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
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