Re:F-35 radar system has bug that requires hard reboot in fl...
by w4 on Thursday March 10, 2016 @05:39PM
(#11263092)
> You don't really need to toss an atomic clock on the plane. Just make the plane use GPS.
These are warplanes - you don't want critical systems reliant on satellites that could be jammed, or downed, during wartime, which I suspect is why they don't do this already.
Re:F-35 radar system has bug that requires hard reboot in fl...
by engi_nerd on Thursday March 10, 2016 @06:50PM
(#11263522)
But fighters do use GPS. Daily. They use it for accurate navigation. But they do not absolutely depend on it.
Re:F-35 radar system has bug that requires hard reboot in fl...
by gherkin0 on Thursday March 10, 2016 @09:13PM
(#11264208)
> But fighters do use GPS. Daily. They use it for accurate navigation. But they do not absolutely depend on it.
But...
>>> Just make the plane use GPS.
...implies you would make them absolutely depend on it. Military aircraft use GPS daily, because it's cheaper and better. However, they also have accurate inertial navigation systems as a backup, so they can still operate effectively if the enemy makes GPS unavailable.
Where one of the tricky parts comes in, is in distributing this clock signal to all portions of the avionics system that need it. But that's beside the point.
It doesn't really sound like a timing skew problem (as in, a problem with making all systems recognize the same time simultaneously) but rather with making sure that all relevant information needed to construct a coherent 'picture' from all sensors reaches the core processors in a timely manner.
You can't provide a real time display if, say, your radar data is delayed for a significant period of time due to problems or instabilities with the radar's onboard processor.