I know it's only tangentially related to your comment, but you reminded me of something Walter Bright discussed about two years ago on the design of the 757: h

I know it's only tangentially related to your comment, but you reminded me of something Walter Bright discussed about two years ago on the design of the 757: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6639097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6639097 Relevant portion applicable to your comment: "The computer control systems were dual, meaning two independent computer boards. The boards were designed independently, had different CPU architectures on board, were programmed in different languages, were developed by different teams, the algorithms used were different, and a third group would check that there was no inadvertent similarity." I realize that the liability fear of failure in commercial aircraft (or perhaps regulatory oversight) is probably a strong motivator, but you'd think that combat systems might be equally well-motivated toward redundancy given the nature of their purpose...