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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

#471

Post by Armisael16 »

Towaway69 wrote: post #464
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?

It’s a war crime. If you start doing it the other side won’t shoot at nothing - they’ll shoot at everything, civilians included.

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

#472

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

immibis wrote: post #425
cesarb wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unlike on a Boeing (at the time at least) where they're physically connected so you can't have contradictory inputs in the first place I don't know if it's true, but I recall reading somewhere that this physical connection is a breakable link, so if one of the controls gets stuck the other control can still be used to fly the airplane (after some application of strong force to break the connection).

It also caused one accident, where both pilots thought the controls were jammed because the other pilot was pulling in the opposite direction. This is no better than averaging. At least Airbus gives an alarm.

Which accident was that? Thanks!

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

#473

Post by aerostable_slug »

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.

Given the fact that Iran successfully jury-rigged MIM-23 Hawk SAMs onto their F-14s, it's not out of the realm of possibility that they could do something similar with Exocet.

During the Falklands war there were worries that the Argies were fitting Exocet to LearJets (turns out they were used for recce and communications), and Chile also had a project on the books to convert Falcon biz jets to carry Exocet. And, some say USS Stark was itself attacked by a Falcon carrying Exocets. Grafting missiles onto a warplane that already has hardpoints and the like seems like an easier task.

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

#474

Post by mardifoufs »

vdqtp3 wrote: post #406
mardifoufs wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny because to me, there's so much more leniency towards Israel. Blockading an entire city for almost two decades, and controlling almost every external aspect of its life while also openly and proudly colonizing the west bank with 0 repercussions is something only Israel can get away with. Bombing a city into rubbles with 0 official international condemnation from the west is also a thing only Israel can do…

> Bombing a city into rubbles with 0 official international condemnation from the west is also a thing only Israel can do. There's plenty to criticize Israel for, but this isn't one of them. If Tijuana started sending terrorists over the border to San Diego, Mexico elected members of a known terrorist organization to public office and started a campaign to kick the US out of California "from the colorado to the sea?"…

I think if Tijuana was under military and civilian blockade for 2 decades, with a nominal "autonomy" that involves anything but actually allowing any meaningful development (a port, electricity etc), and with the American navy openly attacking and murdering anyone who tries to help (like with the flotilla attack)... even Americans would probably not be surprised if said city wouldn't be super peaceful. And even America would've been condemned by Europe or something for even doing all of those things I listed above.

Especially if the US was already promoting and military enforcing colonization of more peaceful mexican territory around Tijuana lol

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

#475

Post by aerostable_slug »

next_xibalba wrote: post #467
proaralyst wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a difference between civilian transponders which generally squawk all the time and military IFF, which typically only responds to a coded challenge (called an IFF interrogation). If a military IFF doesn't receive a valid interrogation, it remains silent.

It is Very Bad if an enemy can either spoof a valid "friend" IFF response or cause IFFs to respond and give up one's position. The latter was done with great effect in both WW2 and the Vietnam War.

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

#476

Post by outworlder »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #422
MichaelZuo wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not something that can be changed on airbus cockpits, since the nature of side sticks makes them impossible to be mechanically linked, unless there was some very complex motor system built into each stick that provided force feedback equal in strength to a pilot tugging hard on it.

...it's a spring and a servo. Or a brushless motor. https://github.com/scottbez1/smartknob ...or any not-bottom-end-of-market steering wheel for driving video games.

It's not just "a spring and a servo" when we are talking about aviation. Redesigning GA aircraft and rectifying is already bad enough. An airliner, and something as crucial as flight controls?

Yeah, good luck jury rigging some servos.

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

#477

Post by dylan604 »

vigormortis wrote: post #469
waihtis wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

>"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.

I find discoveries like this fascinating. The unconsidered knock on effects of decisions is one that is very difficult to appreciate at the time. Whether they were unconsidered because no effort was deemed necessary, just not enough experience by the decision makers to be aware the item was used for more than just the obvious use, or any other reasons besides any form of incompetence.

This is one of those times where not having enough people involved shows up. So it's a trade off on accepting a continuous rolling bit of changes just to make something happen now, or paralysis by analysis through committee of people to approve changes.

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

#478

Post by outworlder »

krisoft wrote: post #288
smcl wrote: post #239

> they saw this contact heading towards them labeled as an F-14 fighter. What's wild to me is the assumption that Iran would suddenly launch a single F-14 fighter to attack a ship. Was there no moment where they thought "maybe there has been a mistake?" - like where Stanislav Petrov chose to interpret the Soviet early warning system telling him an ICBM was incoming as being a result of some faulty instruments. Grante…

> What's wild to me is the assumption that Iran would suddenly launch a single F-14 fighter to attack a ship. What is sudden about that? "Two months before the incident, the U.S. had engaged in Operation Praying Mantis, resulting in the sinkings of the Iranian frigate Sahand, the Iranian fast attack craft Joshan, and three Iranian speedboats. Also, the Iranian frigate Sabalan was crippled, two Iranian platforms were…

> In this situation the idea that Iran would launch a fighter against them is not that wild.

Why would they launch a single fighter to attack a warship?

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

#479

Post by dpkirchner »

marssaxman wrote: post #409
dpkirchner wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just glad to see the entire thread of conversation without having to switch to nitter or whatever.

Are you familiar with the libredirect plugin? It can automatically rewrite all twitter links to point at nitter instead.

I'm not, but I'm on mobile Safari 99% of the time. I see there is an extension that does something similar, which I'll check out. Thanks for the nudge.

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

#480

Post by dylan604 »

subroutine wrote: post #451
astrobase_go wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your company is PSE, correct?

Indeed it is! I'm fine with our name being mentioned. I didn't include it above because our website is trash, which doesn't bode well for a company with professional graphics designers and human factors engineers on staff haha.

The car of the best mechanic in town is usually drives a jalopy or the yard of the landscapers tends to be unkempt kind of a situation.
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