finally a good analysis of the weaponry situation.. surprised it has taken this long for anyone to write something like this. hopefully most weaponry systems will have failsafe mechanisms that prevent them from being shot off. in other words, they will malfunction, they will not work or be launchable.. worst case scenario of course is that they launch..!! the analogy is sort of like with stop lights. how horribly will they fail? for example stop lights could fail and just blink in all 4 directions, or they could be green in all 4 directions.. both are a failure, but the latter is more like a "catastrophic" failure.. with weapons, inoperability is a failure, launching is a catastrophic failure. ------- Forwarded Message Delivered-To: pswann@easynet.co.uk From: Carolyn Langdon <forumpub@stlc.com> Subject: Y2K and Nuclear Weapons Command Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 16:25:51 -0500 Organization: St Lawrence Centre for the Arts Encoding: 119 TEXT Science for Peace Media Release For immediate release - December 1998 Y2K and Nuclear Weapons Command and Control Systems Toronto - There are over 35,000 nuclear weapons remaining in the world today. These arsenals contain the destructive power of 650,000 Hiroshima bombs. Thousands of these weapons, mostly land-based ballistic missiles and submarine launched missiles are in a state of ready deployment. That is their warheads, which contain the nuclear fissile material, are attached to their delivery systems. Computers have become increasingly central to nuclear operations but they have not been without their glitches and serious flaws. During the Cold War computer malfunctions produced several serious false alarms of missile attacks, and during the Gulf War computer malfunctions contributed to the failings of the Patriot anti-missile system. "Both Russia and the U.S. are believed to have a "launch on warning" policy, so that a retaliatory launch is made after an adversary's missile is detected, and before the warhead impacts. Thus a single accidental or unauthorized launch could result in wholesale nuclear war." says Dr. Alan Phillips of Science for Peace. "When you factor in the Y2K computer problem an already dangerous situation becomes untenable", says Calvin Gotlieb from Science for Peace. "A Y2K meltdown in the nuclear systems of any one of the nuclear countries - the U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain, India, Pakistan and Israel (an undeclared nuclear state) would spell disaster." Dr. Barbara Simons, President of the Association for Computing Machinery states, "I am not going to worry about whether or not my VCR might become confused on 1/1/00. The worst case scenario is not especially bad. I am, however, going to worry about whether or not a computer that controls a major weapons system becomes confused on 1/1/00." Research findings by a number of different agencies and experts, both inside and outside the U.S. Dept. of Defense (DOD), show "no confidence" in the Pentagon's present program to meet the Year 2000 challenge. The DOD weapons systems utilize millions of 'embedded systems' in the form of microchips and microprocessors. U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre has admitted that, "everything is so interconnected, it's very hard to know with any precision that we've got it fixed." This was the U.S. state of affairs after 2 billion dollars had been spent trying to fix it. There is little information coming out of Russia about their progress with Y2K problems, but we can safely surmise that all can't be well given their diminished resources. David Parnas, the NSERC/Bell Industrial Research Chair in Software Engineering at McMaster University is concerned about the risks posed by the Y2K computer problem and nuclear systems. He says that, "The US military establishment is heavily dependent on computers for communication, intelligence and for control of weapons. Computer programs are very complex constructions. When a problem is discovered it often takes weeks to fix. Often the "fixed" program is still not right and requires further repair after the revised program is put into service. Sometimes, programs that are not date sensitive exchange dates with programs that are and will fail when those 'partner' programs fail." The Fail Safe Solution: All nuclear weapons states need to disconnect their nuclear warheads from their delivery systems to eliminate the risk of nuclear war by miscalculation, accident, or the Y2K problem. With proper planning and sufficient lead-time, it is technically feasible. In 1991, in the wake of the coup attempt in the Soviet Union, Presidents Bush and Gorbachev took thousands of nuclear weapons off deployment in a short period of time. The most difficult problem will be providing safe storage for the thousands of warheads from land-based missiles. In view of the risks involved in leaving weapons on ready alert, this difficulty can be easily overcome if governments start planning now. We need to hear from NATO, the U.N. and Congress that a multilateral approach to the Y2K problem is being coordinated. To date there has been near silence. Time is running out for a coordinated approach. Similar views to those of Science for Peace are held by individual computer scientists and nuclear physicists, organizations like the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and the British American Security Information Council, both based in the U.S., and Physicians for Global Responsibility among others. - - - 30 - For more information please contact: Science for Peace Board members: Dr. Alan Phillips, Science for Peace & Physicians for Global Survival, 905-385-0353 Calvin Gotlieb, Professor Emeritus, Dept of Computer Science, U of T T. 416-978-2986 or 416-482-4509 David Parnas, P.Eng., NSERC/Bell Industrial Research Chair in Software Engineering, Dept. of Computing and Software, Faculty of Engineering at McMaster University 905-525-9140x27353 or 905-648-5772 Other: Barbara Simons, President of the Association for Computing Machinery (simons@acm.org) Arjun Makhijani, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (U.S.) 301-270-5500 For further information on the Y2K issue and other related nuclear issues see the Science for Peace website at: www.math.yorku.ca/sfp/ Science for Peace is located at University College, 15 King's College Circle, University of Toronto M5S 3H7 Canada. Tel. 416-978-3606.