Yet another Hacker News

L3Harris statement on the Nov. 13 ground stop

53 points taspeotis 1 hour ago 19 comments

madeofpalk 1 hour ago | parent

I guess it’s technically a statement, even though it says nothing.

drooby 1 hour ago | parent

I'm glad they're taking this seriously

oofbey 59 minutes ago | parent

I kinda wish they'd take it "very seriously". Corporate communications generally take issues "very seriously". The fact that they're only taking it "seriously" makes me wonder if they're really taking it seriously or not.

rr808 56 minutes ago | parent

Its like the people who are 101% committed dont sound as dedicated as the people that are 200% committed.

fallingmeat 1 hour ago | parent

personal perspective- L3X has repeatedly demonstrated a corporate culture of accountability allergy. spiderman meme was made for L3. I think it goes up and down the chain

cogman10 1 hour ago | parent

This is standard practice for basically all defense contractors. I don't think there's hardly any of them that strive for excellence, just for next year's contract.

saturn8601 1 hour ago | parent

Very surprised because I know several fellow alumni that went on to do extremely technical low level "frontier level" work there. Due to the secret nature of their operations, what they literally do day to day is an angle I don't know much about so maybe its all nonsense but I don't get that feeling.

Jtsummers 46 minutes ago | parent

Defense contractors, as a rule, seem to have a corporate culture of mediocrity and poor performance. But you will find pockets within them that do better, possibly even actually being "frontier level". IT projects, though, are not one of the things they tend to excel at. The FAA stuff as one example, but most IT procurements end up bogged down with years of delays or just failures. It's tradition now.

bigstrat2003 46 minutes ago | parent

There are certainly staff members at defense contractors who strive for excellence (I know several personally), but yeah the management culture is pretty fucked. Lots of cases where engineers point out what a bad idea something is, get overruled (because we have a deadline to meet, dammit), and then management acts shocked when it blows up in their faces.

praet 1 hour ago | parent

> L3Harris takes the nationwide ground stop and its impact on travelers, airlines and air traffic operations seriously.

Thank goodness

noir_lord 59 minutes ago | parent

I mean they could have taken it humorously I guess.

danso 1 hour ago | parent

> This website uses cookies and similar technologies, which we collectively refer to here as "cookies."[sic] L3Harris uses cookies to improve your experience on our website

Great first impression from a technical company

drewg123 1 hour ago | parent

Oh, these are defense contractors, that explains a lot about this non-statement.

I had thought the L3 was from Level 3 Communications and Harris, but its actually L3 Technologies which seems to be a holding company for defense contractors.

ba1afd89f34cb23 54 minutes ago | parent

FYI, CenturyLink bought Level3 something like 10 years ago and then re-branded as Lumen during COVID.

bastard_op 57 minutes ago | parent

Ahh, these frigging guys...

So I bought a Fortigate firewall on ebay some years back for a lab device, I password recovered it to break in and recover it, and it came up registered to them, and still under Enterprise license support for like 6mo. Great, that's exactly what I wanted for a lab device! I looked them up to see they were a defense contractor, ok, so more money than brains. I'll take advantage...

That 6mo came and went, and they renewed the support on it for another year, and my firewall saw the entitlement. Even better, I continued to use it. After 4 years finally the device went EOL/EOS and expired with no more support available, I was sad.

Obviously these guys are fsckheads, more money and contracts from friends in high places than brains. This totally explains why the air system melted down!

shermozle 55 minutes ago | parent

By "modernizing" they mean making it equivalently fragile and flaky to such modern wonders as Github and Microsoft 363?

slowin 46 minutes ago | parent

For those unfamiliar with this company:

> In 2008, 72 Iraqi civilians sued L3 Services for human rights violations they had endured at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq, including "torture; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; war crimes; assault and battery; sexual assault and battery; intentional infliction of emotional distress; negligent hiring and supervision; and negligent infliction of emotional distress." A settlement was reached on October 10, 2012, which was the "first positive resolution to a U.S. civil case challenging detainee treatment outside the United States in the larger 'war on terror' context".

> In 2012, L3 subsidiary KDI Precision Products participated in the sale of 11,500 JDAM bomb fuzes to Israel, part of a $647 million contract deal. These were among the weapons used by the IDF in the 2014 Gaza War; the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights highlighted the IDF's weapons usages, which included attacks on densely populated civilian areas, as constituting potential war crimes.

> In June 2022, Chris Kubasik succeeded as the Chair following Bill Brown's retirement. That same month it was reported to have held talks to purchase the Israeli company NSO, which builds Pegasus spyware. White House officials heard of the talks and voiced opposition, resulting in L3Harris discontinuing its plans.

> In October 2025, Israel entered into a memorandum of understanding with L3Harris to facilitate the acquisition of new light attack aircraft intended for border defense, aimed at developing the Israeli Sky Warden variant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L3Harris

skew-aberration 39 minutes ago | parent

> purchase the Israeli company NSO, which builds Pegasus spyware. White House officials heard of the talks and voiced opposition

Is the implication that an American company would not be able to continue their business model legally? But they could just sell to the government instead, as L3Harris' other zero-day companies do.

Barbing 43 minutes ago | parent

  L3Harris has been modernizing the communications infrastructure supporting the National Airspace System in close coordination with the FAA. With safety and reliability as our highest priorities, L3Harris, together with its telco partners and the FAA, has completed more than 70% of the planned airspace communications conversion from legacy copper wires to a fiber optic system. We are supporting the FAA in its investigation to understand the conditions that led to the Nov. 13 ground stop of our nation’s air travel. L3Harris takes the nationwide ground stop and its impact on travelers, airlines and air traffic operations seriously.