12 ms·

As soon as I saw the title, I thought of the furor when Gingrich and Clinton discovered that the FAA was using vacuum tube computers and radar in the air traffi

by russell 11y ago

As soon as I saw the title, I thought of the furor when Gingrich and Clinton discovered that the FAA was using vacuum tube computers and radar in the air traffic control system. http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/clinton.htm http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/clinton.htm The foreign (sole) vacuum tube supplier that Clinton mentioned was Russia. Oh, the embarrassment! I knew that there were some delays in rolling out the the replacement system, so I did some googling to see when it actually occurred. My god, it's now. We are in the middle of it. The upgrade was responsible for the recent air traffic meltdown. Please somebody, point out my flawed research skills. I cant believe this.

steve-howard 11y ago
I found this article from Wired earlier this year: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/air-traffic-control/ http://www.wired.com/2015/02/air-traffic-control/ It doesn't specificaly mention vacuum tubes, but it does explain why it's entirely plausible that they're still around: >This technology is complicated and novel, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that NextGen is a project of the FAA. The agency is primarily a regulatory body, responsible for keeping the national airspace safe, and yet it is also in charge of operating air traffic control, an inherent conflict that causes big issues when it comes to upgrades. Modernization, a struggle for any federal agency, is practically antithetical to the FAA's operational culture, which is risk-averse, methodical, and bureaucratic. Paired with this is the lack of anything approximating market pressure. The FAA is the sole consumer of the product; it's a closed loop.
- _delirium 11y ago
  I'm skeptical that the culprit is mainly to be found in specific features of the FAA, and the article doesn't seem to provide much causal evidence of that (though I recognize that it's hard to prove that kind of causality). Major upgrades/replacements/migrations either failing or coming in a decade late and billions over budget is the norm in Fortune 500 companies, too, which leads to a hypothesis that it's a more general problem with big rewrites of safety/business-critical systems in large organizations.
  - hga 11y ago
    And it's also happened a lot with the IRS, for whom IT is a core competency.
  - monochromatic 11y ago
    > billions over budget Well, maybe millions. A billion dollars is real money to anything except the federal government.
q4814 11y ago
It's possible that the computers didn't run on tubes but rather the radar systems. The two may have been conflated. I believe I've read that tubes are still quite common in high-power radio transmitters because they're more effective than solid-state components. Still a bad situation, but maybe not as sensational as it appears on the surface.
- protomyth 11y ago
  Russia used tubes in a number of fighter radars because they could use a lot of power to burn through opponent's ECM.
  - njharman 11y ago
    Also less prone to EMP from nukes.
    - protomyth 11y ago
      True, also a well understood technology that they would have no trouble producing.
      - bigiain 11y ago
        I bet it's only "well understood" by a very small group of people in 2015. On the other hand, at least it's _possible_ to make your own at home: http://makezine.com/2008/01/07/make-your-own-vacuum-tube/ http://makezine.com/2008/01/07/make-your-own-vacuum-tube/ I somehow doubt there's many talented amateurs assembling MOSFETs in their garages...
        protomyth 11y ago
        Perhaps I should have said "institutional experience", but the number of people creating fighter radars at the time were not exactly numerous.
  - bch 11y ago
smackfu 11y ago
For more context, the vacuum tube computers were only around in 1995 because a massive decade-long upgrade project failed in 1994. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/1993-04-25/flying-in-place-the-faas-air-control-fiasco http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/1993-04-25/flying-in-pla...
TrevorJj 11y ago
I was in the control tower of an international airport as recently as 4 years ago, and can confirm that at least some of the systems were still built on 1960's technology - the radar scopes were basically pre-CRT technology. On the other hand, for something as fault-intolerant as air traffic control there's a huge amount of value in reliable, well understood systems.
- twic 11y ago
  Pre-CRT? You mean like John Logie-Baird type stuff? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television
  - omegaham 11y ago
    I worked in an ATC tower with the Marines, and we used the AN/FPN-63 as our precision approach radar. It came into existence around 1958, I believe. The scopes looked something like this, but even more primitive: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/PAR_Scope.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/PAR_Scop... It was maintained with duct tape, gummi bears, and black magic, as the suppliers for said parts had long, long since gone out of business.
  - jweather 11y ago
    Vector tube displays, most likely.
6stringmerc 11y ago
When working in risk management business development, my firm was pursuing some line of business with Sabre. Most probably know, but they're in the travel logistics business primarily. A spinoff from American Airlines. Anyway, when I was getting materials together, I reviewed the CEO's summary remarks and looking ahead to the future. Over, and over, and over, and over again he railed at the FAA and government for not enhancing the flight systems nationwide. It would've been funny if he wasn't so right in his passionate pleas.
- ilaksh 11y ago
  It is clear to me that the government is not only a criminal organization but also dangerously incompetent. Therefore we have a moral obligation to replace government institutions with high tech systems and protocols that are not reliant on the government for support.
  - D-Coder 11y ago
    C, C++, bash, javascript...
acomjean 11y ago
Probably Raytheon's STAR program. I wasn't involved but one from inside it was rumored to be one of the biggest boondoggles there (and thats saying something). I think it inspired the "yesterdays technology tomorrow" motto.
- photosinensis 11y ago
  And I know for a fact that they still haven't managed to kill it, despite actual internal will to do so. If it is Raytheon's STAR program, the consultancy is probably CSC.
warfangle 11y ago
A similarly embarrassing state of affairs is the train traffic control system used by the NYC subway system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA
- jholman 11y ago
  Wow. Their end-goal upgrade, the one that they've installed on one line, and are installing on everything else looks so antiquated. My city's subway/elevated train system will be 30 years old this December. Train control is fully automated; there are no drivers on trains, and in normal operation there is no remote (human) operator either. It's been automated for 30 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver) (Side note: during the BART strike, some HN commenters suggested computers to replace drivers, and other commenters said that wouldn't be safe. Such hilarious technophobia on HN.) I don't want to trivialize NYC's challenges and accomplishments: for one thing their system is far, far more complicated (468 stations on 34 lines, vs 47 stations on 3 lines), and for another we all know it's very hard to upgrade legacy systems. But I'm astonished that they would work so hard to modernize their 1930s technology to 1970s standards in the 2010s.
  - wil421 11y ago
    Some less technology minded people would actually be freaked out by automated trains. The airport where I live has automated trains to go between gates and the cars very closely resemble the public trains cars without the seats. Most likely its not a technical challenge its a bureaucratic problem. Not to mention the unions aren't going to let the transit authority obsolete their jobs.
  - benihana 11y ago
    Another thing about the NYC subway is that it runs 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Not many metros around the world can make that claim. Living in New York, the amazing thing about the subway system is how they keep it running. It's old and ridiculously complex, and despite what natives say, the MTA by and large does a good job running it. There's no political will to fix it right now. It's going to take trains becoming unsafe or costing so much to keep safe that people eventually notice and start making noise about it, I think.

by russell 11y ago

steve-howard 11y ago

I found this article from Wired earlier this year: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/air-traffic-control/ http://www.wired.com/2015/02/air-traffic-control/ It doesn't specificaly mention vacuum tubes, but it does explain why it's entirely plausible that they're still around: >This technology is complicated and novel, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that NextGen is a project of the FAA. The agency is primarily a regulatory body, responsible for keeping the national airspace safe, and yet it is also in charge of operating air traffic control, an inherent conflict that causes big issues when it comes to upgrades. Modernization, a struggle for any federal agency, is practically antithetical to the FAA's operational culture, which is risk-averse, methodical, and bureaucratic. Paired with this is the lack of anything approximating market pressure. The FAA is the sole consumer of the product; it's a closed loop.

_delirium 11y ago
I'm skeptical that the culprit is mainly to be found in specific features of the FAA, and the article doesn't seem to provide much causal evidence of that (though I recognize that it's hard to prove that kind of causality). Major upgrades/replacements/migrations either failing or coming in a decade late and billions over budget is the norm in Fortune 500 companies, too, which leads to a hypothesis that it's a more general problem with big rewrites of safety/business-critical systems in large organizations.
- hga 11y ago
  And it's also happened a lot with the IRS, for whom IT is a core competency.
- monochromatic 11y ago
  > billions over budget Well, maybe millions. A billion dollars is real money to anything except the federal government.

q4814 11y ago

It's possible that the computers didn't run on tubes but rather the radar systems. The two may have been conflated. I believe I've read that tubes are still quite common in high-power radio transmitters because they're more effective than solid-state components. Still a bad situation, but maybe not as sensational as it appears on the surface.

protomyth 11y ago
Russia used tubes in a number of fighter radars because they could use a lot of power to burn through opponent's ECM.
- njharman 11y ago
  Also less prone to EMP from nukes.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    True, also a well understood technology that they would have no trouble producing.
    - bigiain 11y ago
      I bet it's only "well understood" by a very small group of people in 2015. On the other hand, at least it's _possible_ to make your own at home: http://makezine.com/2008/01/07/make-your-own-vacuum-tube/ http://makezine.com/2008/01/07/make-your-own-vacuum-tube/ I somehow doubt there's many talented amateurs assembling MOSFETs in their garages...
      - protomyth 11y ago
        Perhaps I should have said "institutional experience", but the number of people creating fighter radars at the time were not exactly numerous.
- bch 11y ago

smackfu 11y ago

For more context, the vacuum tube computers were only around in 1995 because a massive decade-long upgrade project failed in 1994. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/1993-04-25/flying-in-place-the-faas-air-control-fiasco http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/1993-04-25/flying-in-pla...

TrevorJj 11y ago

I was in the control tower of an international airport as recently as 4 years ago, and can confirm that at least some of the systems were still built on 1960's technology - the radar scopes were basically pre-CRT technology. On the other hand, for something as fault-intolerant as air traffic control there's a huge amount of value in reliable, well understood systems.

twic 11y ago
Pre-CRT? You mean like John Logie-Baird type stuff? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television
- omegaham 11y ago
  I worked in an ATC tower with the Marines, and we used the AN/FPN-63 as our precision approach radar. It came into existence around 1958, I believe. The scopes looked something like this, but even more primitive: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/PAR_Scope.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/PAR_Scop... It was maintained with duct tape, gummi bears, and black magic, as the suppliers for said parts had long, long since gone out of business.
- jweather 11y ago
  Vector tube displays, most likely.

6stringmerc 11y ago

When working in risk management business development, my firm was pursuing some line of business with Sabre. Most probably know, but they're in the travel logistics business primarily. A spinoff from American Airlines. Anyway, when I was getting materials together, I reviewed the CEO's summary remarks and looking ahead to the future. Over, and over, and over, and over again he railed at the FAA and government for not enhancing the flight systems nationwide. It would've been funny if he wasn't so right in his passionate pleas.

ilaksh 11y ago
It is clear to me that the government is not only a criminal organization but also dangerously incompetent. Therefore we have a moral obligation to replace government institutions with high tech systems and protocols that are not reliant on the government for support.
- D-Coder 11y ago
  C, C++, bash, javascript...

acomjean 11y ago

Probably Raytheon's STAR program. I wasn't involved but one from inside it was rumored to be one of the biggest boondoggles there (and thats saying something). I think it inspired the "yesterdays technology tomorrow" motto.

photosinensis 11y ago
And I know for a fact that they still haven't managed to kill it, despite actual internal will to do so. If it is Raytheon's STAR program, the consultancy is probably CSC.

warfangle 11y ago

A similarly embarrassing state of affairs is the train traffic control system used by the NYC subway system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA

jholman 11y ago
Wow. Their end-goal upgrade, the one that they've installed on one line, and are installing on everything else looks so antiquated. My city's subway/elevated train system will be 30 years old this December. Train control is fully automated; there are no drivers on trains, and in normal operation there is no remote (human) operator either. It's been automated for 30 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver) (Side note: during the BART strike, some HN commenters suggested computers to replace drivers, and other commenters said that wouldn't be safe. Such hilarious technophobia on HN.) I don't want to trivialize NYC's challenges and accomplishments: for one thing their system is far, far more complicated (468 stations on 34 lines, vs 47 stations on 3 lines), and for another we all know it's very hard to upgrade legacy systems. But I'm astonished that they would work so hard to modernize their 1930s technology to 1970s standards in the 2010s.
- wil421 11y ago
  Some less technology minded people would actually be freaked out by automated trains. The airport where I live has automated trains to go between gates and the cars very closely resemble the public trains cars without the seats. Most likely its not a technical challenge its a bureaucratic problem. Not to mention the unions aren't going to let the transit authority obsolete their jobs.
- benihana 11y ago
  Another thing about the NYC subway is that it runs 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Not many metros around the world can make that claim. Living in New York, the amazing thing about the subway system is how they keep it running. It's old and ridiculously complex, and despite what natives say, the MTA by and large does a good job running it. There's no political will to fix it right now. It's going to take trains becoming unsafe or costing so much to keep safe that people eventually notice and start making noise about it, I think.