Criminal incompetence at the FAA

(JohnMcGrew) writes:

Considering the expensive overkill in reliability that
the FAA demands in so many of the components that we use in aviation, why
they'd tolerate a Windows based system is beyond me.

It's not just the FAA that makes this mistake. Anybody remember this?


GOVERNMENT NEWS
GCN July 13, 1998


Software glitches leave Navy Smart Ship dead in the water
By Gregory Slabodkin
GCN Staff

The Navy's Smart Ship technology may not be as smart as the service
contends.

Although PCs have reduced workloads for sailors aboard the Aegis
missile cruiser USS Yorktown, software glitches resulted in system
failures and crippled ship operations, according to Navy officials.

Navy brass have called the Yorktown Smart Ship pilot a success in
reducing manpower, maintenance and costs. The Navy began running
shipboard applications under Microsoft Windows NT so that fewer
sailors would be needed to control key ship functions.

But the Navy last fall learned a difficult lesson about automation:
The very information technology on which the ships depend also makes
them vulnerable. The Yorktown last September suffered a systems
failure when bad data was fed into its computers during maneuvers off
the coast of Cape Charles, Va.

The ship had to be towed into the Naval base at Norfolk, Va., because
a database overflow caused its propulsion system to fail, according to
Anthony DiGiorgio, a civilian engineer with the Atlantic Fleet
Technical Support Center in Norfolk.

"We are putting equipment in the engine room that we cannot maintain
and, when it fails, results in a critical failure," DiGiorgio said. It
took two days of pierside maintenance to fix the problem.

The Yorktown has been towed into port after other systems failures, he
said.