The Raptors 2nd fatal flaw...?

This is just a theory so I have no actual facts to suppsrt this theory. Now, we all know that the (F/A-22) Raptor is I very modern, stealthy and highly maneuverable plane. But as all planes, it downsides too. On this web-site some of us have made theads of this, waht could this fatal flaw be...? Now, I haven't exactly set my mind to it, but the other day i remembered a thing that could become a much bigger problem that suspected.

As told, the Raptor is for the moment perhaps the best strice fighter, The pane can discoverenemy planes, and destroy them befor the enemies have time to react. The plane has marvelous engines that can create huge ammounts of thrusts. These to factors have one thing incommon. computers. Yes, I am not aware if you have heard of a very simple virus, that may come into your cell-phone... The virus simply adjusts your cell-phone to use more battery than before. So even tough you just have loaded your battery, it might be empty in minutes.

Now, let's change the scales a bit, the Raptor has seven coputers inside it's frames. These 7 computers are the ones that notices the enemy planes, locks them and shoots them down. Now in theory, what if an enemy of America, simply smuggles a virus into the plane, pretending to me a mechanic. One plane wouldn't be anything, but if the enemy could create a "mass event" of some sort, the recepie to a disaster would be ready.

Under a mission, the planes all electrical systems suddenly would shut them selves down, the pilot would be blidfolded, and couldn't do anything but to jump out, or maybe the computer wouldn't want to lock it self into an enemy target...?

What do you think of my theory...?

Possible but as close to impossible as it could come.

First off a normal mechanic wont get near the software aspect normally nor be able to access it to install the virus.

If they were able to get access to upload a virus into one plane that would pretty much be it. There is no way they would get it into multiple planes without being found out. Scheduling and logging of maintence would pin them upon any suspicion.

Now.. If someone doing the programming slipped a latent virus into the software during a "update" it could easily affect all of the planes, but that to would be rather difficult. First someone that wanted this done would have to find out who the major programmers are, contact them, corrupt them to work against the US, and then develop a plan to get the said virus into the programming without the dozen other programmers noticing it.

The biggest weakness we will have in the future is our depedence on electronics. While many of our key war assets are emp shielded, its still not wholy proven. We have yet to face a enemy that use's advanced electronic warfare. We are still ourselves just starting to scratch the surface in that arena.

The "fatal flaw" going forward will be the reliance on billion dollar solutions to create defense vehicles. The achilles heel of such programs is their scale and complexity which inevitably bloat their costs. The joke of the $600 hammer is still very much in effect today.

In the meantime, others will engineer far more cost effective offensive vehicles with comparitively spartan budgets. It probably won't make sense until we are trying to take out multiple low tech bogies with million dollar missles. Inexpensive unmanned vehicles are more likely to become the norm. The old idea of saturation attacks using the Quantity vs. Quality could expose a greater flaw.



[edit on 14-8-2005 by nullster]

The fatal flaw is that it is an expensive dinosaur arriving at the wrong time. Life cycles for UCAVs are way shorter than they will be cheap and plentiful, the F/A-22 (if it ever sees actions) will be surrounded by UCAVs with DE weapons which make dogfighting irrelevant.

Yes, that is the main point in this thread... us relying too much on elecronics these days... And this thred is about the Raptor, the small possibility that it could be infected from a virus... it's not about how it would be done...

If this is a flaw, it is a flaw of EVERY NEW FIGHTER NOT JUST THE RAPTOR.

The Raptor may have the best computers, but aircraft like the Typhoon and the soon to be T-50 MUST use computers for the fly by wire systems and avionics. So, every fighter would have this flaw.

I bet the mechanic could easily get into the computer, I mean, everything has a USB port these days, why not a raptor. Simply plug in the Ipod with the virus saved on it and in less than 5 seconds, bam, the raptor is inoperatable. (That was sarcasm)
But computers are a major weakness...thats why I prefer the SU-27 to the F-22.

I really don't think it would be that easy to upload a virus. There would be no outside access via other computers, and the uplinks for software upgrades is probably a proprietary connector, or parallel, etc. I've seen other computers in planes, and they didn't have a USB port on them. They're not like desktops where it's a computer looking device. As was stated by another member, ALL modern fighters have a lot of computers built into them. They HAVE to. The new designs, from about the F-117 on are inherentaly unstable, which means more flight computers to keep them stable. The more unstable a design the more manuverable it is, in most cases.

Originally posted by jonesey_dude
But computers are a major weakness...thats why I prefer the SU-27 to the F-22.

You are aware that the Su-27 is controlled by computers [ie: flight and weapons control, etc], as well, correct?

The MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-27 Flanker, third-generation fighters, were fitted with the more advanced Argon Ts-101 family of computers. The Su-27’s TsVM-80 main fire-control computer was the first system in a Russian aircraft to combine infrared sight, laser, optical and multimode radar inputs to feed a head-up display (HUD). The Su-27 also includes Russia’s first operational helmet-mounted target designator, called the NSTs-27. It feeds the 36SH optical radar, which is produced by Geofizika NPO and incorporates one Ts-101 computer.

Both the Su-27 and MiG-29 were benchmark aircraft in terms of computer power. The two fighters also were initial platforms for the "Tester" on-board flight recorder, which records 256 parameters. Post flight analysis of Tester cassettes are conducted using the base Luch-74 laboratory monitoring system, built around the ES-1841 computer, an IBM PC copy that has been produced by Miniradioprom since 1987. A recent 1998 prototype of an upgraded MiG-29 SMT incorporates a more powerful MVK computer.

Russian Airborne Computers

There is not a major or significant fighter aircraft flying today that does not heavily rely on computers electronics, not a one. If one is susceptable, they all are in varying ways and means.




seekerof

[edit on 14-8-2005 by Seekerof]

You all seem to think the world today depends to much on electronics...well...of course we do, thats not a bad thing. Would you prefer we take everything back to being mechanical, and planes will all be cables and pulleys. No

The best we can do is harden things from EMP...thats it.

As for the Raptor, It has no flaws, you little scenerio would never work, the odds of someone taking down even one plane with that tactic is very very low.

Originally posted by American Mad Man
If this is a flaw, it is a flaw of EVERY NEW FIGHTER NOT JUST THE RAPTOR.

The Raptor may have the best computers, but aircraft like the Typhoon and the soon to be T-50 MUST use computers for the fly by wire systems and avionics. So, every fighter would have this flaw.

A very good point, I just brought this thing up because i believe that the Raptor has the most computers of them all... And the EF, it's on the same side with the Raptor so an enemy would just be happy if he/she could put the virus on in the EF too...

Originally posted by jonesey_dude

But computers are a major weakness...thats why I prefer the SU-27 to the F-22.

Are you joking?

Tell you what - you take your Su-27's, I'll take 1/3rd the number of aircraft, but I get Raptors. I'd bet the Raptors could take every single one of the 27's without a single lost aircraft.

I heard on the History Channel the Raptor has triple or quadruple redundancy features.

Originally posted by American Mad Man

Are you joking?

Tell you what - you take your Su-27's, I'll take 1/3rd the number of aircraft, but I get Raptors. I'd bet the Raptors could take every single one of the 27's without a single lost aircraft.

Wel, I understand you... I'd do the same thing as you...

Any way, to get to the core of this situation, you have to consider exactly HOW a virus would be introduced to the software on a military aircraft.

I am not the worlds formost authority (actually, I'd wager there are 12 year olds out there who have a better idea then i do) on the subject, but as I see it, there are only 3 ways.

1) The virus is written into the software before it is put into the aircraft. For example, a spy somhow puts a virus into the fly-by-wire system, and has a trigger for it (say, the 5th time after burners are used). Now, this software is delivered to the technicians at airbases, and they unknowingly put it into all the planes they work on.

2) One of the aircrew swap the software in an act of sabotage.

3) The virus is introduced to the aircraft through the aircrafts communications network. I don't know if this is even possable, and it certainly isn't probable even if it can be done because of the extreme security that military electronic communications systems have.

In any case, even if one of these situations were to play out, it would be pretty easy to fix.

I'd go for the third solution... But then again, the "enemy" can propably figure out a fourth or maybe even a fifth way...

Fighter Master FIN, thats not actually what the Raptor's cockpit/display looks like. Believe it or not, it's classified.

Whoever was writing the virus would also need access to the operating system wouldn't they?

(unless these things are running windows in which case they'll probably never take off anyway )

Originally posted by Chris McGee
Whoever was writing the virus would also need access to the operating system wouldn't they?

(unless these things are running windows in which case they'll probably never take off anyway

)

Funny... You are really funny... Yeah, well if they use the windows longhorn wich is full of bugs, it doesn't look good for the Raptor...

Originally posted by NWguy83
Fighter Master FIN, thats not actually what the Raptor's cockpit/display looks like. Believe it or not, it's classified.

I'am sorry... But I have verified this thing from many sources and I can garantee that the raptor looks like that from the inside... But then again, if you say that it's classified, you or your source must know how it looks, because otherwise he couldn't say that this is the actual cockpit... Now this is what it said on the page from were I took the picture...

Above: The F-22 cockpit in the most advanced of any US fighter. The three main displays are left to right, defence, situation and attack, while the lower centre one is stores management. Like the F-16, the Raptor has a sidestick controller. (Photo, LM).

[edit on 15-8-2005 by Figher Master FIN]