Red alert! - missile systems on alert status that are not Y2K compliant could trigger a nuclear disaster

New Internationalist, August, 1999

DOOMSDAY SCENARIOS were bound to explode into life as the year 2000 (Y2K) neared but the danger of nuclear disaster being triggered by the millennium bug in computers is very real. Even some of the military departments responsible are saying their weapons systems will not be fully `Y2K compliant'. Yet political leaders still refuse to take missile systems and nuclear submarines off `alert status' because this would mean lowering their guard. The insanity of having nuclear weapons at all - of holding in readiness warheads that could wipe out human civilization within minutes - has never been more evident.

The New Internationalist urges the governments of all the nuclear powers to remove their weapons from alert status throughout the danger period, which begins this month, and to restart initiatives to rid the world of nuclear weapons - permanently.

What is the origin of the millennium bug?

Programmers in the 1960s decided to conserve computer memory by using only two digits to designate the year in computers' internal clocks, with the first two digits assumed to be 19. Unless corrected, microchips and systems may misinterpret year 2000 as 1900 and malfunction. The latest estimates expect at least two per cent of all microchips to malfunction when the date rolls over from 99 to 00.

What kind of computers are vulnerable?

The Y2K (Year 2000) problem primarily affects two kinds of equipment: mainframe computer systems run by big institutions or businesses; and microchips, or `embedded processors'. There are an estimated 15 billion microchips worldwide, embedded in everything from smoke detectors to sewerage systems, alarms to automobiles.

The essence of the Y2K flaw is that it is unpredictable. It could make a computer stop dead or it could cause havoc by producing invalid data which is not immediately detected. (Watch your pay packets carefully over the next year...) The failure of just one chip can set off a chain of events, bringing down whole systems.

Do nuclear weapons rely on computers?

Nuclear weapons and their associated command, control and communications systems are completely dependent on computers and microchips. The US and Russia in particular monitor each other using interdependent radar, satellite and communications systems. The weapons themselves use millions of microchips, and over the years the military has tried to reduce costs by using `commercial-off-the-shelf' chips (COTS) which may well be susceptible to the Y2K problem. The only way to make sure a system is Y2K compliant is to check it laboriously line by line, chip by chip.

But surely that's what the military are doing, aren't they?

They have been trying but failing. The US Naval Audit Service admitted on 4 January this year that `the Strategic Systems Programs will not meet the Department of Defense and Navy Target Completion Dates for their mission support and infrastructure.' According to Brookings Institute analyst Bruce Blair, two systems, which are the primary mode of communications with ballistic missile submarines, will not be Y2K compliant by the turn of the century. As of June 1999 264 mission-critical systems in the US Department of Defense are still not yet Y2K compliant.

Why on earth can't they get it together?

They've got huge problems. Much of the software currently in use is based upon virtually extinct programming languages that hardly anyone understands any more. The subsystems they have to test are so numerous and varied that they may not even be able to locate them. And even when they do, the microchips may have a date-specific program written into them that can't be amended. Dry-run testing all systems and sub-systems in every conceivable scenario is fantastically time-consuming.

But if they'd checked it all we'd be safe?

Even if the military systems were completely error-free we would not be out of the woods. Any interface with another system could introduce bad data and wreak havoc. For example, US communications from Strategic Command to its nuclear submarines in the Mediterranean travel partly over the Italian telephone system.

Could a computer failure automatically launch a nuclear missile?

Unlikely. Most nuclear missiles have built-in security systems to avoid accidental launches. The missile would probably disable itself.

So what's the problem?

If the military computer systems collapse there could be false early-warning information or a blank-out, leaving both sides ignorant of what the other is doing. A malfunctioning system could wrongly suggest that an enemy missile had been launched and cause a commander to authorize a missile launch in response.

This almost happened on 3 June 1980 when US nuclear command centres showed that Soviet missiles had been launched. Bomber crews started their engines and Minuteman missiles were readied for launch. Technicians recognized this as a false alarm only just in time. The malfunction was traced back to the failure of one microchip costing 46 cents.

But that was during the Cold War...

US insistence on retaining the right to launch a pre-emptive strike has led Russia to overturn its previous policy of `no first use'. Both Russia and the US have a policy of launching nuclear missiles `on warning'. Missiles are kept on high-alert status in order that they could be fired as soon as an enemy launch was detected. Of the 36,000 nuclear weapons remaining in the world 5,000 sit in silos on high-alert status. These missiles can be fired in about 15 minutes and reach their target cities in another 30 minutes.