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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

#531

Post by cutemonster »

pesfandiar wrote: post #428
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…

Software engineers sometimes wonder about the importance of their jobs by comparing them to other engineering fields where mistakes can hurt or kill fellow human beings. And then there are jobs that hurt or kill regardless of the quality of your work.

I wonder what "jobs that hurt or kill regardless" you have in mind

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

#532

Post by wavemode »

mrguyorama wrote: post #520
toss1 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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…

"So... the fighter was in range of your missiles."

"Yep."

"And rapidly diving directly toward your fleet."

"Mmhmm."

"But you didn't fire on it? Why not?"

"Well, it was an F-14, you see. Doesn't possess anti-ship missiles."

"Yes... that's precisely the sort of tactical advantage you were put there to exploit."

"Wouldn't have been sporting."

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

#533

Post by jpc0 »

bee_rider wrote: post #382
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price in cents is the way "it was always done" in retail, back when POS terminals were not directly connected to cash registers and the worker had to manually type in the amount. But yeah, sudden change in US design will causemany errors everywhere.

I’m adding a tangent to a tangent, but “POS terminals” has to be one of the greatest naming decisions in history.

I couldn't agree more.

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

#534

Post by cutemonster »

subroutine wrote: post #457
pesfandiar wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers sometimes wonder about the importance of their jobs by comparing them to other engineering fields where mistakes can hurt or kill fellow human beings. And then there are jobs that hurt or kill regardless of the quality of your work.

I'm not sure what you are implying. The nature of the work described above was to prevent a disaster like the shooting down of commercial Flight 655 from ever happening again.

Yes precisely, and (to GP) that's software and UX design. Not comparing with, it's that exact thing (in that case)

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

#535

Post by rightbyte »

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?

You tell your enemies where you are so they wont get close. Its sabre rattling. A favorite engagement for soldiers is firing at other soldiers somewhat out of practical range.

Pretending to not be the enemy will get you close before the enemy realizes and everybody loses.

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

#536

Post by cutemonster »

sillywalk wrote: post #527
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…

UI failings aside, a few points, mostly from the US Naval Institute's Proceedings[2] (which has references to the Official Investigation "Fogarty report"[3]) - it was standard practice to illuminate Iranian military aircraft with missile fire control radar as a warning for them to turn around. "When you put that radar on them, they went home. They were not interested in any missiles," Captain Carlson recalled. - the…

And, from your [2]:

> Then Vice President George Bush had gone before the United Nations on 14 July and declared, "One thing is clear, and that is that USS Vincennes acted in self-defense…It occurred in the midst of a naval attack initiated by Iranian vessels [...]

> As it came to pass, none of this was true.

> However, the truth of the matter would have given the Democratic candidate for President, Michael Dukakis, ammunition to embarrass George Bush.

> There were good reasons for spinning the story in a way that put the Iranians in the worst possible light.

And so the trigger happy captain got that ribbon instead

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

#537

Post by cco »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #291
quietbritishjim wrote: post #204

Another good write up of this incident is on the excellent Admiral Cloudberg blog: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-shadow-of-war-t... Another article in that series is also related to a UX mistake: Air France Flight 447. This crashed, in part, because the inputs from two control sticks (one for pilot and other for copilot) were averaged if they disagreed, unlike on a Boeing (at the time at least) where t…

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.

I believe Airbus is planning to add force feedback to the side sticks for this error case. But I don't know that.

Many aircraft controls already have force feedback in the form of stick pushers [1], a device to violently shake the control yoke when the aircraft is at risk of stalling. Those have been around since the 60's.

So this is not only possible, but it's been around for a long time though Airbus had chosen to use a verbal warning only instead of a stick shaker.

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

#538

Post by khazhoux »

cutemonster wrote: post #531
pesfandiar wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers sometimes wonder about the importance of their jobs by comparing them to other engineering fields where mistakes can hurt or kill fellow human beings. And then there are jobs that hurt or kill regardless of the quality of your work.

I wonder what "jobs that hurt or kill regardless" you have in mind

* I'm stressed from working at a game studio --> but no one will die

* I'm stressed from working on avionics or medical software, or designing bridges/etc --> someone may die if I make a mistake

* I'm stressed from working as a firefighter or police officer --> someone (or myself) may die even if I don't make any mistakes

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

#539

Post by gpderetta »

toast0 wrote: post #506
outworlder wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Patrol ship sees and engages a foreign warship inside the patrol's territorial waters and radios for help. First fighter available launches and flies that way to investigate. Sees the warship engaged with the patrol boat and takes initiative, while other fighters are prepping for launch for follow on attacks in case the invading warship does not retreat or surrender.

The issue is "single". Does scrambling a single fighter ever happen, don't they always fly in pairs? A single attack or recognisance plane would make sense.

Of course they might have known that their ability to properly identify the threat was limited, but that raises even more questions...

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

#540

Post by gpderetta »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #528
toss1 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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…

I happen to agree with you. I was just speculating what could have been done. I have had to make decisions under stress. If I had been in the captain’s chair, I absolutely would have fired. A verified enemy plane diving towards my ship in an active war zone? If I had been thinking at all, I’d be thinking about the British losing a ship in the Falklands just 6 years ago.

Probably I would as well.

Then again there is a reason I'm not a navy captain with copious amounts of missiles under my control.

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