Slashdot Mirror
Software Bug in F-35 Radar Causes Mid-Flight System Reboot
Reader Lisandro writes: The F-35 Fighter jet can't seem to catch a break. An advanced AN/APG-81 AESA F35 radar system has been found riddled with a software bug that causes it to degrade and stop working. The solution? Rebooting the system while in the air.
Major General Jeffrey Harrigian, director of the Air Force's F-35 integration office at the Pentagon, was quoted as saying "radar stability - the radar's ability to stay up and running. [...] What would happen is they'd get a signal that says either a radar degrade or a radar fail - "something that would force us to restart the radar." The issue was spotted in late 2015, and thankfully, it was caught during the testing period. The software version "3i" is affected. An update aimed to resolve the bug is expected to be delivered to the US Air Force by the end of March.
Major General Jeffrey Harrigian, director of the Air Force's F-35 integration office at the Pentagon, was quoted as saying "radar stability - the radar's ability to stay up and running. [...] What would happen is they'd get a signal that says either a radar degrade or a radar fail - "something that would force us to restart the radar." The issue was spotted in late 2015, and thankfully, it was caught during the testing period. The software version "3i" is affected. An update aimed to resolve the bug is expected to be delivered to the US Air Force by the end of March.
Oh come on, who here hasn't had to reboot during air to air combat?
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Have you actually every tried writing a formal proof of correctness for any algorithm at all, let alone a non-trial one dependent on external subsystems and with huge amounts of state?
Yes, I have tried, and raised funding, and managed in fact to run one layer of our formal modelling language in real time (slowly). But we decided that the proof languages (Z and ML, with a sprinkling of CCS) weren't up to the task, and nor were we.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
It should have been caught in testing, but of course someone wanted to save money and then it's testing that gets shaved first.
You mean like it says in TFS?
Software Bug in F-35 Radar Causes Mid-Flight System Reboot
Alarmist headline.
First of all, the bug doesn't cause a reboot. It requires a reboot to put the radar back into a useable state.
Secondly, it is only the radar system that needs rebooting.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
a formal proof for such a complex system is hideously, insanely ridiculously expensive. proper testing is sufficient. Yes a company could lose billions if their systems went offline as opposed to definitely spending billions to write verifiable software that will be out of date by the time they release it.
I'm sure it's a very serious bug but does it mean that the software is "riddled" with bugs? For all anyone knows it was an isolated issue that occurred in an atypical circumstance and was subsequently rectified. And it occurred during testing which is the reason that testing even exists as a thing - to find problems.
"Yaeh, my jet is plummeting to earth at mach 3. Any suggestions?"
"Have you tried turning off and on again?"
A solution would be new code. It sounds like the test pilots are doing a great job of you know, testing.
This happens literally all the time with software updates on jets, anyone who's worked on any other generation fighter/attack aircraft in the "digital age" knows this. The interesting part, is that someone is publicly complaining about it, and making a software version with a bug, known to the public. Every radar system we've produced for 30 years has issues, again, this is completely normal. This article is about sounding some sort of political alarm, it shows that there's some dissent among the ranks, and I can assure you, that any experienced test pilot wouldn't even be remotely surprised to see this type of behavior, but the usual course of action is to document it and train the pilots in the short term, while releasing a new version of software in the long term. Pilots fly with "radar degrade" every single day. This is making a standard issue between contractors and military flight crews, into a public pentagon issue, to either ask congress for more money, rather than holding said contractors accountable for their failure to meet some sort of design goal, or to try to join the "anti F-35" team to advance his own career in some way. Our jets are flying way beyond their designed limitations right now, and the longer it takes to replace them, the worse off all of our military personnel are going to be.
The software version "3i" is affected.
As a general rule, when your version numbering system needs to use complex numbers, something's going wrong with your project.
You can't shut us down! The Internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people's ideas!
As others below have mentioned, it is very difficult to formally verify large complex systems. However, it is made even more complex in that there aren't enough research results to cover such a system in its complexity. Also, computer scientists tend to think the world revolves around their code, so if they get that correct, then the system will run correctly. The real world isn't like that, and it is not all captured in software, much of the system is hardware. Trying to capture the correct interaction between hardware and software is very, very hard...and it isn't clear that even if you could that you could verify the result before the universe dies.
I don't feel like watching the video, because based on the Defense Response it is the normal F-35 hachet job by journalists. I've heard the same arguments again and again.
First off the F-35 was never meant to be a primary air supremacy fighter, it was meant to be a multi-role stealth strike thus the deficiencies in ACM are to be expected. It is sacrificing wing area to get an internal weapons bay large enough to fit a 2,000lb JDAM. Something that the F-22 can't do. It also has a much longer range than other fighter aircraft, literally 50% more on internal fuel than the F-16 with drop tanks, and the F-22 on internal fuel.
Second though the specs don't seem impressive compared to the hot rod that is are the F-16, and F-15. But neither of those aircraft are going to reach their max speeds and altitudes with a war load. Those specs were tested with no armaments on the hardpoints and no drop tanks (with exception of the F-16 where wingtip missiles reduce wing flutter). While the F-35 going to be capable of nearly reaching its specs with an actual warload in the aircraft, and that includes super cruise. Granted the specs might be down rated somewhat from the initial contract specs, but that is to be expected as they often don't know the exact weights of all the third party systems to be installed on the aircraft (some were yet to be developed when the contract was written).
Third the expected price of the aircraft is inline with the F-35 competitors, who are all non-stealth aircraft. The F-15SE is brought up as a replacement for the F-35 by some critics, saying it would be cheaper than the F-35. Well the F-15K which has a similar electronics suite as the F-35, cost the ROK $100M each. Compared to the current LRIP production cost of the F-35 at $90-100M each, with the full rate production cost to be in $90M. The Eurofighter cost just short $90M each. So the price for a stealth strike aircraft is actually inline with competitors.
Fourth Canada made another stupid decision with canceling the F-35. They did so without selecting a replacement. The CF-18 nearly at the end of their service lives if they haven't reached it already. And likely will become another Sea King with the replacement used as political football between the ruling parties until if has killed enough aircrews that both parties agree "Perhaps we should actually replace these eh?"
The other detail missing here is that 3i isn't fielded yet. That is something like Block 2F which is only installed in the Marine Corp unit right now. Oh by the way - There is only one unit of Marine F-35s that are "on-duty" right now - the entire rest of the fleet is under test/development.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Extremely common, actually. It's one of the major pitfalls and difficulties of doing multi-threaded programming and one of the hardest things for programmers new to multi-threaded design to learn how to solve. It can also be extremely difficult to debug, even for experienced programmers.
Improper garbage collection is another extremely common bug that becomes harder to find and debug with multi-threaded programming, and that can also lead to memory leaks.
There are time tested techniques to mitigate these issues and strategies to find and squash the bugs, but as you said, they can be extremely hard to reproduce while testing.
It's possible to write complex systems using modular design: do one thing and do it well.
And you'll soon discover your simple modules start interacting in ways that you did not anticipate or understand. There are also unlikely to be any tools available to analyze how your set of modules work as a whole.
Every nontrivial system has emergent behavior. You can't eliminate complexity with hand waving.
The F-104 was a fantastic jet. But a terrible military jet.
That thing was made to be a fast, last minute, bomber interceptor. It was built to get there at Mach 2+, fill the bomber's ass with lead and get home. Originally, it hadn't provision even for missiles!
But them, Pentagon changed the rules demanding a multi hole aircraft, and Lockheed started to hack the airframe. As a technical achievement, it was a formidable one. But again, as a military weapon, a questionable one.
The best "worst" hack was the F-104G, made for Germany. They almost doubled the combat radius - but made the thing yet more harsh to handle. A lot of German women were made widows by this plane.
Curiously, Italy was also an operator for this aircraft, but without a single recorded casualty (perhaps nobody managed to take it off! =P ).
The bottom line I had read is: the F-104 is a formidable plane in the hands of formidable pilots. And a catastrophe waiting to happen in everybody else's.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org