F-35 radar system has bug that requires hard reboot in flight

I read elsewhere, from a reliable source that I can&#x27;t find right now. that the mean time between reboots on &#x27;mature&#x27; fighter planes is 8 hours and the F-35 is at around 4 hours so far with plans to improve it.<p>It was the first number that shocked me the most.<p>EDIT: I found it:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;breakingdefense.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;02&#x2F;bogdan-predicts-f-35s-for-less-than-80m-engines-included&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;breakingdefense.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;02&#x2F;bogdan-predicts-f-35s-for...</a><p><i>The toughest problem the program is having is matching the timing of the aircraft’s fusion software with its sensors’ software. “As we add different radar modes and as we add different and capabilities to the DAS system and to the EOTS system, the timing is misaligned,” and then you have to reboot it. Bogdan said he’s aiming for eight to nine hours between such software failures when a radar or DAS or EOTS needs to be rebooted, which is what legacy aircraft boast. Right now they are at four to five hours between such events. “That’s not a good metric.”</i><p>I don&#x27;t understand a lot of that, but I think the fusion softwre refers to a unified UI for the pilot that merges information from the plane&#x27;s very many sensors and presents it in a comprehensible way on one screen. Apparently pilots in older planes suffer from data overload and from watching many different screens at once - all while trying to fly a plane in combat. UI is reported to be a highly consequential improvement for the new plane.

I am getting a little tired of the &quot;F-35 is bad&quot; headlines. There should be more context that tells us how common such problems are in general. I remember listening to a podcast where they said that SR-71 pilots had to restart their engine every so often. Same for the Concorde. Sounds really bad but neither of these problems hurt the airplanes&#x27; usability and were not really a problem.<p>I firmly believe that military procurement is a mess but the discussion reminds me of the political discussion where Republicans jump on anything that goes wrong under Democrats and vice versa.

According to a lot of people in this thread[0], it is pretty much expected that the radar in any fighter jet will need rebooting from time to time.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;technology&#x2F;comments&#x2F;49iegx&#x2F;radar_glitch_requires_f35_fighter_jet_pilots_to&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;technology&#x2F;comments&#x2F;49iegx&#x2F;radar_gl...</a>

I assume that bugs requiring reboots to resolve is part of the design of the failure model. When a software fault is detected, its consequences are unknowable. Those consequences could include killing the pilot and destroying his $100M aircraft. Therefore, the default response is to reset everything and get to a known-good state ASAP.<p>This is not a bad general-purpose failure strategy: It&#x27;s been believed for decades that most software faults encountered in production are Heisenbugs[1], and disappear rather than reproduce.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;research.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;um&#x2F;people&#x2F;gray&#x2F;papers&#x2F;TandemTR85.7_WhyDoComputersStop.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;research.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;um&#x2F;people&#x2F;gray&#x2F;papers&#x2F;Ta...</a>

Though to be fair, the software isn&#x27;t due to reach 1.0 until 2050 (assuming the pentagon can scrape up another billion dollars to train ada programmers). No surprise that alpha software is bug-ridden.

&gt; F-35 radar system has bug that requires hard reboot [of the radar] in flight

Had a bug. Everywhere I read said they already delivered a fix for this but I&#x27;ve noticed some news outlets not mentioning it.<p>Though I gotta say this damn jet has been a nightmare. Since they&#x27;ll never stop working towards newer and newer jets I&#x27;m curious if lessons learned here will apply to the next one. After doing government contracting for many years where we don&#x27;t get the &quot;lessons learned&quot; from the previous contractors or much of anything (I&#x27;ve had to FIGHT to get source code for a product we were supposed to update; ended up having to rewrite the damn thing) I&#x27;m curious how it works when they contract out to have a jet built.

&#x27;Have you tried turning it off and on?&#x27;

Judging by reddit comments this type of thing is pretty common with fighter jets which is kinda surprising to me. I would have thought that this is one area where reliability is highly prized. Along with space shuttle software &amp; other life&#x2F;death stuff etc.<p>Instead &quot;bash it with a hammer and maybe reset it&quot; seems widely accepted. Weird.

So, how fast does it reboot, and how much does this affect the other software components and operating the plane?<p>Not that I expect it, but this could be a minor issue, if this &#x27;radar system&#x27; is as good as stateless (and not, for example, a component that tracks friends and foes over time) and if it reboots in milliseconds.

So? The SR-71 has (had?) a bug that required both engines to restart in flight. Frequently.

Looks like they need to add a &quot;Turn Radar Off and On Again&quot; to their FENCE IN.

&gt; Lockheed Martin has discovered the cause of the problem and has diverted developers who were working on the next increment of the F-35&#x27;s code to fix it. A patch is expected by the end of March.<p>Much ado about nothing.

How much you want to bet that simply running Valgrind would have caught it?

Anybody know how long the reboot takes? That seems like important information. Especially if e.g. your AAMs need directions from the master system (?) in order to take over tracking by themselves.

I bet the Chinese read about the F-35 fiasco and just laugh at us. The amount of money we&#x27;re throwing down the hole here is staggering.

&quot;Have you tried turning it off and on again?&quot;

this doesn&#x27;t surprise me one bit. I interviewed at one of the major defense contractors for a programming job last year and the technical interviewer had never heard of C#<p>this was for a java position

Do they initiate the reboot with CTRL-ALT-DEL sequence?