Sweden Fighter Crash

[alice!peju@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Peter Juhl)]

Last week Bjarne Stroustrup posted something about the fighter
that crashed in Sweden. Eventhough his main point was about
the difficulty of comparing languages, and the traps that people
fall into when they do so, there was some follow-ups about the
crash as such.

Somebody from Sweden expressed doubts about Bjarne knowing anything about
what caused the failure, which Bjarne attributed to software.

This just came in on the apnews

	   STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) _ Sweden's new jet fighter crashed during
an air show last week because of a computer flaw, an inquiry board
said Wednesday in clearing the pilot of blame.
	   Producers and military officials had been aware that vigorous
movement of the control stick could cause the JAS 39 Gripen to go
out of control because of computer overcompensation. But they
underestimated the problem, the government board said in a
preliminary report.

[ ... stuff deleted ... ]

I'll just point out that Bjarne has a lot of contacts all over the world,
and probably got a tip from friends in Sweden. 

--- peter (peju@research.att.com)