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.

Comments

Nothing to see here

[Freshly Exhumed]

Oh come on, who here hasn't had to reboot during air to air combat?

Re:Nothing to see here

[Feral Nerd]

Oh come on, who here hasn't had to reboot during air to air combat?

... a problem that is aggravated by system's insisting on the installation of innumerable update packages on every reboot.

MISSILE LAUNCH DETECTED!!!
Installing radar software update 3 of 68....
MISSILE APPROACH WARNING!!!
Installing radar software update 3 of 68....
MISSILE APPROACH WARNING!!!
Installing radar software update 3 of 68....
MISSILE APPROACH WARNING!!!
Installing radar software update 3 of 68....
MISSILE APPROACH WARNING!!!
Installing radar software update 3 of 68....
MISSILE IMPACT IMMINENT, EJECT! EJECT!
Installing radar software update 4 of 68....
For this update you need Microsoft Silverlight, install Silverlight [Y/N]:

Re:Nothing to see here

[sumdumass]

You forgot we recommend you upgrade to Windows 10.

Re:Nothing to see here

[dywolf]

actually "rebooting", ie, flipping the power switch or circuit breaker, isn't at all uncommon on avionics equipment on military aircraft.
we aren't talking about typical computers that go through a boot process anyway. this is ruggedized equipment that largely lacks any thing resembling an operating system or RAM or much else a typical Slashdot reader would be familiar with.

anyone who's spent any time working on military aircraft as a maintainer, particularly the avionics systems, knows that inflight glitches are not at all infrequent. and when they pop up on the Master Caution* or elsewhere, often the first corrective action the pilot takes is to power cycle the specific piece of equipment. most every system is on its own breaker, and pilots are trained in what can and what cannot be power cycled in flight. the majority of the time, that's enough to fix the glitch.

and typically the first thing that happens when the pilot returns is a rep from each of the main work shops (avionics, flightline, airframes, ordinance, life support) meets him as he is exiting his aircraft, in order to ask if any gripes came up during the flight. this way they can get a jump on it before the pilot even gets back to the maintenance control to write the maintenance order describing the glitch.

there a thousands of wires, with hundreds of connectors, each connector a cannon plug consisting of several dozen pins, any one of which could have gotten slightly bent (or even broken) upon reconnection, making an imperfect electrical connection or faulty data bus signal (depending on system). Or a wire may fall out of the backend of the pin from a faulty installation of the retainer of the cannon plug. or the plug itself may be not quite fully seated; you'd think it would be easy, but there's a reason we have cannon plug pliers (aka "bi*ch grips"). There's also millions of solder joints and splices that can fatigue from vibration. sometimes a contact simply gets dirty cause oil or grease (we wipe everything constantly, but still happens).

(*speaking of PITA to maintain: due its nature, being tied into EVERYTHING (hundreds, sometimes thousands, of feet of wiring, depending on aircraft type), the Master Caution Panel (MCP) itself is often the actual point of failure, throwing false indications. one of the first things we frequently did in tracing a gripe was to first eliminate the MCP itself)

Re:Nothing to see here

[Noble713]

Because Russia invading a sovereign country is perfectly acceptable because they weren't doing what Russia wanted them to do. Of course, pointing to another country doing something kind of the same excuses what Russia is doing, it is all perfectly acceptable to annex the territory of another country.

Great Powers do it all the time. I don't expect it to change. But I do aim to point out the hypocrisy and/or naivete of anyone who thinks the US's foreign policy has altruistic motives or that the "Other Guys" are inherently evil.

Yeah, screw those other countries, China has a huge population, so they should just be able to steal territory that they have no valid claim to.

Might makes right. Just ask any sovereign nation that's been subject to a US invasion. As an aside, note that no nuclear-armed state has suffered a regime change at US hands. And yet Americans are surprised when antagonists pursue nuclear arms? As for "stealing territory they have no valid claim to"....the validity of their claim stems from their ability to enforce their will. Hence the fortification of their man-made islands. Also note that the US has progressed to a uniquely insidious alternative to directly "stealing" territory: the Petrodollar system. But it requires constant enforcement by the US, and controlling/manipulating central banks, financial institutions, and the exchange of oil are all aspects of this enforcement.

2000: Saddam was planning to switch sales of Iraqi oil from dollars to Euros. Within 3 years he was deposed.
2009: Gaddafi was doing his best to reconcile with the West. Unfortunately for him, he also planned a gold-and-oil-backed Libyan currency. He was dead within 3 years of shaking Obama's hand. And the "rebels" sure were quick to set up a Central Bank (less than 2 months into the civil war).
2012: Iran was planning to sell oil in exchange for gold. Despite having them bracketed with bases in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military was in no position to invade. So Iran instead found themselves promptly disconnected from global financial institutions: http://www.reuters.com/article...
2014: Ukraine has a revolution....and suddenly all the gold is missing from their central bank. Now they are stuck with fiat currency and IMF obligations. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/... Meanwhile, Russia and China are buying up gold like crazy ( http://www.mining.com/china-ru... ), and started their own alternative-IMF (the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank). Both have stated intentions to end the US's hegemonic influence. These are two nuclear-armed Great Powers that are closing the conventional military gap, and despite shaky economies, having been consistently moving to eliminate US dollar influence across their entire sphere of influence. Which, IMO, will eventually be a good thing for everyone, including the average (productive) American citizen.

Oh, let us ignore all the people Assad was murdering, and that a large percentage of the population wants him out of office.

If you have a problem with murderous heads of state that are unpopular, perhaps you should look a little closer to home before trying to solve other people's problems? https://theintercept.com/drone...

Lets just prop up that dictator because he is our friend and is nice to us.

Yes, the Russian relationship with Assad closely parallels the relationship the United States has with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Ya know, the guys who are busy bombing the shit out of Yemen? These are also the same people who are VERY close ideologically to ISIS and al Qaeda....who we've spent the past 15 yea

Re:Classic memory leak.

[DamonHD]

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

Only the radar system needs rebooting

[wonkey_monkey]

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.

Re:Only the radar system needs rebooting

[rikkards]

Third it's already been resolved. My dad worked on the Canadian Maritime Helicopter Project for years. During it the papers had an article talking about some snag that was hit and how horrible it was. I sent my dad the link and his response:
"Yeah that was my thing and 8 months ago, it was pointed out and in less than a day resolved."

Media exaggerating? Never...

Re:Classic memory leak.

[bloodhawk]

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.

Riddled with a single bug?

[DrXym]

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.

"Hi, tech support?"

[Snufu]

"Yaeh, my jet is plummeting to earth at mach 3. Any suggestions?"

"Have you tried turning off and on again?"

Reboot isn't a solution, that is a work around.

[dsmatthews9379]

A solution would be new code. It sounds like the test pilots are doing a great job of you know, testing.

Version what?

[ma i ude]

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.

Re:Classic memory leak.

[gtall]

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.