complain.

JOVIAL code rewritten in C?

[andyh-rayleigh]

I though ADA was the mandated language for such applications? C seems far too insecure a language to replace the rigour of what is essentially a dialect of Algol.

Re:JOVIAL code rewritten in C?

[nbehary]

The Ada requirement was waivered out of existance nearly as soon as it was introduced. I've been a programmer in the AF for 11+ years and haven't touched Ada since Tech School back in '97. (I've spent the vast majority of my career programming in JOVIAL. We're upgrading to C++/JAVA sometime in the next decade....maybe. Been saying that for years.)

Not so stealthy?

[Chicken_Kickers]

I might be mistaken but I think I read in a book about designing warships that the F-117A and the B-2 could be detected and targeted by British frigates during the first Gulf War. They are only stealthy against outdated Russian-made radars that the Iraqis had.

Re:Not so stealthy?

[Detritus]

I don't think so. The problem with the F-117A is that it's designed to deal with radar systems that have their transmit and receive antennas at the same location.

Re:Not so stealthy?

[VoltCurve]

No B2's in the first gulf war

Re:Not so stealthy?

[iamlucky13]

Well, don't forget the Serbs managed to shoot down an F-117 during the showdown with Milosovic, and that was using stuff that was probably equivalent to what the Iraqi's had.*

However, you're not quite correct to the best of my knowledge. Stealth doesn't make things invisible to radar...it makes them harder to see. There's a lot of factors involved, but generally they boil it down into a factor called radar cross section (RCS). This is the size of a typical reflector that would produce the same radar return as the plane in question. A B-52 has a radar cross section the size of...well...a B-52 (not quite actually, but we won't get that deep into it). The B-2, on the other hand, has been said to have a radar cross section of a sparrow. You reduce the radar cross section mainly in two ways: by absorbing the radio wave (materials) or by reflecting it a different direction than straight back (geometry). This means that the way the plane is facing is important, because they're not spheres. If you get an aileron facing flat at a radar, they'll probably see you.

Now remember radar return above. You need enough radar return for the receiver to detect it. As the RCS gets smaller, the return drops, so you need a stronger signal to reflect off it, and/or a more sensitive receiver. A shorter distance means a stronger signal, due to the inverse square law. What the story likely refers to is stealth aircraft passing close enough to British frigates to be detected despite being stealthy.**

* I believe the Air Force concluded the F-117 was shot down by one of several radar-guided missiles fired at it, being guided partially manually, with help from infrared tracking. The F-117 has features to reduce it's infrared signature, too, but I don't think the reduction is as significant in infrared as it is in radar. The Serbs may have gotten enough of a radar return that allowed them to point the missile and let it's infrared seeker lock-on. The F-117's probably also flew riskier routes than a non-stealth aircraft like the F-15E's would take. If it was close enough to the radar, it also might have been possible to shoot it down with a strictly radar-guided missile.

It seems the Serbian military paid attention to both the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi air defenses against the F-117 during Desert Storm, and to the thorough way in which the US focused on destorying those defenses early on, making air supremacy a given only hours after the first bombs fell on Baghdad. They were careful both to protect their radars and missile launchers and to employ alternate detection tools, especially the Mk 1 eyeball. ** The Russians claim they have a technique of finding stealth aircraft by looking for holes in expected radar returns (mountains, etc). That would take extra computer power and it seems to me it would only work effectively on low-altitude aircraft, so it might not be a significant blow to stealth technology. I've also heard some stuff about using two receivers to detect stealth aircraft, but there wasn't enough details to get an idea how it works and how effective it might be.

Re:Not so stealthy?

[dave420]

They had a B2 at an airshow in the UK, and it was picked up by the surface-to-air missile defence systems BAE were demonstrating at the time. Oopsie.

Re:Not so stealthy?

[icebrain]

It didn't help that NATO aircraft were flying the same tracks night after night. The Serbian air defense guys picked up on it, and (it is suspected) laid a trap, of sorts. Remember, too, that when the aircraft opens the weapons bay doors, those doors aren't stealthy. The radar signature will bloom significantly while they're open, and they might have gotten one or two good returns during that period. Even something like a screw sticking up, or a door not closing quite all the way, can harm the radar signature.

There are also some reports of spying, like guys with cellphones watching aircraft take off on missions and reporting it, or even someone "inside" with access to the air tasking order.

Re:Not so stealthy?

[greyhueofdoubt]

There is much, much more to stealth than just radar cross-section.

-heat signature: the engines are tucked deep within the airframe and the exhaust is vented over a large surface area that is baffled from the ground's POV. This drastically reduces the chances of being picked up or hit by heat-seaking weapons

-noise: Again, the engines are tucked deep in the airframe; the intakes follow a tortuous path that minimizes both radar sig and noise; the aircraft never flies at supersonic speeds to avoid sonic boom

-EM: missions are conducted in radio silence; no lights; all sources of rf are shielded; passive radar and sensing

-predictability: flightpath hugs terrain; flightpath does not follow a straight line or constant altitude; etc.

Many people know about the b-2's radar-related features, and of course there are other features that I've left out. The fact that the brits or our own troops can detect the b-2 every now and then means nothing; when the b-2 is on a mission you will not find it. Just go ahead and trust me on this.

-b

Probably not x86

[Henriok]

It's "Pentium class", not "Pentium". I would bet my money on this comptuer being PowerPC based, probably PowerPC 74xx based, also known as "G4" of Macintosh fame. There are _a_lot_ of PowerPC based avionics, and cutting edge airplanes like Eurofighter, Gripen and F-22 have multiple PowerPC based systems doing all kinds of stuff. When doing embedded electronics for the military you are not going far pitching Intel stuff. You are going to use hardware from manufacturers that can guarantee parts that'll keep being manufactured over many years and are harndened to endure rapid heat, cold, moist and preassure fluctuations. Intel are doing commodity products for low end table environments. Look to manufacturers like Freescale for the stable and durable stuff.

Re:Probably not x86

[hellwig]

Worked for a well-known avionics company on various aircraft modernizing/upgrading programs only a year ago. We used Motorolla PPC604-class processors for the avionics on upgrading old C-130 cargo aircraft (200MHz, 32-each floating and integer general purpose registers, etc...). Of course, those processors are so old you can't buy them anymore. Our testing equipment instead used the PPC 74XX series processors. They had just upgraded from Ada-83 to Ada-95

The C-5 cargo aircraft AMP and RERP upgrades use a custom-built AMD ARM processor, also no longer available. This program still used Ada-83. We also used custom-built real-time OS's from companies like WindRiver(vxWorks) and GreenHills. You certainly don't run Windows or Linux on these machines.

In college we heard about how satellites use older processors because the size of the traces inside are large enough to withstand hits from various energetic particles. I.e. your new 45nm Intel would get fried in seconds being exposed to the radiation in space, while an old 386 with a 1um process can generaly withstand the bombardment

Re:Probably not x86

[drinkypoo]

When doing embedded electronics for the military you are not going far pitching Intel stuff.

Yeah, that's true. Because the military would never use radiation hardened pentiums under a no fee-license from intel or anything.

Re:Probably not x86

[crankyspice]

Here's what happens when you go Intel... :) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE2DF1739F931A25756C0A9649C8B63

Re:Probably not x86

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps an i960. The F-22 runs on i960s (actually a special version, the i960x)

Re:Probably not x86

[kesuki]

that article mentions NASA not the USAF... in fact it doesn't mention aircraft at all.

Re:Probably not x86

[je ne sais quoi]

I would bet my money on this comptuer being PowerPC based, probably PowerPC 74xx based, also known as "G4" of Macintosh fame.

So wait, you're telling me this is accurate?

Re:Probably not x86

[drinkypoo]

that article mentions NASA not the USAF

Wrong.

From the article I linked: "DOE and Sandia are proud to be partnering with Intel, NASA, the Air Force Research Lab, and the National Reconnaissance Office..."

in fact it doesn't mention aircraft at all.

It does however mention "defense systems", "missiles, nuclear weapons", "missile defense, and other advanced military systems", and "defense and space-related markets".

The B-2 falls into several of these categories and delivers most of the others.

Re:Probably not x86

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "Pentium class", not "Pentium". I would bet my money on this comptuer being PowerPC based, probably PowerPC 74xx based, also known as "G4" of Macintosh fame. There are _a_lot_ of PowerPC based avionics, and cutting edge airplanes like Eurofighter, Gripen and F-22 have multiple PowerPC based systems doing all kinds of stuff. When doing embedded electronics for the military you are not going far pitching Intel stuff. You are going to use hardware from manufacturers that can guarantee parts that'll keep being manufactured over many years and are harndened to endure rapid heat, cold, moist and preassure fluctuations. Intel are doing commodity products for low end table environments. Look to manufacturers like Freescale for the stable and durable stuff.

I'm getting a kick out of that statement. We use Freescale's MPC-8540 in our network routers and had a hell of a time tracking down a problem that ended up being an L1 data cache corruption bug in some of their earlier revisions. We had an even harder time getting Freescale to fess up to it.

Exactly right. It's obsolete

[heroine]

They should have written all the flight control in Ruby & made it an AJAX web application that runs on Firefox on an iPhone. That would make it zillions of times faster than that old C code & Pentiums, right?

Am I the only one concerned about this?

[kannibul]

Seems there was a whole slew of Pentium processors back in the day that had issues calculating numbers.

So what?

[Arimus]

The demands of military grade computing are VERY different from the demands of your typical desktop/server.

Forget the tasks they're doing - those are essentially the same as you or I just for a different problem domain. The real issues are: thermal, power, 'ruggedness', tempest, EMP protection, parts being available for years (or decades by preference).

This isn't really news...

Still no official word about B-2's use of anti-g

[mTor]

The most interesting thing about B-2 is that it purportedly uses electrogravitics and that it also charges its leading sections of wings to reduce the drag.

Here's what Bill Gunston, one of the most respected aviation journalists has to say on the topic (his bio is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gunston )

I have numerous documents, all published openly in the United States, which purport to explain how the B-2 is even stranger - far stranger - than it appears. Most are articles published in commercial magazines, some are openly published US Patents, while a few are open USAF publications by Wright Aeronautical Laboratory and Air Force Systems Command's Astronautics Laboratory. They deal with such topics as electric-field propulsion, and electrogravitics (or anti-gravity), the transient alteration of not only thrust but also a body's weight. Sci-Fi has nothing on this stuff.

The literature goes back to Faraday, but the idea of electrogravitics really took off in the 1920s when an American physicist, Townsend T. Brown, carried out extensive experiments. He may have been the first to recognize that a capacitor (a dielectric material sandwiched between positive and negative plates) experiences a force tending to move it in the direction of the positive face. He found that the electrostatic charge induced a gravity field between the two plates. Soon he was making capacitors rotate on whirling arms, and measuring the loss in weight of capacitors with the positive face turned uppermost.

In 1953, Brown demonstrated to the USAF a whirling rig of 50ft (15.2m) diameter, which at 150,000 volts (150kV) became a mere blur. The subject was immediately classified, and for the next 40 years, while 'black' research in this field made astonishing progress, it was not reported. Though private individuals continued to experiment, and to take out unclassified patents, not much surfaced. Exceptions were Electrogravitics Systems (February 1956) and The Gravitics Situation (December 1956), published for subscribers only by Aviation Studies (International). This was a London-based 'think tank' run by two very bright young men: R G 'Dicky' Worcester and John Longhurst. Unlike the established journals, they published reports and informed comment without the slightest regard for questions of 'security'. The only time they were taken to court, they won their case and collected heavy damages.

More here: http://engines.fighter-planes.com/jet_engine.htm

Pentium's are Nuclear Hardened

[Christopher_G_Lewis]

Well, given this http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN12-18-98/intel_story.htm was in 1998, and about 10 years of development and testing, I guess we're finally seeing CPU's on the B2's that will actually allow them to fly through some of the massive radiation/electrical crap that they would be generating.

It's not really from the 90's

[eebra82]

Those of you who have read some about Intel's coming Larrabee GPU know that it consists of many Pentium cores. The thing is, these cores aren't as old as one may think.

When the Pentium core became obsolete, Intel gave the technology to the U.S. military, which in turn developed it further and added bug fixes. So it's not really technology from the 90's only, because it has been in development for quite some time.

Additionally, old technology has the advantage of being used so much that virtually everything is known about the chip, including bugs. Therefore, it is much safer to work with such a chip rather than going for the latest Core 2 Duo.

Still Stuck in the 1980s

[Doc Ruby]

The Stealth Bomber's mission is to deliver nuke bombs inside Soviet territory. It's not really that good at anything else. Though it does get used for other missions, since the US needs to justify spending $2.2 BILLION on each one.

Upgrading the B2 to the 1990s is just keeping a 1980s corporate welfare programme for another decade, even while letting it float a decade behind in technology. I guess someone's got to buy all those old Pentiums, or Intel might go out of business.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[compro01]

They're quite good at accurately dropping lots (up to 80) of little (mk-82 500lb) bombs too. Can even drop them one at a time, so you could hit 80 targets in one run. I'd say that's fairly good at other missions, though it obviously requires good people on the ground to direct where to hit.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[Anonymous Coward]

The Stealth Bomber's mission is to deliver nuke bombs inside Soviet territory. It's not really that good at anything else.

Not true. It delivers a large payload, and it's harder to see and thus harder to shoot down, so it's good at delivering its payload to any destination.

Its biggest problem is that, because of worries about people figuring out the stealth, they are only flown out of the USA. So they fly these crazy long missions where they load up (in the USA), fly for hours, midair refuel, fly more hours, drop bombs, fly back for hours, midair refuel, fly back more hours, land (in the USA). They have pilots flying in shifts and sleeping while not flying. It's crazy.

the US needs to justify spending $2.2 BILLION on each one.

Not quite correct. It's more "we have the planes, might as well use them". And they do have their uses.

And they don't exactly cost $2.2 bn. There is a huge enormous sunk cost from the research and development of these planes. That cost is just gone, never to come back. The additional cost required to build more B2s would be far less than $2.2 bn each. Opponents of all things military like to take the small number of B2s, divide that into the giant sunk cost, and quote that $2.2 bn figure to show how horrible it is. If Congress had authorized building more B2s, the cost-per-plane would drop quickly.

But they won't build more. The fleet of B2s we have is deemed adequate for the tasks needed right now, and as I said there are fears about people measuring the B2s and reverse engineering the stealth.

In the future, we will probably get big stealthy bomb-dropping drones (big for drones, smaller than a B2) or something like that.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[Doc Ruby]

They're adequate at that job, for which they're retrofitted. For $2.2B each, we can make lots more littler planes that don't get shot down, which can deliver even more bombs even more precisely, to even more separate locations.

The B-2 is a white elephant that represents us throwing ever more money down a wasteful hole, just because there are powerful people in that hole with their hands out - primarily at Northrup Grumman.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[compro01]

aside from the fact that we already spent that money roughly a decade ago and we already have these planes, so why not use them rather than throwing more money down that "wasteful hole" to develop and make a bunch of new planes?

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[Doc Ruby]

Because they cost a fortune to keep working. And now we're spending more fortunes retrofitting them. Which is only bringing them up to the 1990s, which was already a decade ago.

And then there's the fact that they don't do what we need. We need to spend the new money not on shoving their square pegs into today's round holes, but making new round pegs.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[Spy Handler]

"The Stealth Bomber's mission is to deliver nuke bombs inside Soviet territory. It's not really that good at anything else. Though it does get used for other missions, since the US needs to justify spending $2.2 BILLION on each one."

It's quite good at dropping large bombloads on places, other than Soviet Union, that are defended by SAMs and radar-guided AAA, and avoid getting shot down.

No other aircraft in the world can do this. F-117 can do the "avoid getting shot down" part, but not the large bombload part.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[Doc Ruby]

But these planes cost a lot to run and maintain. And to retrofit, even when we retrofit them into a shape that's been old for a decade already.

And they don't meet the current mission. We don't have a current mission that is equivalent to sending a small number of bombers behind Soviet radar.

We've got the benefits of the sunk R&D costs already, and these planes aren't the latest version. We're just throwing more money down their holes.

This isn't the time for some kneejerk reaction like "opponents of all things military". In fact that is the popular fallacy that people who defend all things military like to use. But proper logic for the argument is required as well as the proper military hardware for the mission. That kind of defense contractor marketing you just pushed doesn't cut either.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[Eil]

Wow, cynical much?

The last century taught us a very important lesson that our military and civilian leaders hopefully will not forget: it is far easier to try to stay on top of technology and keep the military forces current than suddenly ramp up training and technology only when a threat appears.

While I strongly disagree with this administration's (ab)use of the our nation's armed forces and the government contractors who are becoming billionaires because of it, please understand that the military has many important roles besides defense.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[LanceUppercut]

Absolutely not. It was designed to drop bombs inside territory. It is completely useless agains any country with even a moderately developed air defence infrastructure. B-2 is a weapon of skewed oil wars, and this is what it was designed for.

Of course, the truth is that as a weapon of global war, strategic bomers went out of the picture well in the 50's, being replaced by intercontinental missiles. What it was really designed for is to pump money from taxpayers pockets into the pockets of neocon con artists. The "stealth" fad sold really well, you know...

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[Anonymous Coward]

The B52, and other strategic bombers, can certainly fly high enough to avoid gunfire, and there aren't that many countries with widespread SAMs capable of consistently hitting them at that altitude. But you are right, the B2 is uniquely proficient at it. Just wanted to point out that it's not the only aircraft that can do it.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[je ne sais quoi]

There are also arguments that say that the radar evading capabilities of these planes hasn't actually been vetted all that much because the U.S. controls the air-space in most of its engagements so having stealth isn't actually very helpful. In any case, the stealth planes fly such a small fraction of the bombing runs that any statistics on how few they have lost to enemy fire are meaningless.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[Mike610544]

They are indeed good at not getting shot down, but not perfect. An F-117 was taken down by conventional SAMs in Kosovo (might have been a lucky shot) and there's some Czech radar system that's supposed to be somewhat effective, but if the tech can be advanced to the point where stealthy aircraft can hit their targets no matter how heavily defended, I'd think that would have some heavy implications.

Maybe someone can point out the anti-stealth technology that would prevent that scenario. I've seen some talk of acoustic detection systems and "shotgun" weapons, but I don't know how they'd measure up in the real world.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[pease1]

Do we really know that N. Korean nuke plant in Syria wasn't REALLY knocked out by a B-2? Little doubt the Israelis would be more than willing to take the international heat for that attack without actually having to risk aircrew while the USAF does the deed with little or no risk. Might even be a working model for dealing with Iran. All of a sudden, this "1980s" platform designed for attacking the Soviets provides some interesting options in today's complex environment.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[superyooser]

The Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir "KGB" Putin, likewise, is stuck in the cold-war '80s. I say it's a good thing we keep this weapon around.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[Anonymous Coward]

But these planes cost a lot to run and maintain. And to retrofit, even when we retrofit them into a shape that's been old for a decade already.

Yeah, but guess what: the only other plane we have that can remotely do the same job is the B-52, which is ANCIENT and costs a lot to keep going too.

We don't have any decent modern bombers. Congress and the military, in their joint collective wisdom, only built the B2. So the pilots have to fly those crazy long missions I mentioned.

I saw a comment here on Slashdot. A guy who said he was an airplane mechanic for the military said he wanted to convert 747 cargo planes into bombers; he said they would be way better than the B-52. Not my area of expertise so I won't judge that, but it might make more sense than flying the B2s.

So, given that we have B2 bombers and B-52 bombers, what bombers do you propose we should fly for bombing missions? Or do you think we should just scrap them all and fire ballistic missiles every time we want to take out big targets? Not being rhetorical here, I want to know what you propose.

This isn't the time for some kneejerk reaction like "opponents of all things military". In fact that is the popular fallacy that people who defend all things military like to use.

But it is the time for pulling out that $2.2 bn figure and bashing the military with it?

Look pal, your original post was just flamebait. "keeping a 1980s corporate welfare programme for another decade" and all that. I'll ask you again: if they scrap all the B2s tomorrow, what do they fly in their place?

That kind of defense contractor marketing you just pushed doesn't cut either.

Oh, go push yourself.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[QuoteMstr]

"shotgun" weapons

Like flak?

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[compro01]

Decade is relative. These applications require pretty specialized components, radiation hardening, for instance, which is a factor at high altitudes, and as far as I understand, radiation hardening gets profoundly more difficult and expensive with smaller feature sizes (used in today's processors).

For replacement, key questions need to be answered such as "What exactly do we need?", "How long will it take to get it?", "How much will that cost?", and "What do we do until we get it?".

though I admit, the B-2 is only particularly useful in the opening round. the B-52 is a better tool for sustained action once you get rid of anything that could shoot it down.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[DerekLyons]

Upgrading the B2 to the 1990s is just keeping a 1980s corporate welfare programme for another decade, even while letting it float a decade behind in technology.

Old only equals outmoded by those who've bought into the whole Madison Avenue/$_BIG_COMPANY mindset that you have to be on the upgrade treadmill constantly to keep up with Joneses.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[Anonymous Coward]

An F-117 was taken down by conventional SAMs in Kosovo (might have been a lucky shot)

There's no such thing as lucky shot. The guys who shot it down did their homework and broke a sweat about it. F-117 was actually taken down in Voivodina, Serbian part of Panonia, several hundred kilometers from Kosovo.

There wasn't ANY tactical reason to fly stealth plane on that particular mission, at that time, as almost all defenders radar installations where down and complete air domination was accomplished. I suppose pilots or their commanders volunteered in order to assist their comrade pilots of "conventional" airplanes. Other then that, there was no real NEED to fly the mixed formations of stealth and non-stealth planes on missions.

Radar-absorbing coating on F-117 does not actually absorb longer wave (sub-400MHz) radar radiation. It is invivible for any respectable adversary which uses modern radar systems to obtain valuable information about objects (precise position, speed, size of the plane) in their airspace. However, little is ever thrown away in Serbian (Yugoslav) military. They probably still have some equipment donated to Tito's Yugoslavia by Allies back in 40's and 50's, for training, if for nothing else. It was speculated that AA artillery operators rigged an relict radar from the 50's and spotted F-117, but other sources claim that they actually used radars which can't "see" F-117, but instead they saw a formation of airplanes advancing onto them ... with one of them apparently missing. They decided to take on it for sheer glory of becoming "first AA crew to shoot down a stealth plane, EVAR".

Since this formation went on missions nightly, the battery set up their ambush: acquired and hid other flak guns (or/and higher charged ammo) with higher range ceiling (from some more heavily defended site) then their unit was known to wield, and additional heat-seeking vehicle-mounted missiles. Next time around they where ready. After dark, when heavy weather rolled in the clouds and rain, they moved their weapons from the woods hideout onto the meadow above which the formation's route lied. When the airplanes came, the gunners blindly fired heavy flak barrage toward the spot in the cloudy sky where they calculated the position of F-117 would be, and then immediately heat-seeking pair was fired toward lights above.

The stealth plane pilot ejected and was subsequently rescued by their chopper. He is probably a good kid, helping his buddies out and all, but too much enthusiasm sometimes costs your taxpayers serious money...and humiliation. If it is not broken, don't fix it. If there is no need for special/expensive tool, don't use it to do your daily chores. Don't send over-equipped heavy cavalry against peasant militia archers, ... etc., you get the point.

The commander of the AA unit retired from the service after the war and, AFAIK, owns and runs a bakery in his home town. Although they don't admit it, Serbs lost big time and consequently where strong armed into ruining their military even further, themselves. Military career became an unambiguous dead end, so being a local baker instead of a war hero decorated officer is an excellent deal. Which is just fine, as most of the people in the world have more use of the bread then...

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[the_other_chewey]

They are indeed good at not getting shot down, but not perfect. An F-117 was taken down by conventional SAMs in Kosovo (might have been a lucky shot)

Yes, the bad guys used a highly sophisticated OverHead Stereoscopic Human Imaging Targeter, known by pilots as "OH SHIT".

In other news, it is a bad idea to fly low altitude daylight missions over hostile ground, because you can see the bloody plane.

Re:Still Stuck in the 1980s

[dave420]

Or you could use a few smaller planes that also have uses outside this one particular attack scenario. Or use special forces. Or anything that doesn't require massively-expensive limited-role aircraft which sit in hangars or fly at airshows for most of their operational lives.

Re:Better functionally quaint than gee-whiz and oo

[nine-times]

Well, yeah, it's fine for them to be using old hardware. It seems like it's an embedded system that probably has lots of specific requirements, and they can't afford for there to be a BSOD. So it's only smart to use stuff that has been around for a long time and is known to work without any delays or bugs.

Still, it'd be awesome if you could fly one of these things with a Wiimote while rendering the the outside world with a modern game engine. I bet you're going to ask "What's wrong with the '3D graphics' of real life?" Well, the textures are nice and high-res, but dammit, there aren't enough lens flares.

Regarding that Mars lander...

[jd]

How are you expecting to Martians to communicate with it, if it doesn't have Bluetooth support, eh? Hadn't thought of that, had you?

Re:Regarding that Mars lander...

[gbjbaanb]

Dude, its on Mars. Everythings infrared.

Re:Regarding that Mars lander...

[jd]

Damn, you're right. That must explain why the Martians blew up the other landers, then. Wrong frequency.

Re:Better functionally quaint than gee-whiz and oo

[oneal13rru]

Just to point a small detail... flying a B2 is cooler than any computer out there. The large weapons just give you cause to giggle every time the news talks about "tensions". More serious note, all military electronic hardware feels primitive, from the GPS that belongs in an 80s sci-fi flick, to the palm pilot the size of a paperback we use to put crypto in radios, its all old. Reasons: A, beauracracy and change don't mix. B: Blowing the shit out of countries that didn't do anything to us just so we can rebuild them is kinda pricey. C: Ammo is expensive too. D: Our budget is mostly going to expanding a certain moron's oil empire. E: Usr=ID10T.

I wonder

[al0ha]

I wonder if they also included some of those $500 Cat 5 cables? This being a Government project I'd venture to guess; Yes!

Re:Still no official word about B-2's use of anti-

[Free the Cowards]

Riight, a revolution in physics and technology that would rival quantum mechanics and the USAF is sitting on it and using it to mildly enhance a score of strategic bombers.

Tell me another one!

Anyone else disappointed about no doom stat?

[Dan667]

They could have updated the stat on how many times the US could destroy the world with this B-2 upgrade, but it is strangely absent. How sad.

mod parent up

[damn_registrars]

Thats a fair assesment of how we keep pulling technology along when our government is in charge of the purse-strings.

Re:mod parent up

[moosesocks]

Uhm. No.

Military/aerospace-grade components are built to an absurdly high standard, and have to be tolerant of extreme physical forces and high levels of electromagnetic radiation.

Take a look at what gets put onto satellites (including ones not built by governments). You'll see a lot of radiation-hardened Pentiums and 486s.

A year or two ago, an amateur satellite got sent up using off-the-shelf components, and many (including those who built it) were astonished when the chips lasted a whole month before finally succumbing.

The military is one area where the government actually wants to succeed, as opposed to the many other agencies that were intentionally set up for failure during the Reagan years.

Re:mod parent up

[damn_registrars]

The comment had more to do with the way that once a project is launched, the government will go to great lengths to keep it going, even if its original purpose is no longer relevant.

As the previous poster pointed out, the B2 bomber's role was more relevant during the cold war and far less relevant now. Yet we keep it running anyways. The speculation being that we are keeping it running because of the investment, not because of the return. Sure, the B2 made sense when we thought we may need to drop nukes into remote areas of the USSR. Now we no longer even have the USSR to drop nukes on. And considering where our (perceived) enemies are now, nuclear warfare is likely an option that needs to be seriously reconsidered (as to whether it even makes sense).

I did not intend to imply that military projects are made to inferior standards. We all know how enormous the military budget is, and would hope that for $2 billion, the B2 was made pretty well.

Imagine..

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowulf hanger of those.

well it's not as if they want Vista on it

[advocate_one]

You wish to drop the bomb: Cancel or Allow?

Why run everything on a single procesor?

[91degrees]

It's not like using multiple chips represents a substantial saving, even when you're looking at military spec.

And these things are not immune from crashes. They just rely on extremely low downtime so it doesn't matter. Would have thought that resetting every system could still be an inconvenience.

Re:Why run everything on a single procesor?

[smash]

I think you'll find that whilst they're using a single processor for the "system" - there are several copies of the system on board the plane. Most/many fly by wire military aircraft have double or quad redundant flight control systems.

One reason why vacuum tubes were used.

[Anonymous Coward]

Russia was denied the science for new solid state tech, they had no choice but to advance the science of vacuum tubes. Laugh if you want, but Russian tubes are highly prized by rock guitarists for use in amps. And before clueless audio geeks and non-musically inclined electrical engineers/technicians chime in with "tubes are inferior" thread crapping, tubes in guitars are used for SOUND CREATION, not sound reproduction. There's a difference. All the engineers at my station (from the youngest straight out of vo-tech to the oldest grizzled longbeard) still can't wrap their head around why distortion is desirable in a final electric guitar sound.

Process slowly

[Anonymous Coward]

but carry a big stick

Good Timing

[longacre]

Today the Air Force released the first photos of the B-2 that crashed in Guam a couple months back. B-2 Stealth Bomber Crash Scene Photos: Exclusive First Look

Re:Good Timing

[soldeed]

Today the Air Force released the first photos of the B-2 that crashed in Guam a couple months back. B-2 Stealth Bomber Crash Scene Photos: Exclusive First Look

Excellent article! Look at the timeline;

9:29 am /// Waterlogged /// During a preflight check, the pilot notices three air data sensors are malfunctioning. Unknown to the crew, water in the sensors is skewing the air-pressure readings too high.

9:34 am /// Recalibration /// A ground crewman, using a cockpit keyboard, recalibrates the three waterlogged sensors. The preflight checks continue, and the B-2 taxis to runway Zero-Six-Right (above, top left).

10:29 am /// Boiling Sensors /// Before takeoff, the pilot turns on the sensorsâ(TM) heaters. Water in the sensors evaporates; the readings are now normal, but the earlier fix skews air-pressure data too low.

10:30:12 am /// Slow Start /// The B-2 starts takeoff. The on-board flight computer displays the wrong airspeed, causing the pilot to lift off at 133 knots (153 mph) rather than the required 145 knots.

10:30:50 am /// Auto Override /// The flight computer, relying on bad air-pressure readings, concludes the aircraft is in a nose-low altitude and automatically raises the nose to 30 degrees (top right).

10:31:06 am /// Fiery Ending /// The B-2, going too slowly, with its nose angled too high, stalls. As the airplaneâ(TM)s wing scrapes the runway (bottom left), the pilot and commander safely eject. The B-2 crashes (bottom right).

There you go, HUMAN ERROR!!

Linux ruins everything

[not flu]

I bet you can't use it as a toaster anymore though.

Re:Exactly right. It's obsolete

[smoker2]

Well if it's running on an iphone, at least it'll know which way up it is !

yeah but this is more fun

[SEAL]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F00f

Watch the whole plane crash as its pilots desperately try to reboot the fly-by-wire system.

Re:yeah but this is more fun

[repvik]

Pre-MMX Pentiums also had a HLT-bug that'd cause the box to lock up. afaik, no other OS'es than linux had a proper workaround (pass no-hlt on the kernel cmdline). I couldn't for the life of me get NT working on that box ;)

Re:yeah but this is more fun

[pentalive]

I suppose the fly by wire system uses a watchdog interrupt that triggers NMI every 1/10th of a second.

Re:yeah but this is more fun

[totally bogus dude]

I couldn't for the life of me get NT working on that box ;)

Undoubtedly, but that has nothing to do with processor bugs.

Re:yeah but this is more fun

[NateTech]

Ahh whippersnappers.

Motorola assembly programmers had the HCF (Halt and Catch Fire) commands for a decade prior to Intel's shitty knock-off that was a bug, whereas it was a FEATURE in the Moto chips! ;-)

 

JOVIAL BITES

[Embedded Geek]

My first job out of college was on the B-2, specifically on the flight control box. Despite what C/C++ detractors might say, JOVIAL as I saw it in use was vastly inferior to nearly any other language I've ever used. Compiler bugs were known but never fixed. The minuscule market for JOVIAL applications meant limited or no choice in compilers or tools. The lack of coders meant that you could not attract personnel and those you had were incentivized to get the heck out so as not to become unemployable.

Frankly, the actual language you use on a project is almost (not quite, but almost) an afterthought compared to the other factors of toolsets and talent pool.

Re:JOVIAL BITES

[speedtux]

All true, but what does any of that have to do with the language?

Re:JOVIAL BITES

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, don't be any dumber than ya gotta be.

The language JOVIAL means you have to use a JOVIAL compiler. If the only available JOVIAL compiler is buggy, you have to use a buggy compiler.

You could spend your own money and time to invest in improving the JOVIAL compiler, if you could find one where you had source. You could even set up a tiger team to add JOVIAL to the GCC family. But then, guess what, you are not solving your problem; you are working on JOVIAL and not getting the things you actually care about done.

You need good developers. GP said it is hard to get good devs who will write JOVIAL. You didn't refute that at all, you just pulled your cute line. If it's hard to find devs to code JOVIAL, that means JOVIAL is a liability.

So, buggy compiler, hard to find devs, and it is wonderfully clear to any sensible person why the GP said it was a good move to dump JOVIAL.

The technology isn't the problem

[megaditto]

Where exactly? Another Iraq?

For the Clueless: DO-178B

[Anonymous Coward]

The standard applied world wide to aircraft avionic software is DO-178B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178B. This standard and related standards are used for civilian and military aircraft systems. The "B" level means that a failure is "Hazardous"

Failure has a large negative impact on safety or performance, or reduces the ability of the crew to operate the plane due to physical distress or a higher workload, or causes serious or fatal injuries among the passengers.

You don't just hack on this kind of software. You have to invest in major amounts of planning, documentation and verification in addition to coding. It takes lots of time, people and money.

It also requires a high degree of professionalism. The people and organizations that do this kind of work are far beyond worrying about the Pentium FDIV bug or a DOS attack against a secure embedded system that will never be on a public network. Anyone on Slashdot who brings up these kinds of issues is only showing that they are clueless and are incapable of achieving the professional level required to do this kind of work.

It was Douglas MacArthur

[mangu]

He said: "The Japanese soldier's duty is to die for his emperor. Our duty is to make sure he does his duty"

IIRC this was in the film, so it must be true.

Re:It was Douglas MacArthur

[fprintf]

Well, who originated the quote about dying for their country?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066206/quotes is from the movie Patton and the first quote says "Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

Like the grandparent post, I have always remembered the quote as being from Patton.

Re:It was Douglas MacArthur

[rossdee]

The quote from Patton was also in a film: Patton (1970)

"Nobody ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." -- General George S. Patton (George C. Scott)

upgrade is probably not for any upgrade needs

[arse maker]

The plane works, it doesn't need more cpu. Maybe new features could use this, but id bet its easier to add another system do to this on board, you already have a reliable system.

My bet is that this is to do with the parts used for this computer being obsolete. No one makes them any more. The shuttle has huge issues with this, they have boxes of old parts to replace broken parts with. To get "new" replacements is either extremely expensive or impossible. Thats a huge problem for your nuclear delivery systems.

Dude...

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome! I want some of that stuff your'e smoking!

Re: Oops

[LanceUppercut]

It was supposed to say

It was designed to drop bombs inside [insert your favorite banana republic's name here] territory.

Just wondering...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this related to the fact that Win 3.11 is no longer for sale?

Re:Better functionally quaint than gee-whiz and oo

[Anonymous Coward]

if some guy's carrying around a large handgun on his hip, you're less likely to comment on his mullet.

.

While at the same time he's more likely to have one.

ok ok, flamebait.

Flight Dynamic upgrade

[geogob]

In the list of systems affected by the processor upgrade, I read FMS, radar, comm, sensors (most likely electronic warfare/countermeasures), weapon system integration, etc.

I remember reading that the on-board computers are absolutely essential to fly the B-2 and to handle the control surfaces. All control surfaces are computer controlled to keep the plane stable (and able to fly).

It is still unclear to me whether the upgrade affects or not flight dynamic systems. Furthermore I'm not sure upgrading the flight dynamic software and hardware would be pertinent, unless stability issues have been observed(plane stability or software stability...or both).

The crash some other slashdoters have pointed out might be a trigger to a major flight dynamic software and hardware update, but if that's the case, TFA is unclear on the extent of that upgrade in this upgrade program.

The pentium problem.

[IchNiSan]

I just hope they bought processors made after 1995. http://www.willamette.edu/~mjaneba/pentprob.html

Testing not only for safety but also for steath

[pease1]

I know someone who was involved in the integration of the electrical systems on the B-2a's. The level of testing he has described is impressive. Not only do they do the normal flight testing, but also extensive testing to ensure any one system doesn't create any "noise" that would allow the plane to be detected. That fibre-channel drive can't emit any RF.

And that's just the beginning; as they found out in testing in early flight tests, sometimes quiet electronic packages when combined into the system created RF noise, so components have to be tested many times to eliminate bad signals.

But I still haven't figured out or seen anyone explain how that aircraft can use radar to detect a ground target, but not be detected as source.

Re:Testing not only for safety but also for steath

[dave420]

If the ground target is operating radar, then that will do the trick.

Re:Testing not only for safety but also for steath

[pease1]

My understanding is they use a radar from the plane to sync up terrain and building profiles with GPS data before dropping the JDAM in order better ensure they are hitting the correct building/trench/etc. They've been using radar to profile ground targets since WWII.

it will be a great day

[t35t0r]

"when our schools have all the money they need and the government has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber"

This story just after...

[MrKaos]

Kaspersky To Demo Attack Code For Intel Chips

hmmmmmmmm

Re:Better functionally quaint than gee-whiz and oo

[Cjstone]

F: Tried and True. If I remember correctly, the US Army took some prodding to adopt a semiautomatic rifle, even after the technology was quite mature.

Planes don't need fast processors

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the software on military jets is proprietary and coded specifically for the hardware, therefor there's no need for ultimate technology, it just needs to do simple computation with little lag. It's not like it needs to be a rendering powerhouse.

Re:Still no official word about B-2's use of anti-

[mTor]

You'd be surprised how much tech is locked up in "black" programs. Heck, if I told you stealth was achievable, you'd call me crazy 30 years ago too. Electrogravitics is very real and they use it in B-2 to reduce the weight by few percent.

Ultimate Ctrl+Alt+Del - The Ejection Seat

[ryanisflyboy]

As the article mentions, if there is a malfunction of the B2 Spirit's computer system (either in sensors or the system itself) the pilots must eject or be killed. There was a video, not available any more, explaining that the computer is the reason why the airplane doesn't spin out of control and crash. If it goes offline it takes just a few seconds before you're toast. This apparently happened once or twice during early development while they worked out the kinks in the software (sorry, can't find any current proof of this). The only B2 that has crashed (that we know of) crashed due to bad sensor input to the computer (if that is really the truth):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-2_Spirit#Incidents_and_accidents

When you've got a billion dollars flying around at very high speeds, with some nuclear weapons on-board, and a couple of highly-trained pilots... you need to be 100% sure the system doesn't go off-line resulting in a near instant vehicle loss. It is also well known that spacecraft and aircraft use technologies that are actually very advanced, but might appear on the surface as old. The amount of materials research that goes in to these things costs in the multitudes of billions. It is very important the H-bombs drop where they are supposed to, and when. It is very scary, and the only way to test all the moving parts together is to start a nuclear war. As the SysAdmins say: "Not if, but when."

Here are some more details (may be a bit redundant):
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Preliminary_Design_Review_Of_New_B_2_Bomber_Computer_Architecture_Completed_999.html

Re:Ultimate Ctrl+Alt+Del - The Ejection Seat

[greyhueofdoubt]

>>When you've got a billion dollars flying around at very high speeds, with some nuclear weapons on-board, and a couple of highly-trained pilots

I hate to nit-pick, but the b-2 doens't fly very fast. Its maximum speed is always somewhere below mach 1, putting it on par with or slower than commercial jet liners.

If you're curious why this is, consider the effect of a sonic boom wrt the aircraft's stealth.

-b

Re:Exactly right. It's obsolete

[Quiet_Desperation]

"Your aircraft has crashed. Click OK to restore session."

The laugh's on you

[Tom]

The military isn't "behind" in development - the rest of us are behind in testing and quality.

Yeah, you laugh that they use CPUs an order of magnitude slower than your notebook. But they can't afford a BSOD, a floating-point error or any of the other nonsense that you put up with every day. Their processors might be slower, but I wouldn't bet that - taking all things into account - their total productivity is.

Software quality on the "bleeding edge", where most of us live, is abysmal, and that's putting it very nicely. Regular users are beta-testers, and that's if they're lucky. There is software being sold today that shouldn't qualify as an alpha version. When's the last time you bought a game, just for an extreme example, that did not already have a patch available before the box was on sale the first day?

That's nonsense you can't afford in a billion-dollar plane with nuclear weapons on board.

Curtis LeMay

[Airw0lf]

"Bombs away with Curtis LeMay" - pretty much sums up the USAF's attitude, doesn't it?

Re:Curtis LeMay

[Dun Malg]

"Bombs away with Curtis LeMay" - pretty much sums up the USAF's attitude, doesn't it?

Roger that! Between the LeMay bomber folks and the Boyd "fighter mafia" gang, close air support has become the red headed stepchild in the whole mess. Nobody wants to push for small, slow, ugly ground attack planes. They're just not "sexy", and also ground warfare is so dirty...

Re:Curtis LeMay

[Nimey]

It's going to suck for you guys when USAF does get 'round to retiring the A-10 in favor of the F-35. I just don't think the '35 could be near as good at CAS as the Hog.

I think it's a stupid decision--they should have a dedicated CAS aircraft replace the Hog--but a civvie's opinion doesn't matter.

Just Note

[tekshogun]

Like NASA the US Military does not jump on the latest and greatest technology for everything and for good reason. Some things they do but not all and not the most critical systems. The older technology has been tried and proven over time which makes it more trustworthy than the 15-year old's Alienwarez Octal Core "gaming" PC down the street. When you are flying your 2-billion dollar bomber aircraft over Baghdad and you don't want it to fall from the sky due to a floating point error that had never been seen because the processor is a year old and engineers rushed it to the production line. When you only have one rocket sending a single rover to Mars and the entire space program's life expectancy is hinging on the success, or failure, of this mission, you don't need a hardware failure of the SATA array because a small amount of cosmic radiation has an adverse effect on this one little chip unique to the controller.

sweeeeet

[Tekninja_Hawk]

Maybe with this new hardware upgrade theyll finally just be able to fly the plane like they were playing Terminal Velocity.

Or they could play Terminal Velocity!

The obvious pun

[Nerdposeur]

Just now upgrading to Pentiums? This must be a real "fly-by-night" operation! [Cue "corny joke" sound effects]

Re:Better functionally quaint than gee-whiz and oo

[oneal13rru]

Depends on the shed you're dealing with, I guess, but at least I'm willing to put my name behind what I say... but accurate enough analogy, calling oneself a tool while trying to insult someone from behind anonymity... and all those statements I made are a combination of personal opinion and personal experience. But again, I'm willing to back those. Cheers.

No bomber needs.....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

more than 640K! Congratulations on the upgrade!

Re:Still no official word about B-2's use of anti-

[Free the Cowards]

You're insane if you think they're even remotely equivalent. Stealth is clever shapes and clever use of materials, mostly enabled by the vast increase in computing power which made it possible to model the radar characteristics of the aircraft more completely. (This is why the F-117 was shaped like a 1980s-era 3D rendering, all flat polygons and no curves: that was the best the computers of the time could handle.) Stealth has absolutely zero application outside of the military. On the other hand, electrogravitics would be an enormous revolution in fundamental physics as well as in applied technology, and would revolutionize nearly every aspect of our lives in the same way that quantum mechanics has.

It's plausible for an applied technology that has no use outside of the military to stay locked up in black programs for a while. It is utterly implausible for a massive theoretical breakthrough which changes a great deal of known physics to do the same.

State of 1980s Avionics Development

[SimFlyer]

There was a core group of early avionics software developers located in Seattle in the 70s and 80s that produced the core of the B-1A, B-52 OAS, B-1B, and B-2 Offensive Avionics system. The B-1B and B-2 development groups and resulting Offensive Avionics systems had common elements. Jovial Programing Toolset and IBM Processors used in the B-1B were mature in the mid 80s and provided a relatively low risk development environment for what was largely a very successful Offensive Avionics development. Realtime Simulation Software that supported the Offensive Avionics System development was written in FORTRAN and Harris Assembly Language running on Harris 800 Computers. Computer card decks, offsite software compiling and linking, front panel switch debugging, etc were the state of things back then...

Re:Still no official word about B-2's use of anti-

[Anonymous Coward]

Electricity is a precious commodity onboard aircrafts. Even if you can use it to "reduce weight by a few percent" I doubt it would increase maximum load or improve fuel mileage.

Keep in mind that any electricity used on a plane has to be produced by the engines. This process in itself is very inefficient. Then on top of that you have this "electrogravic" system that takes that precious electricity and converts it to something useful, which makes up for the loss of the fuel and drop of engine power used for generating this electricity.

Electrogravic tech will have to be pretty darn amazing to be worthwhile.

Scores a 6.3 on the Napoleon scale!

[sponglish]

The Napoleon scale rates aircraft/spacecraft on the likelihood that they would have enabled him to win the Battle of Waterloo.

B-52: 0
B-2: +6.3
U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701): +3,000,000.5
Death Star (Mk II): +4,000,000

Re:There's a (BETTER) Reason for That

[Goldenhawk]

I worked on a Navy jet upgrade about 10 years ago. It was a project to replace an antiquated (read that as "wire-wrap technology") autopilot computer with a brand-new, spiffy, fully digital autopilot computer. Of course, just like the B-2, it had to be a form/fit replacement.

I was shocked when, at the first design review, the contractor said they would be using an 80286 as the CPU. Remember, this is 1995. The 80286 was introduced in 1984. By 1995, the Pentium was the standard. So of course I asked "Why use such an older processor, when a newer one would be much much faster?"

Their answer was essentially one word.

HEAT.

The 286 had perfectly adequate processing power to run the fairly simple algorithms needed for autopilot and related functions, including all the error detection and fault logging, as well as the required 2x of government-mandated growth allowance (you MUST use less than 50% of clock times in your design). Using anything more high-powered would generate more heat (which must be dissipated somewhere in the closed environment), and use more current. On a 1960's era airplane, with Kapton wiring and its risk of insulation fires, and its limited power generation ability, you don't toss in higher heat and power requirements without VERY good reasons.

The result turned out to be perfectly adequate, and a vast improvement over the original design.

Let me toss out another interesting statistic. From what I remember from a recent brief, Boeing is right now delivering upgrades to its commercial airline fleet autopilot/navigation computers with 32Mb of data storage installed for the navigation database. Just 32Mb. That's what you're sitting behind in every Southwest or United or American flight you enjoy. With memory so cheap, why not put more in? Same logic, same ideas: for commericial and military programs, you don't overbuild a device just because you can. You'd better have a REALLY good reason to make a change.

We geeks tend to forget that overclocking and water-cooling and 8Gb RAM and 2-TB hard drives are thousands of times overkill for very many purposes.

Re:Still no official word about B-2's use of anti-

[greyhueofdoubt]

-No, I wouldn't
-No, I wouldn't
-No, it isn't
-No, we don't

-b

But can it win against...

[thexile]

this: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/14/1852203.