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The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

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Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#461

Post by ghaff »

Merad wrote: post #405
graphe wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the Cuban missile crisis with the stake of the entire world didn't escalate.

We got _incredibly_ lucky. A Soviet submarine trying to get through the blockade believed that war had broken out and wanted to attack the US fleet with nuclear torpedoes [0]. Normally only two men aboard the sub had to approve the nuclear launch, and they both wanted to fire. This particular sub happened to have a third officer [1] on board who also needed to approve the launch, and he may have literally saved the w…

And my understanding is the US military leadership was generally in favor of attacking Cuba not knowing there were already nuclear warheads there.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#462

Post by ceejayoz »

p_l wrote: post #400
ceejayoz wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there is; we call them "lights". The logo on the tail was lit up. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KAL007747-2.png The pilot of the fighter also reported seeing "two rows of windows", which can only be a 747 at the time. https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/31/us/kal-fight-007-anniversary/... > “I could see two rows of windows, which were lit up,” Soviet pilot Col. Gennadi Osipovitch told CNN in 1998, describing th…

Cargo don't. Converted intelligence/C4I planes? Often do. Also, logos like that aren't that well readable especially at speed, and the actual shootdown happened in a way that could be mistaken for evasive maneuveurs. Essentially, I feel that if we're going to let UX take part of the blame for Iran Air 655, we have to allow wider narrative for KAL007 as well (Personally I think humans are directly at fault for both ca…

The only converted 747s with the distinctive double row of windows in military use are the Air Force One and E-4 aircraft I already mentioned. Neither of which is going to be anywhere near Soviet airspace without the Soviets knowing long, long in advance.

I also quoted the pilot himself. Further from him:

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1996-12-09-19963440...

> "I was just next to him, on the same altitude, 150 meters to 200 meters away," he recalled in conversations with a reporter during the weekend. From the flashing lights and the configuration of the windows, he recognized the aircraft as a civilian type of plane, he said. "I saw two rows of windows and knew that this was a Boeing," he said. "I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me this meant nothing. It is easy to turn a civilian type of plane into one for military use."

It wasn't a "oops we thought it was an RC-135" scenario.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#463

Post by kayodelycaon »

blobcode wrote: post #439
xen2xen1 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand it, a single F14 could launch a single Exocet missile, and make a VERY large hole in an aircraft carrier, and if the conditions were right, putting it to the bottom of the sea. Or the same for a battleship. I seem to recall that being a large concern even then, if not especially then.

To my knowledge, the F-14 never carried any anti-ship missile, especially on the early-model Iranian Tomcats, as the F-14 only received an air-to-ground upgrade package in the 90’s.

Yup. Some quick googling shows F-14 had LANTIRN pods added and upgraded software to support smart bombs in the mid-90s.

All models appear to completely lack the necessary software and hardware to use self-guided ground-attack weapons.

A hefty unguided bomb would be possible, but a WW2 dive bomber would have better accuracy. You’re probably better off using the gun.

With a lot of luck, you could mission-kill a frigate. Radar arrays don’t like to be rapidly disassembled.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#464

Post by Towaway69 »

next_xibalba wrote: post #414

> every large aircraft in the world is equipped with a device called an IFF -- "identification friend or foe." This is weird, I'm sure I don't have all the facts. In a conflict, why would a military aircraft ever want to identify itself?

More interestingly why not fake it and claim to be civilian?

Logically speaking:

- no identification: risk being shot down by both sides

- correct identification: risk being shot down by the enemy

- fake civilian identification: no risk of being shot down?

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#465

Post by [deleted] »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #432
rbanffy wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not something that can be changed on airbus cockpits You'd need to run cables between them and redesign the sticks to have mechanical hooks, and it'd be a very ugly hack, but it's hardly impossible.

Impossible for it to still be viable for a commercial airliner competing on costs, especially long term upkeep costs. Not impossible for an unlimited budget.

[deleted]

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#466

Post by lynx23 »

ben0x539 wrote: post #135
lynx23 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Hi yeah I also hate web things that should be documents and want to be apps instead but I think it's still pretty hard to make the case that this is as bad as Facebook's impact on like everything.

Well... There used to be m.facebook.com for a long time. One might argue that Mastodon never even tried t care...

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#467

Post by next_xibalba »

proaralyst wrote: post #417
next_xibalba wrote: post #414

> every large aircraft in the world is equipped with a device called an IFF -- "identification friend or foe." This is weird, I'm sure I don't have all the facts. In a conflict, why would a military aircraft ever want to identify itself?

So you don't get shot down by your own air defense

Why would it need to be interoperable then? Presumably it tells adversaries that you’re friend OR foe though. The friend bit is obvious. The foe… still not seeing the logic.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#468

Post by nottorp »

Ndymium wrote: post #363
nottorp wrote: post #267

Is this a mastodon instance? Mastodon is a twitter clone that doesn't allow long posts? All the posts but the first come collapsed and I have to click on each to read it. Is someone measuring engagement?

This can be configured in the instance settings and I've seen some support up to 5000 characters.

Well if 1 line is the default, it leaves a bad taste. There was no need to clone twitter.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#469

Post by vigormortis »

waihtis wrote: post #332
subroutine wrote: post #160

Interesting to see this on HN. I currently work for the company that redesigned the HMI/UI following this incident. Or rather, it's how my company was founded. In the aftermath, the US Navy Command in San Diego contacted several UCSD professors in the Cognitive Science and Psychology department who specialized in high-impact decision making under stress and cognitive load. The Navy was apparently impressed with the d…

Any good reading on this? Might be some interesting learning opportunities for (cyber)security monitoring, which is a total mess right now. Stakes are a bit less severe, but still.

I would recommend Ed Hutchins' "Cognition in the Wild". He examines the performance of the crew of a ship acting as distributed intelligence and the many factors that go into making them an effective unit (or not).

Ed was also part of the UCSD Cognitive Science department at the time of the Vincennes incident and I suspect it was his work, along with Don Norman's, that drew the attention of the Navy. At the time, I was doing an undergraduate independent study in his lab, where we spent hours watching videos of airline pilots in 747 flight simulators, looking out for errors while using the flight guidance system. Our "textbook" was the operations manual for the 747 guidance and autopilot system.

An example of the sort of UI things we were looking for:

"Improvements" such as replacing the analog altimeter and airspeed indicators with digital readouts deprived pilots of operational awareness as they could no longer estimate rate of descent by watching the movement of the hands of the analog meters.

Anyway, here are the links:

This is the introduction and table of contents:

https://hci.ucsd.edu/hutchins/citw.html

Amazon link

https://www.amazon.com/Cognition-Wild-Bradford-Edwin-Hutchin...

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#470

Post by toss1 »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #463
blobcode wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge, the F-14 never carried any anti-ship missile, especially on the early-model Iranian Tomcats, as the F-14 only received an air-to-ground upgrade package in the 90’s.

Yup. Some quick googling shows F-14 had LANTIRN pods added and upgraded software to support smart bombs in the mid-90s. All models appear to completely lack the necessary software and hardware to use self-guided ground-attack weapons. A hefty unguided bomb would be possible, but a WW2 dive bomber would have better accuracy. You’re probably better off using the gun. With a lot of luck, you could mission-kill a frigate…

... which we can all discuss at leisure from our armchairs with zero of the stress associated with being in the command chair that day.

Just because commenters here may come up with some down-in-the-weeds detailed analysis that could have, if known then, changed the course of events, does not mean that it's reasonable to have come up with that in the heat of battle.

There is a reason that the practice is called "Monday Morning Quarterbacking".

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