U.S. attack warning system ‘obsolete'

Press, 12 March 1982, Page 6

U.S. attack warning system ‘obsolete'

NZPA-Reuter Washington

The North American nuclear attack warning system designed to alert the Pentagon within seconds of a Soviet missile launching is dangerously obsolete, according to a congressional report released yesterday. The report, compiled by the House of Representatives Government Operations Committee, said the North American Air Defence Command (Norad) warning system was plagued by severe and potentially catastrophic deficiencies.

Serious problems with the Norad early-warning computers, linked to surveillance satellites that can detect Soviet missiles, have persisted despite Pentagon promises that the situation would be corrected, it said. It was reported a year ago that congressional investigators had concluded that the system’s obsolete computers could cause false alarms of attack and were vulnerable to breakdown, during which no warning of an actual attack could be received.

None of these problems

has been corrected, according to the report, which blames bureaucratic footdragging by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Air Force.

The report said failure to correct the problems “will undermine any chance that an effective attack warning or command and communications system can be installed by 1990.”

“This committee doubts the ability of the Department of Defence to provide this country with a timely, effective missile warning system,” it said. The investigation leading to the report began after three false alarms of atomic attack were given by the Norad computers in 1979 and 1980.

Pentagon officials said the false alarms, which critics said could have sparked accidental nuclear war, were caused by mistaken use of a computer test tape and faulty computer chips. The committee said it was encouraged by steps taken at Norad to correct immediate causes of those false alarms. But it added that similar mishaps could occur again. This is because the com-

puter system is mismanaged and obsolete, and cannot cope with the stress under which it is placed on a daily basis, according to the report. The report urged replacement of the computers with more modern devices. Another serious problem is that the Norad complex, deep underground near Colorado Springs, is vulnerable to power failure, it said. Power-supply fluctuations can scramble computer warning data or cause the system to black-out. An. official of the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, told NZPA-Reuter that the computers had frequently gone down in the past, such as during lightning storms. Once, they were out for more than 12 hours. During such black-outs, Norad would find it difficult to provide quick warning of a Soviet attack, he said.

The new report said the solution was to give Norad computers a back-up power system. But little progress had been made because Congress cut funds in the 1982 Budget.