fly by wire

here's a thought. with most military aircraft being sold by us firms using fly by wire. would it be wrong to assume that their would be a hard wired code to shut down the flight controls in the event we had to fly against our own equipment? it's not hard to etch a hard wire command set in.

Well though it would possibly be very hard to do and hide, that is one of the (unnamed) reasons why the UK insists on full rights on the software code for their JSF´s.; and its also a good argument for keeping a domestic aviation capability.

bigx01, though your notion may have validity, having a code and then putting the disruptive code in place are two different things.

The British may be using such a notion as their excuse, or one of their excuses, to gain full rights and access to the software codes for the JSF, disrupting fly-by-wire would simply be pointless. Why? Well, If one can get close enough to upload such a disruptive code, there are other highly sought after 'things' that could be targeted for disruption on aircraft other than simply fly-by-wire.

Again, having such disruptive codes and getting it upload into your targeted type aircraft are two different things and matters....






seekerof

[edit on 11-3-2006 by Seekerof]

software is one thing. but when you hard wire it in, it can be very difficult to find.

you'll have to do a search, but back in the 80's the cia found out that russia was buying equipment for natural gas production from the usa through shadow companies. the cia planted such a bug and then activated the code and the processing plant had one of the largest compressor explosions ever.

the code could have been something as simple as allowing the electronic governer to exceed the max turbine speed and disabling the overspeed trip.

hard wiring code is not a problem once the template is made all you do is mask and shoot, chip after chip

I don't think this would be hard to do if the buyer doesn't understand the technology; which is the case most of the time.
This could also be used to keep countries from reverse engineering our stuff.

[edit on 13-3-2006 by NuclearHead]