Ask HN: Radar and radio failures at Dallas area airports

Anyone have any clue what the cause of this disruption was/is and if it's still going on?

kraussvonespy 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It would be interesting to know the who and how of the fiber cut. We're a tiny company in the heartland and have seen two separate fiber cuts in different parts of the state. Both tickets indicated that they were believed to be malicious, intentional cuts. In one case, fiber was cut in two places many hundreds of meters apart.

What may be outdated here is our trust in humans to not destroy critical parts of our infrastructure.

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toomuchtodo 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fiber cut

https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/cut-cables-trigger-da...

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ranger_danger 14 hours ago | parent [-]

> “This is a clear example of the FAA’s outdated infrastructure and underscores the urgent need to modernize our air traffic control systems,” the agency said in its Sept. 20 update. “Moving from aging, analog systems to more resilient, digital technology, is critical to maintaining the reliability and resiliency of the national airspace system.”

Umm, what? How is a fiber cut an "aging, analog system"? They even admitted that there was supposed to be redundancy in place but the system did not work.

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imoverclocked 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not the fiber that's the problem. I mean, it is ... but that's not the analog part we are talking about.

ATC communications are still over two-way radio. It's like walkie-talkies but on aviation bands instead of citizen bands. There are digital communications in some cases but it's definitely not the baseline.

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bigfatkitten 10 hours ago | parent [-]

And that part is not the problem.

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anon7000 10 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s a good example of legacy technology with severe flaws

	▲	bigfatkitten 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And with nothing approximating good (let alone better) to replace it.

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emchammer 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fiber can be and often is used to carry wideband analog signals.

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fishgoesblub 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh you know, analog telephone wires, digital fibre, they're both wire shaped so they're the same.

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pdonner 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So far it appears the news is reporting a cyber attack in Europe that is affecting European boarding. The RADAR/RADIO (TRACON) thing in Texas and other major airports in the US. A cyber attack on Collins Aerospace and Frontier. And some blame pointing at L3Harris for inadequate failure recovery. Sounds like no one has a clue. I wonder if any of our security apparatus is still functioning enough to provide support to find the source of the problem.

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jachee 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Could you link some of your sources please?

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leumon 8 hours ago | parent [-]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/20/heathrow-air...

	▲	pogue 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Who's the suspect for who's doing the cyberattack? Russia? Or another ransomwear group?

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burnt-resistor 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Somebody completely forgot about high availability and redundancy.

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JumpCrisscross 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If only we had “a system that had no centralized switches and could operate even if many of its links and switching nodes had been destroyed” [1].

[1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2018/paul-baran-and-the-o...

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daveguy 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, I'm distraught that a central point of failure has been exploited in the internet and now internet does not exist.

	▲	toomuchtodo 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		https://youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg