"phil hunt" wrote in message
rg...
On Tue, 25 May 2004 17:38:41 -0400, Paul F Austin
wrote:

That may be the case for most of the bugs cited by QinetiQ but some are
serious:

"Corruption" of the flight control computer system means that it could
suddenly switch from "in-flight" mode to "ground" mode in mid-air,
leading
to "immediately catastrophic" results.

and

The cockpit flight information displays "frequently fail in flight", and
therefore, whenever a Eurofighter is taken into cloud or bad weather, it
should again be with two pilots.

sound quite serious, although I don't know how a second pilot will help
in
the second case.

The impression I get is that the fault is a software bug rather than
hardware corruption. It's not as if they're using a dodgy cheapo
hard disk to store it on!

I agree. I have the same impression. If the FCS goes TU in an aircraft
that's statically unstable in pitch for instance, the results would be
"immediately catastrophic"