Text File

Aucbvax.1379 fa.arms-d utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!GEOFF@SRI-CSL Wed May 20 09:16:27 1981 Clipping Service - NORAD & WWMCCS in the news again.

a012 2242 19 May 81 PM-Early Warning, Bjt,480 Early-Warning Network Called Unreliable, Inadequate Eds: Hearing resumes 10 a.m. EDT; prenoon lead expected By DON WATERS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The computerized system designed to give early warning of a missile attack on the United States is unreliable and inadequate because of poor design and management, congressional investigators charge. In strongly worded testimony to a House Government Operations subcommittee Tuesday, acting Comptroller General Milton J. Socolar said the problem stems from a decision by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1970 to use the same type of computer in all elements of the Pentagon's worldwide military command and control system. The North American Aerospace Defense Command, one of the elements, protested that the computer was inadequate for its needs but was overruled, said Socolar, who heads the congressional General Accounting Office. Officials of the Defense Department and its office of the joint chiefs were called to testify before the subcommittee today. NORAD's current commander, Lt. Gen. James V. Hartinger, said in testimony Tuesday that he agreed with his predecessors that the needs of his command were unique and that it should have had its own computer design. But he said he and his superiors were taking steps to improve the current system. And Hartinger said human error and a defective component, not the computer system itself, were to blame for three incidents in 1979 and 1980 in which false alerts of an imminent enemy missile attack were sounded. In his statement, Socolar said deficiencies in the current system have jeopardized the multibillion-dollar investment the United States has made in its strategic defense. ''The problems experienced by NORAD in its computer development program are primarily attributable to poor planning and poor management and the attempt to force-fit user requirements to a particular type of equipment,'' he contended. The GAO official said his agency gave an early warning of its own when it told the Air Force in 1978 that the system it was developing already was obsolete. But, he noted, the Air Force accepted the sstem anyway in September 1979 and the first false alert came two months later. Hartinger said, however, that the incident was the fault of a technician who inadvertently entered a test-alert tape into the operational computer at NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain center in Colorado. He said his command subsequently ''implemented stringent test procedures and controls'' and last year built a $16 million facility that enables it to run checks on computer hardware and programs without involving the main computer. In the other two incidents, last June 3 and June 6, Hartinger said, a defective computer chip in a circuit board caused a missile attack warning to flash to the Strategic Air Command and the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. The errors were caught within two minutes through back-up procedures, he said.

ap-ny-05-20 0138EDT ***************

----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/

This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.