Military AI Works

I posted this on another forum but thought I would also let you guys see it as well:

I worked a Manchester EGCC for over 33 yrs, I remember the day the Airtours caught fire:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...ester-33304675

After this it got me thinking and I submitted an idea to management, this was passed on to the fire brigade chief at the time.
My idea was to have foam storage tanks placed underground along the runway, and if and when an aircraft was in a similar situation where ever it stopped the fire station could trigger jets to spray the aircraft with foam.
This was so the flames could be put out quick before the actual fire engines go to the scene, thus possibly saving lives, the airport management thought this was a good idea but the fire chief said it wouldn't work because foam can't be stored underground.

Now bare in mind this was over 30 years ago and I often wonder if this would work today with the advance of things since then, I also wonder if one day this will be done and someone else will get the credit for my idea, I could just see the headline in the news, "Retired fire chief has revolutionary idea,"

Any way, if you ever hear of it being done remember it was me that thought of it first lol.

Col.

It's an interesting concept. It's not viable though. The system would cost millions of dollars and would need to be certified by the aviation regulatory body. ARFF is usually waiting for the emergcy aircraft unless it's an alert 3. If they aren't already waiting, they can be applying foam in under two minutes in most cases.

Yep I would also agree that there is no way they will do it.

If you took the example alone, Manchester, how many times would it have been needed? The installation cost would be very expensive, but the ongoing maintenance costs would be horrendous.

It would be appalling for any relatives of the victims to hear but it is always going to be better, and cheaper, to prevent what happened rather than deal with it once it has happened.

Hi Steve & ahs06, yes you are both right, it would cost too much to install and as you say they are working on better preventions to stop things like this happening again.

On a side issue about ideas, I once suggested a safe cycle route to the airport not only for the workers but anyone else visiting, I sent in the plans.
Nothing was done then one day someone came up with the idea and lo and behold the route was almost identical to mine, I followed it up but the answer I got was something like 'Great minds think alike' so whoever it was got the credit.

Col.

Yep.
About 15 years ago at work I suggested that to save money we should invest in Linux servers rather than use the Unix that was bought from Sun and IBM. This was pooh-poohed as there was no way that BA was going to use a non-supported public domain OS.
This was part of a program where if you came up with an idea you got a payment that was inline with the money that was saved by a suggestion.

15 months later, the Unix support team announced that BA was going to invest in Linux and 5 years after that there were no Unix/AIX servers left. It seems that BA decided to save even more money by not paying me either.

I believe the absolute worst is the TV/Film industry. People are always putting forward ideas that get rejected and a very similar project is announced 3 years later. Apparently trying to prove that they are using your idea is nigh on impossible.

Hi Steve,

We had a similar suggestion scheme where you got paid for the money saving idea if it was viable:

At the time there was a lot of sickness, so when someone was off they had to bring someone in on overtime to take their place, I suggested a scheme where: If you didn't go sick in a month you got paid a bit extra, 3 months a bit more, 6 months more still.
It got accepted, some still went sick but the sickness levels went down, after about 11 months they scrapped it, guess why... It was costing too much.
A few went mad because they were due a payment for not going sick, so course when they knew they were not going to get it they went sick lol.

It's all "Agile" and AWS or Linux Openstack these days. We have moved from Unix and Power systems to Linux and Openstack/AWS. IT has changed so much last few years. Its not surprising when you compare costs of running UNIX on a Power system to running Linux on some cheap HW or with VM/Docker.