"Gene Storey" wrote in message news:emWBb.6458$US3.497@okepread03...
What!! I thought that the radar was the most top-secret portion of the
plane, and that the radar algorithms were a military secret. They hand it
out to graduate students??

Could you have gotten access to the flight control software? Could
the Belgian government?

Yes, the Belgium depot at Gosselies was heavily involved with the F-16
MLU (Mid-Life Upgrade).

Yes, all software that was meant to be changed over time is available to
several universities in their engineering schools. The highest classification
I saw was For Official Use Only, and not releasable to the public :-)
That included flight, engine and radar software.


I'm still trying to understand.

Does this mean that they gave you some of the code, and some object files.
In other words, did they give you some *.c files, but keep a few
things secret in the *.o files.


The government doesn't provide F-16 radars to just any school that asks
for them, and very few students are interested in radar unless they are going
to become government contractors, or government employees. So it's not
like these things are all over and kids are dinking with them. These things
cost millions, and are expensive to power-up and run for several hours, so
you spend hours on simulators before ever getting allowed to run your code
live out the antenna. It's very tedious and I have to say, very glad it was
over. I didn't want to be the one that blew-up the radar and had to fill out
all the reports to get replacement parts.

You must have some interesting stories. I'd be happy to read any you
might want to share.