F-16 Source Code

The F-16 is a very popular airplane. I'm just curious who has copies of the source code to the plane and it's radar, etc.
Obviously the USAF does, but do the Israeli,
the Belgians, or anyone else?

-Thanks

The F-16 was built as an international fighter, and those countries that do
their own development and depot work, would have an interest in all
aspects of the flight computers. The radar and various other computer
code would also be available. I know the radar software was available
to our university, as many of us wrote algorithms against it for our Masters.
My groups project was to better track turbine velocities of targets, as a
possible enhancement to cruise missile detection. One would hope that
today the missiles would be designed to hide the turbine :-)

"Charles Talleyrand" wrote
The F-16 is a very popular airplane. I'm just curious who has copies of
the source code to the plane and it's radar, etc. Obviously the USAF does,
but do the Israeli, the Belgians, or anyone else?

"Gene Storey" wrote in message news:JRiBb.5676$US3.4579@okepread03...
The F-16 was built as an international fighter, and those countries that do
their own development and depot work, would have an interest in all
aspects of the flight computers. The radar and various other computer
code would also be available. I know the radar software was available
to our university, as many of us wrote algorithms against it for our Masters.
My groups project was to better track turbine velocities of targets, as a
possible enhancement to cruise missile detection. One would hope that
today the missiles would be designed to hide the turbine :-)

"Charles Talleyrand" wrote
The F-16 is a very popular airplane. I'm just curious who has copies of
the source code to the plane and it's radar, etc. Obviously the USAF does,
but do the Israeli, the Belgians, or anyone else?


What!! I thought that the radar was the most top-secret portion of the
plane, and that the radar algorithms were a military secret. They hand it
out to graduate students??

Could you have gotten access to the flight control software? Could
the Belgian government?

-Thanks

"Charles Talleyrand" wrote
"Gene Storey" wrote
The F-16 was built as an international fighter, and those countries that do
their own development and depot work, would have an interest in all
aspects of the flight computers. The radar and various other computer
code would also be available. I know the radar software was available
to our university, as many of us wrote algorithms against it for our Masters.
My groups project was to better track turbine velocities of targets, as a
possible enhancement to cruise missile detection. One would hope that
today the missiles would be designed to hide the turbine :-)

"Charles Talleyrand" wrote
The F-16 is a very popular airplane. I'm just curious who has copies of
the source code to the plane and it's radar, etc. Obviously the USAF does,
but do the Israeli, the Belgians, or anyone else?


What!! I thought that the radar was the most top-secret portion of the
plane, and that the radar algorithms were a military secret. They hand it
out to graduate students??

Could you have gotten access to the flight control software? Could
the Belgian government?

Yes, the Belgium depot at Gosselies was heavily involved with the F-16
MLU (Mid-Life Upgrade).

Yes, all software that was meant to be changed over time is available to
several universities in their engineering schools. The highest classification
I saw was For Official Use Only, and not releasable to the public :-)
That included flight, engine and radar software.

The government doesn't provide F-16 radars to just any school that asks
for them, and very few students are interested in radar unless they are going
to become government contractors, or government employees. So it's not
like these things are all over and kids are dinking with them. These things
cost millions, and are expensive to power-up and run for several hours, so
you spend hours on simulators before ever getting allowed to run your code
live out the antenna. It's very tedious and I have to say, very glad it was
over. I didn't want to be the one that blew-up the radar and had to fill out
all the reports to get replacement parts.

"Gene Storey" wrote in message news:emWBb.6458$US3.497@okepread03...
What!! I thought that the radar was the most top-secret portion of the
plane, and that the radar algorithms were a military secret. They hand it
out to graduate students??

Could you have gotten access to the flight control software? Could
the Belgian government?

Yes, the Belgium depot at Gosselies was heavily involved with the F-16
MLU (Mid-Life Upgrade).

Yes, all software that was meant to be changed over time is available to
several universities in their engineering schools. The highest classification
I saw was For Official Use Only, and not releasable to the public :-)
That included flight, engine and radar software.


I'm still trying to understand.

Does this mean that they gave you some of the code, and some object files.
In other words, did they give you some *.c files, but keep a few
things secret in the *.o files.


The government doesn't provide F-16 radars to just any school that asks
for them, and very few students are interested in radar unless they are going
to become government contractors, or government employees. So it's not
like these things are all over and kids are dinking with them. These things
cost millions, and are expensive to power-up and run for several hours, so
you spend hours on simulators before ever getting allowed to run your code
live out the antenna. It's very tedious and I have to say, very glad it was
over. I didn't want to be the one that blew-up the radar and had to fill out
all the reports to get replacement parts.

You must have some interesting stories. I'd be happy to read any you
might want to share.

"Charles Talleyrand" wrote

Does this mean that they gave you some of the code, and some object files.
In other words, did they give you some *.c files, but keep a few
things secret in the *.o files.

It was all in Ada, and you compiled all of your software on a DEC Alpha, and
downloaded it into the firmware card, and plugged that back into the radar.
There's something called a Security Classification Guide. While any one or
two things might be unclassified, by tying them all together makes it classified
at some level. There hasn't been much new in radar algorithms in the last
20 years. Everyone knows a lot about DSP, tracking, etc :-) Every Mig
I know of has an F-16 detector in its RHAW, ha. Stuff like PRF, Frequency,
and algorithms actually used weren't published, which supposedly makes the
enemy have to work for it in their ESM gear. I'm sure the Soviets could
probably of told NATO more about the radar from just signal analysis, then
even Westinghouse engineers knew :-)

"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message
...
I'm still trying to understand.

Does this mean that they gave you some of the code, and some object files.
In other words, did they give you some *.c files, but keep a few
things secret in the *.o files.

Bear in mind that software is used all over the place in a modern jet,
there's not simply a single computer that does everything. The company that
I work for does sonobuoy processors, crypto comms boxes, datalinks, etc. for
a number of US and UK aircraft programs. These products and their code is
the intellectual property of the company and is not releasable to the
customer. It's like any other embedded software product. Having said that,
often algorithms and research is done jointly with Universities or "customer
friend" organisations, such as QinetiQ (formerly DERA) in the UK, but it's
unusual for them to be given access to the product itself.

So basically, from my industry standpoint, we do not deliver source code to
the RAF, USAF, USMC or anybody else. Software Design Documents are
delievered, but the customers aren't interested in reverse engineering our
product. They have the budgets to come to us for enhancements or upgrades,
and they know we're the best suited to do the work which is why they came to
us in the first place. Plus copyright and patents are in place and protected
just as in the public sector.

Si

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 23:19:05 -0500, Charles Talleyrand wrote:

"Gene Storey" wrote in message news:emWBb.6458$US3.497@okepread03...
What!! I thought that the radar was the most top-secret portion of the
plane, and that the radar algorithms were a military secret. They hand it
out to graduate students??

Could you have gotten access to the flight control software? Could
the Belgian government?

Yes, the Belgium depot at Gosselies was heavily involved with the F-16
MLU (Mid-Life Upgrade).

Yes, all software that was meant to be changed over time is available to
several universities in their engineering schools. The highest classification
I saw was For Official Use Only, and not releasable to the public :-)
That included flight, engine and radar software.


I'm still trying to understand.

Does this mean that they gave you some of the code, and some object files.
In other words, did they give you some *.c files, but keep a few
things secret in the *.o files.

It was probably written in Ada.


--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: , but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).

"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message
...
The F-16 is a very popular airplane. I'm just curious who has copies of
the source code to the plane and it's radar, etc.
Obviously the USAF does, but do the Israeli,
the Belgians, or anyone else?

For some boxes, we did not provide the source code. This hasn't kept the
Israeli's from uncompiling it and selling the technology to other countries.