Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

octodon.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 695 posts

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

#511

Post by MichaelZuo »

masklinn wrote: post #453
MichaelZuo wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but then no one would consider the feedback to be the equivalent of a mechanically linked system, like what Boeing uses.

Of course they would: the problem is that there is a lack of feedback when incompatible input is entered. Audio feedback was added since AF 447 but as well known sound is one of the first thing to be blanked out in high stress situations. Physical feedback provides a second stimulus, and one which does not get ignored as much. The planes are FBW, the side sticks have no mechanical linkage outside their control box, t…

The moment one pilot does tug hard on the stick though, then the same problem is still there.

So it will work most of the time except when you really need to, when the other pilot is panicking and won't provide accurate answers.

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

#512

Post by mrguyorama »

outworlder wrote: post #478
krisoft wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

A single F-14 which only barely can even attack a surface vessel! It didn't have an anti-ship missile!

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

#513

Post by Johnny555 »

toast0 wrote: post #510
Johnny555 wrote: post #491

There seems to be a lot of trust in IFF in this incident, what would stop Iran from reprogramming their F-14's IFF to identify as as civilian aircraft (or if reprogramming isn't feasible, retrofitting a stolen civilian airliner's IFF system into an electronics pod on their F-14, I'm sure the Iranian government wouldn't have any trouble getting an aircraft from Iranian Airlines)? Do warships do any verification beyond…

> what would stop Iran from reprogramming their F-14's IFF to identify as as civilian aircraft If you do that, you paint a target on civilian aircraft launched from your country's airfields. Especially if your airfields are military and civilian dual-use like the airfield in this case.

Sure, it might only work once, but it sure would complicate war efforts if the "good guys" kept shooting down civilian airliners carrying passengers of various nationalities.

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

#514

Post by [deleted] »

aerostable_slug wrote: post #473
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.

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…

[deleted]

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

#515

Post by WheatMillington »

withinboredom wrote: post #321
mavhc wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The left scroll wheel can: play/pause/next/previous/vol up/down in Normal mode If you press the wiper button on the steering wheel it can change wiper speed Long press is a custom function When there's a call it answers/declines, mute/unmute, and ends a call The right one actives autosteer/tacc/fsd, adjusts follow distance and max speed There's 3 buttons for left/right/high beam on the left, and on the right, buttons…

> When there's a call it answers/declines, mute/unmute, and ends a call Literally do not care about a phone call when it is raining. Hopefully, it at least has coyote time on it so when you adjust the wiper speed it will ignore a phone call. > Not sure I need a button for steering wheel tilt, should only be when stopped. I've had to adjust while driving. I don't remember for what reason, but I know I've had to do it…

What do you mean when you say the train "should not have been there"?

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

#516

Post by JumpCrisscross »

outworlder wrote: post #499
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why isn't the code for something as mission critical as a car not written right before it was shipped? We OTA spacecraft. We update planes’ software as part of maintenance. We have never written software once. We just accepted the bugs and defects as part of the product’s basket of tradeoffs, marvelling when the occasional manufacturer got it right in the first manufacturing runs. > never needed an ECU update on a…

> We update planes’ software as part of maintenance We don't OTA plane software updates. > We OTA spacecraft. Because we can't realistically bring them back and there's an incredible amount of work that goes into make those updates flawless. Spacecraft are not a mass produced consumer product driven by profits and are less likely to have corners cut.

Sure. We still update the software. The tool which airlines use to create update blobs is even online [1].

> Because we can't realistically bring them back

We couldn’t always OTA spacecraft. Back then we just lost them.

The point is in even high-stakes games we don’t write flawless software. Now software in cares is doing more. There will be bugs. Pretending there won’t is delusional.

What we can do is minimise safety-critical bugs by forcing standardisation and certifciation in those components, even if that slows down innovation, and ensuring timely patches. That’s easier with digital than analog, which in turn makes manufacturers more willing to admit they made a mistake.

[1] https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/2010...

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

#517

Post by edrxty »

Johnny555 wrote: post #491

There seems to be a lot of trust in IFF in this incident, what would stop Iran from reprogramming their F-14's IFF to identify as as civilian aircraft (or if reprogramming isn't feasible, retrofitting a stolen civilian airliner's IFF system into an electronics pod on their F-14, I'm sure the Iranian government wouldn't have any trouble getting an aircraft from Iranian Airlines)? Do warships do any verification beyond…

First, very slight correction to the thread, most civilian craft have transponders, not IFF. They're kinda the same thing in practice but transponders just give out a static number, IFF is a cryptographic challenge response.

I don't know how the navy does it when abroad, but anything entering or leaving a sensitive area will generally be on an ICAO style flight plan (entering US ADIZ/TFRs/DC SFRA etc) and it's a simple matter of checking to see if the thing responding with "hi I'm mode c or s (civilian aircraft) 1234" is doing what it should be.

There are also some other sidebands that get used like NCTR which looks at the radar return to attempt to identify the type of aircraft but they weren't well developed in the 80s.

If the aircraft is not responding at all to transponder interrogations you can assume it's hostile and presently attacking you or the pilot is forgetful and didn't flip the switch (choose wisely).

You can obviously put a mode c/s civilian transponder on a cruise missile or better yet fill a remotely piloted 747 full of explosives if you're feeling especially squirrelly and that's totally been done. That's also part of why these events keep happening, everyone's kinda understandably jumpy.

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

#518

Post by lostlogin »

dmix wrote: post #269
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…

Fun fact the Captain of the Vincennes went to school for psychology and his father was a US Navy Psychologist in WW2.

From the wiki: “Rogers' next assignment was as commanding officer of the United States Navy Tactical Training Group at Naval Base Point Loma, a group responsible for training officers in handling combat situations.”

Is having that guy train people genius, or moronic?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C._Rogers_III

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

#519

Post by singingboyo »

outworlder wrote: post #487
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?

I have tried to find the sentence you quoted in the article and was not able to. But it is not true that "every large aircraft (...) carries an IFF". IFF is strictly military. What civilian aircraft do have (large and small) is a transponder. The article talks about this but in a confusing way.

Eh. Military aircraft would also have a transponder, they just wouldn't necessarily have active broadcasts.

Civilian aircraft do broadcast actively (ADS-B). But they also respond to secondary radar for Mode A/C, which are basically cases of IFF Mode III (okay, maybe not exact term, but the idea applies.) So it's still a challenge-response/IFF, just in this case always responding.

Military aircraft use different modes and presumably don't respond unless interrogated with an appropriate challenge, but the principles are the same.

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

#520

Post by mrguyorama »

toss1 wrote: post #470
kayodelycaon wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "Mond…

If you are commander of an explicitly Anti-Air cruiser, and you are unaware that any F-14 tasked against you would not have an anti-ship missile and would be abusing some other weapon "off-label", then you should not be defending a carrier fleet from aircraft. You should be familiar with the airframes, weapons, and abilities of your adversary.

The F-14 is not an attack aircraft! It was designed to intercept incoming air threats and bombers!

Post reply on HN