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Reuters reports that last week's computer glitch at a California air traffic control center that led officials to halt takeoffs at Los Angeles International Airport was caused by a U-2 spy plane still in use by the US military, passing through air space monitored by the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center that appears to have overloaded ERAM, a computer system at the center. According to NBC News, computers at the center began operations to prevent the U-2 from colliding with other aircraft, even though the U-2 was flying at an altitude of 60,000 feet and other airplanes passing through the region's air space were miles below. FAA technical specialists resolved the specific issue that triggered the problem on Wednesday, and the FAA has put in place mitigation measures as engineers complete development of software changes," said the agency in a statement. "The FAA will fully analyze the event to resolve any underlying issues that contributed to the incident and prevent a reoccurrence." The U.S. Air Force is still flying U-2s, but plans to retire them within the next few years. The U-2 was slated for retirement in 2006 in favor of the unmanned Global Hawk Block 30 system, before the Air Force pulled an about-face two years ago and declared the Global Hawk too expensive and insufficient for the needs of combatant commanders.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 05 2014, @08:34AM
If what you need to see can't wait until a spy satellite passes over it, that must be a really important something--enough so that it is bristling with SAM batteries. [wikipedia.org]
As has already been mentioned, it was demonstrated over 50 years ago [wikipedia.org] that this aircraft is simply a target over an area with any significant military presence.
Clearly this was a spy mission against the American people by its own government.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Aighearach on Monday May 05 2014, @09:47AM
As has been shown consistently for over 50 years, this plane is really hard to shoot down, operates all over the world, and is rarely lost.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Tuesday May 06 2014, @03:09AM
Obviously, "gewg__" is a government employee conducting a false-flag operation. By posting comments like the above, they hope to make the public perceive all critics of domestic spying as paranoid morons.
But seriously, the sort of fact-free speculation exhibited above is exactly why it took so long to finally make the public accept the truth about Room 641A. Would it kill you to wait for actual evidence before drawing conclusions, or at least not to present them as proven fact? You may not care about your own credibility, but you hurt the credibility of all surveillance-state opposers when you post stuff like that and it gets proven false.