Second false ‘alert’

Press, 9 June 1980, Page 8

Second false ‘alert’

NZPA-Reuter Washington A faulty computer put United States forces on • nuclear alert for the second time in four days and some 852 bombers were readied for take-off, the Defence Department said at the week-end. The second alert took place on Friday. It was caused by the same computer which had given a false alert last Tuesday,, officials said. Both alerts lasted three minutes before

information from other sources showed them to be false alarms. “Some Strategic Air Command aircraft’s engines were turned on since S.A.C. responds automatically,” a Pentagon spokesman said, “but no planes went sent in the air.” One aircraft was launched from a Hawaii ,base during Tuesday’s alert.

In a similar false alarm last November, six minutes elapsed before the alert was cancelled and 10 United States and Canadian interceptor aircraft were scrambled.

The Pentagon said that the computer had been deliberately left on in spite of its malfunction on Tuesday to help determine what had made it issue its first

warning that a barrage of Soviet inter-continental ballistic missiles and sub-marine-launched ballistic missiles had been fired at North America. After the second malfunction the computer was turned off and it was believed that the cause of «e problem had been found, the spokesman said. It was now being corrected, he said, but did not say what the fault had been.

The Pentagon said that the. missiles erroneously reported to have been fired on Friday were fewer than those which the computer said had been launched on Tuesday. In the November alert the 10 United States and Canadian planes took off from three bases. Confirmation of , a missile attack would have to

come from various sources,

including satellites designed to pick up heat signals from burning missile fuel and from ballistic missile early-warning, systems in Greenland, England and Alaska. .

According to United States laws, a direct order from the President is required before missiles could be fired at the Soviet Union or bombers

could fly beyond a “failsafe” line in the far north. The official Soviet News agency “Tass” responding to Tuesday’s false alarm, said that the computer malfunction meant “during several minutes the world was on the brink of a nuclear war.” “Had the mistake not been checked and the nuclear alarm called off, trategic nuclear missiles might have been launched in the direction of the Soviet Union several minutes later,” said the newspaper.