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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

#591

Post by smcl »

Nition wrote: post #522
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…

It sounds like the real pro strat for an attack would have been to launch a single F-14 with a commercial jet taking off right up close behind you. "Sure that plane looks like it's moving fast and diving straight towards us, but it's just an Airbus A300."

Doesn't sound like the guy Will Rogers made that decision though. It sounds like he just blindly trusted his instruments, knowing he could act with impunity. He was right - after all is said and done he killed 290 innocent people and he ended up getting something called the "Legion of Merit" so it doesn't sound like it bothered too many people there.

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

#592

Post by JshWright »

xp84 wrote: post #551
grotorea wrote: post #98

Since we're on the topic, you know how much HN complains about touchscreens on cars? Now find out how replacing old school analog controls with software touchscreens UI partly led to the USS John S. McCain colliding: https://features.propublica.org/navy-uss-mccain-crash/navy-i...

This is a fascinating article. I feel like I am in my life constantly fighting against either haphazard UI like the one featured there, and the Apple-style UIs which attempt to optimize for beauty by shoving nearly everything (regardless of usefulness) into layers of "••• junk drawers" or little (i) icons. On a ship worth hundreds of billions of dollars, it was never considered that the Big Red Button should have a p…

> If it's wildly irregular to have 2 people independently doing port/starboard thrust control, the process should be like "Transfer Thrust Control", followed by a modal with a giant "BOTH SIDES" button and two tiny "Port only" "Stbd Only" buttons.

A contributing factor in the crash of Air France Flight 447 was that Airbus aircraft average the inputs of the two pilots side-stick flight controls (as oppose to Boeing, which connects the two yokes so you can't move one without moving the other). At various points leading up to the crash one pilot understood the situation and was applying the correct input to resolve the issue, but the other pilot was doing the opposite and canceled out the correct input. While there was an audible warning about the conflicting inputs, it was easily lost in the chaos of the moment.

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

#593

Post by mrguyorama »

wavemode wrote: post #532
mrguyorama wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Meanwhile in reality:

"So you got a radar track squaking civillian"

"Yup"

"And it never made any search or track radar emissions"

"Yup"

"And it was climbing out of the area, and despite all your instruments showing it continuing to climb, you all asserted it was diving for an attack run"

"Right"

"And instead of trying to further deconflict, or ask any of the other local navy vessels their interpretation, or just take a risk and accept that as a member of the military sometimes your job is to stand up in the line of fire, you decided that this was definitely an F-14 interceptor, being used to attack an AEGIS vessel whose intended design is to protect an american aircraft carrier from 20 simultaneous incoming Soviet antiship missiles, and was definitely a threat to said vessel"

"Yup"

"And now 290 innocent people are dead"

The captain of the Vincennes also claims they were in "hot pursuit" of a small Iranian gunboat in "self defense" at the time, and was noted by superiors as regularly going beyond his Rules of Engagement in training activities. He had a chip on his shoulder and clearly made up his mind about what he was going to do to that plane well before he had any indication it was a threat. A nearby vessel that was datalinked (ie, was hooked into the same battlefield map and signals) very quickly and clearly concluded it was a civilian flight. Capt Rogers convinced himself otherwise.

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

#594

Post by simne »

dontlaugh wrote: post #49
locallost wrote: post #29

Everything's possible, but there would be no debate about UI mistakes if it was Iran shooting down a US plane. They would've done because they are evil by nature, or at least perceived as such. In that case the media and the public buys into its own reality, but of course the UI discussion could be a distraction from the public maybe starting to question if that's actually the reality. Also from the Wiki page about t…

Also, what was the US navy even doing there? The Persian Gulf is nowhere near the US. It's as if Iran had their navy parked on the US east coast, it would be seen as an outrage immediately.

Well, Ukraine is not near US, but Ukraine asked US for support, trying to de-occupy Ukrainian territory, which is defined and agreed by dozen of international treaties.

Absolutely same thing happen at Persian Gulf, allies asked for support from US and help arrived.

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

#595

Post by custard42 »

cameldrv wrote: post #489
vigormortis wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find the glass cockpit airspeed/altitude tapes to be significantly worse overall than analog dials. Not only is it easier to see rate of descent, but it's very easy to see whether the absolute number is where you want it to be. Normally if you're cruising, you will be at an even thousand or 500 foot increment. The big hand should either be pointing straight up or straight down. You can even see out of the corner of…

I recall reading that Thrust II (running at 1000mph but somewhat closer to the ground) used analog meters so that a glance could get an approximate value and rate of change quickly and in a situation of heavy pilot vibration. I couldn't find the original article, but I found this breathless page from the manufacturer which alludes to this. https://masterhorologer.com/2014/05/03/rolex-unveils-two-bes...

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

#596

Post by smcl »

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…

I looked into this "small arms fire" you mentioned. You're right that it wasn't out of nowhere, but the actual story seems to be somewhat more nuanced than your very carefully worded depiction suggests:

> All 290 on-board including 16 crew perished. At the time of the incident, Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters and engaged in small arms combat with several Iranian surface craft

Did you miss that bit?

I mean in that context, with the guy stumbling into Iranian waters and shooting at some of their boats it makes more sense that he'd be worried about an attack. But that just makes the situation even stupider and more avoidable in my opinion.

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

#597

Post by inferiorhuman »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #501
immibis wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't remember, sorry.

I couldn't find any evidence of it happening either, which makes sense, a system which gives feedback there's a problem intuitively seems better than one which doesn't.

  a system which gives feedback there's a problem intuitively seems
  better than one which doesn't.
Except that your intuition isn't always correct. Airbus throttle levers don't move on their own, Boeing throttle levers (at least pre-FBW) were mechanically linked to the control system and would move in response to computer inputs. Sounds safer, right?

Look at the Sriwijaya Air 737 crash (among others). Even with the throttle levers showing wildly asymmetrical thrust, when the automation gave up the pilots didn't notice, didn't react properly, and crashed the plane.

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

#598

Post by inferiorhuman »

masklinn wrote: post #294
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…

> 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, and you'd feel the other pilot fighting you. Note that it’s not quite that flagrant: because Boeings don’t normally autotrim (famously aside from the 737 MAX, whose MCAS was not documented and trained for — I think the more recent Boeings like 777 and 787 are FBW and do autotrim) i…

  because Boeings don’t normally autotrim
Yeah they do. On the 737/757/767 they have a mach trim system to account for mach tuck. On the 737, at least, they also have a speed trim system to keep the plane under control at lower speeds when autopilot is off.

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

#599

Post by cannabis_sam »

I’m guessing it’s not a popular opinion around here, but what’s described is so insanely dog shit I would have been fired and sued if I had been responsible for developing anything even close to how stupid this system was.

I know people who have worked with military systems, and as dumb as the process around developing these things tend to be, due to the asinine cluelessness of the decision makers, none of them would have accepted even a fraction of the idiocy on display here.

I mean, not “slaving” the cursor still feeds garbage data into the system, immediately reusing 4 digit codes in a way that is pretty much guaranteed to create confusion, no real cooperation or coordination between the same system running on ships in the same battle group, supposedly essential data displayed without the actual essential details shown to decision makers in charge of death and destruction…

It would be laughable if it was the worlds strongest military we were talking about.

The people in charge of deciding to make this “system” in this way should be in prison.

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

#600

Post by ok_dad »

lostlogin wrote: post #518
dmix wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Commanding officers at shore training commands are mostly there work on their golf games and sign administrative paperwork. The real lessons come from people with not even half his experience. Even a former CO that allowed this to happen is probably better to teach basic tactics than a Lieutenant who has done maybe two sea tours, honestly.
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