F22 mishap or more that meeets the eye?

the F22 is the most expensive and advanced jet fighter built for the USAF, it has been plagued with a fault thought to cured or is it, better yet blame the pilot abcnews.go.com... from the link

In December the Air Force released its findings from an intense, months-long investigation into the crash, concluding that even though an unknown malfunction caused Haney's oxygen system to shut down -- leaving Haney to experience "a sense similar to suffocation" -- it was Haney's fault that the plane went down.

this does bring back the fault of the F16 blame the pilot when it was the Nav system that was to blame, the family should file suite to get to the bottom of this , the Ox sys might have a high alt fault where it shuts down do to extreme cold temps freezes up, a lack of Ox can kill, but how long would you be able to maintain awareness to dive to a safe alt to pull of your mask and breath ?

Shocking, but also noted the comment made by the family comparing it to a soldier on the front line.

"So by this logic, next the Army will say soldiers killed in action were in fact not killed but enemy gun fire [but] they died from a lack of blood volume and intact organs [and] were at fault for not seeking medical attention in a timely manner."

"a sense similar to suffocation." lack of oxygen is not a sense similar to suffocation, it is suffocation.

just like being 100 ft on the ocean bottom without an oxygen tank is not similar to drowning, it is drowning.

another case of money being more important than a person's life.

I always assumed that the ejection seats would countain emergency oxygen, this can be turned on by the pilot without ejecting, maybe this is why he cops a bit of blame, for not using his Emergency o2.
This is all assumption on my part BTW,

reply to post by FawnyKate
so noted but if your the article it is not that easy to get too when one is wearing winter gear as the pilot was. This brings up the question why not redesign the sys for use with winter gear, ban the F22 from winter flight or, do nothing and see how many more die. few thousand dollars spent on up grading seems to be the best bet, but then this is common sense , the Brass seems to lack in this area.

Originally posted by FawnyKate
I always assumed that the ejection seats would countain emergency oxygen, this can be turned on by the pilot without ejecting, maybe this is why he cops a bit of blame, for not using his Emergency o2.
This is all assumption on my part BTW,

There is an emergency oxygen system, and part of this "conclusion" is orientated around the fact that he didn't activate it, even though it's in an awkward position and requires a hefty pull to activate.

There s a lot wrong with the F-22, and even though production has just finished, already more than 50 of those produced will not be upgraded in the current block upgrades - it also has the highest maintenance hour to flight hour ratio, being extremely costly.

reply to post by bekod


6 seconds from what I read about problems with the Lear Jets decompressinf at altitude over some valves that is supposed to seal the cabin malfunctioning. That is what happened to Pane Stewert

This is one of those hazy areas, honestly.

The pilot failed to activate the emergency oxygen supply - which is present for cases such as this. One cannot overlook this fact.

However, how much training was the pilot given on activating the emergency oxygen supply? Is there a history of concerns over gear conflicts/issues?

Those are questions that, also, need to be answered.

Cause and fault are two different things. 90% or more of all mishaps and failures in the military are caused by the operator. The fault, however, is often in poor oversight, command ORM policies, and a lack of/improper training.

But, if you have seen some of the gripe sheets pilots turn in for their equipment malfunctions... you find it miraculous that crashing aircraft are as infrequent as they are.

reply to post by Aim64C
there is history on design faults , this is one of them , in the article this is spelled out , winter gear makes it more difficult to get to back up sys, but why does the Sys fail and why not have the back up designed for winter gear, just makes no sense but then this is the mil and we all know in there things get FUBAR look in to the F16 history you will see.

reply to post by bekod


This is true... but at the same time - there are considerable "design faults" with other systems. The M-240 can (if you go about it 'in the right way') be placed on safe with the bolt to the rear; a condition that will result in a runaway weapon. What's the fix? Don't do 'just the right thing' to # yourself over. Similarly, the M-60 can be double-fed by racking the slide too many times (a condition fixed in the M-240, but decades after the issue was known in the M-60). What's the fix? Don't do it.

The issue with winter gear is going to be difficult to argue an entire design change for the F-22, and is difficult to blame the developers for. I'm not sure how long this gear has been around - but it is entirely possible that the gear the pilot was using was developed in parallel with the F-22 but isolated from the F-22 project (if not after the F-22). I've been in the Navy for 5 and a half years and changed uniforms about three damned times.

Further, a number of us in our professions purchase third-party gear that may be authorized, but vary in exact style and function. A lot of people ditch the uniform issue gloves and go for gloves tailored more to their function (if they need gloves at all).

There are simply so many variables involved, here. In all - the ORM procedures for addressing this issue would be to inform pilots of the difficulty with winter gear and doing additional practical training to ensure they can reach their emergency oxygen in a timely and effective manner in winter gear as well as others.

F22 mishap or more that meeets the eye?

The F-16 was really cutting edge when it first arrived. The fly-by-wire technology had a lot of bugs and there were crashes that more than once grounded the young fleet.

My impression of the F-22 is that it is everything the F-16 was and everything the F-35 never will be; that is, a next gen air warrior that is so far ahead that by the time it may have ever reached full production, we would have become bored by its incredible abilities.

Of course, the program was killed by the Washington bean counters.

My guess is that the F-35 will prove to be a flying coffin in combat... and the F-22 will someday soon arise again, like a Phoenix... butunder a new name and number.

Aircraft accident investigations generally start out looking at the sequence of events, then start ruling out the subsystems on the aircraft before ending up with the pilot and declaring it human error.

There is a known unresolved problem with the oxygen system on the F-22. The fact that it is unresolved means that they don't understand the problem well enough to identify or correct it.

I can't imagine that they can tell from an autopsy if the pilot had a seizure due to oxygen starvation. If he did have a seizure, then his hands would fall by the side, but his feet stay on the pedals, possibly causing the roll and subsequent rudder input that was recorded by the flightrecorder.

It sounds like a whitewash.

proves that the raptor is craptor indeed.

Originally posted by redoubt

My impression of the F-22 is that it is everything the F-16 was and everything the F-35 never will be; that is, a next gen air warrior that is so far ahead that by the time it may have ever reached full production, we would have become bored by its incredible abilities.

Its worth noting that there are proposals to upgrade the F-22 with skin and surface technology from the F-35, as the F-22s approach is far too complex and has resulted in a lot of reported corrosion issues throughout the fleet, while the F-35s approach for skin and surface technology offers a comparable level of stealth when used (the F-35s lower stealth rating is a victim of its shape rather than the technology used) and lower maintenance hours.

Also the F-22 may be upgraded using the standardised electronics and processing systems being introduced on the F-35 - even as the F-22 production ends, the systems the F-22 was built with (I think something like the last 30 frames are OK, but the other 150 or so aren't) cannot handle many of the software upgrades planned for it and a solution needs to be found.

reply to post by RichardPrice


If the F-22 is anything like the avionics of the YF-23; then the 'problem' is very simple. The F-23 operated on a scalable parallel processing architecture. The individual 'components' were all virtual, and a progressive failure system was in place to preserve critical functions in the event of hardware failures.

Basically, that means the 'cards' are all the same, and need only be replaced with their respective drop-in upgrades.

Again, presuming the F-22 and F-23 are similar, in that regard (it was the opinion of my source that Lockheed went with a very similar concept).

there was a design fault with one of the last Prop fighter bombers from WW2 pre 1950's at high alt the Ox mask would freeze,from moisture, this lead to a bleed off valve, frost was the point of "you better bleed off of die off" wonder if the same issue has come back freezing tubs or lines , when the plane comes down from height, all signs of freeze up disappear, a simple wrap or bleed off valve could be the fix

Originally posted by Aim64C
reply to post by RichardPrice

 

If the F-22 is anything like the avionics of the YF-23; then the 'problem' is very simple. The F-23 operated on a scalable parallel processing architecture. The individual 'components' were all virtual, and a progressive failure system was in place to preserve critical functions in the event of hardware failures.

Basically, that means the 'cards' are all the same, and need only be replaced with their respective drop-in upgrades.

Again, presuming the F-22 and F-23 are similar, in that regard (it was the opinion of my source that Lockheed went with a very similar concept).

The upgrade is an architectural change, not just a capability update, so its not a case of just plugging in new cards containing the upgraded hardware.

Also, even the F-23 would have had task specific hardware, as dedicated processors are always faster than a distributed parallel processing architecture - DSPs designed for the task in hand will out perform while using less power, with lower cooling requirements, and a smaller physical package at the same time.

Even systems designed as you describe have run into major limits in upgrade capability, because once you have limited yourself to a bus, then you are limited by the capabilities of that bus. If you want faster interconnects, or more memory lines etc, you are hamstrung by your earlier decisions.

reply to post by RichardPrice

The upgrade is an architectural change, not just a capability update, so its not a case of just plugging in new cards containing the upgraded hardware.

I suppose this would depend, highly, upon the specifics of the system and the nature of the upgrades.

Bus and socket technology have not really changed in computers over the past 15 years. They've simply gotten more creative with the I/O waveforms. In that case - it's really a matter of just how scalable your system is.

Also, even the F-23 would have had task specific hardware, as dedicated processors are always faster than a distributed parallel processing architecture - DSPs designed for the task in hand will out perform while using less power, with lower cooling requirements, and a smaller physical package at the same time.

Yes, and no. Parallel distributed floating point processing is highly scalable and the RISC architecture makes all complex instructions virtual in nature. Task-specific hardware is, thus, unnecessary. All of the processes conducted by modern avionics are massively parallel in nature - from analysis of radar returns to stabilization and kinematics.

In short, the nature of RISC programming is that you customize the code to the function and not the hardware to the function. It is not only more cost-effective, but more power-efficient, as well.

Unless you want to go back to running your avionics off of PLAs. But that's no longer necessary, and digital processing has reached a point where it is not a very plausible venture.

The F-23 had the vast majority of its avionics virtualized. This is, precisely, the trend that has been mirrored in the server industry 10-15 years later. Not to mention I have a face-to-face source on this.

Even systems designed as you describe have run into major limits in upgrade capability, because once you have limited yourself to a bus, then you are limited by the capabilities of that bus. If you want faster interconnects, or more memory lines etc, you are hamstrung by your earlier decisions.

The F-16E (an export only, interestingly enough) has a fiber-optic data bus. The only thing that should change on it for its foreseeable lifetime is the front end on that fiber line.

I don't know what they put in the first run-of-the-mill F-22s, but I would call it a serious design oversight on their part to not include a bus engineered to the civilian standards of the time. Even NIPR networks installed by the military were being done with fiber back in the 80s. They knew better. Hell - most of our current telecommunications networks run on fiber lines that were laid for the purpose of linking the Strategic Missile Defense system together.

So, either someone(s) at Lockheed needs to lose their job for being insufferably short-sighted, or they are trying to milk an upgrade contract out of politicians who, in the wake of recent open-floor debates, have made it apparent that anything electronic is sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic (at least to them).

motherboard.vice.com...

Clearly - it's #ing voodoo. In light of this, I've begun to question the motivations behind any systemic upgrade of electronic devices by the government and/or its agencies.

In the words of a fellow reservist: "I can hear the video games! I know what you're doing in there; I'm a sailor, too!" [In regard to Admin being open from 0930-1030 and 1330-1430; extrapolated, here to apply to contract rape of the tax payer]

Originally posted by Aim64C

I suppose this would depend, highly, upon the specifics of the system and the nature of the upgrades.

Bus and socket technology have not really changed in computers over the past 15 years. They've simply gotten more creative with the I/O waveforms. In that case - it's really a matter of just how scalable your system is.

Bus and socket technologies have hugely changed in computers over the past 15 years, with significant speed increases and error handling along the way.

You have materials changes, configuration changes, grounding changes, tunneling changes - loads of improvements over the past decade alone.

What was scalable 15 years ago is not comparable to what is considered scalable today - you do not see the interconnects used 15 years ago in HPCs used today in modern HPCs. Interconnect technology is a rapidly moving target

Yes, and no. Parallel distributed floating point processing is highly scalable and the RISC architecture makes all complex instructions virtual in nature. Task-specific hardware is, thus, unnecessary. All of the processes conducted by modern avionics are massively parallel in nature - from analysis of radar returns to stabilization and kinematics.

A hardware DSP will always, always *always* outperform a distributed architecture for the same power, cooling and space requirements. Always.

The only reason we do not use DSPs in everything is because they are essentially single-task orientated, while most super computers are designed to be used for multiple tasks.

But a modern aircraft is full of tasks that can be happily processed by single-task chips - there is extremely little general purpose computing involved in a modern aircrafts systems. Even the tasks you highlight can be handled much better by a hardware DSP than a general purpose computing architecture - they are well defined problems with well defined solutions, you put X in and want Y out. You will always put X in and want Y out. Therefor you do not use a general purpose computing architecture, you use specific hardware to do that.

And in a modern aircraft, you really do want tasks to be split out - you do not want your FBW system to suddenly find that its being bumped from the schedule because the radar system wants a little more processing time.

And equally, you don't want your targetting system to be bumped because the FBW system is having a hard time keeping up with a limited amount of time on the system.

So you are back to independent systems that tasks can monopolise.

In short, the nature of RISC programming is that you customize the code to the function and not the hardware to the function.

Which is fine in general purpose computing - you don't want your architecture to be hamstrung by decisions you made to lean the capabilities to one task or another.

But its another thing when you know that your system isn't going to be doing general purpose computing, and instead is going to be handling a lot of very well defined tasks.

It is not only more cost-effective, but more power-efficient, as well.

Its cost effective in certain circumstances, but it can be a huge problem in others - RISC was much vaunted in the 1980s and 1990s as the saviour of computing, but in the end it just turned out to be another architecture that was useful in some circumstances and not others.

RISC is insanely useful in low branching, low pipeline length systems, but it does not inherently decrease the complexity of a system - you still code in high level complex instructions, and rather than being translated in an almost 1:1 fashion by the compiler, you end up with your high level instruction being translated to a dozen or more RISC instructions. More gets executed - which is fine if you have a short pipeline and excellent branch prediction, but not if the architecture is poor in that area.

The F-23 had the vast majority of its avionics virtualized. This is, precisely, the trend that has been mirrored in the server industry 10-15 years later. Not to mention I have a face-to-face source on this.

Lets remember that the F-23 never existed - there was the YF-23 and a proposal.

None of the YF-23 would have gone into production, if the F-22's and F-35's births are any indication - we would have ended up with an aircraft that looked vaguely like the YF-23 but none of its systems would have been carried over.

So we have no idea what the F-23 would have looked like.

And yes, there has been a great virtualisation trend in the server market, but as an accomplished IT engineer who has handled budgets in the millions of dollars for hardware and software infrastructures, there are loads of tasks I would never, *ever* virtualise and I do cast scorn on those who do virtualise those tasks.

Virtualisation does not solve every problem, it solves some problems and creates huge ones of its own.

reply to post by RichardPrice

Found this pdf about F-22 hardware: www.davi.ws...

It is utilizing custom Common Integrated Processors containing two 25-MHz Intel 80960 cpus, a 25MHz signal processor, a graphics processor and a few specialized units, io interfaces and 12MB memory. The DSPs seem to be generic not a custom design for the F-22.

The avionics are software, consisting of Avionics Operating System (AOS) and the Avionics System Manager(ASM) which quite interesting.