http://nuclearrisk.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/inadvertent-erections-could-cause-nuclear-war/Inadvertent Erections Could Cause Nuclear War
Posted on July 17, 2011
Les Earnest is well known to digital cognoscenti for his contributions to artificial intelligence, robotics and the Internet, but few know of his warning that inadvertent erections could start a nuclear war:
In the 1950s I helped design the SAGE air defense system … when we reviewed the BOMARC launch control system, one of our engineers noticed a rather serious defect: if the launch command system was tested, … the “test” switch was then returned to “operate” without individually resetting the control systems in each missile that had been tested, they would all immediately erect and launch! Needless to say, that “feature” was modified rather soon after we mentioned it to Boeing. … The official name of the first BOMARC model was IM-99A, so I wrote a report about this problem titled Inadvertent erection of the IM-99A.
Les also states that:
SAGE was a gigantic fraud on taxpayers in that it was a “peacetime defense system” that would malfunction under an actual attack, much like France’s Maginot Line did in World War 2. … SAGE thus gave rise to a corrupt military-industrial-political establishment that has produced a string of largely useless command-control and weapons projects such as President Reagan’s phony “Star Wars” defense program and the current ongoing deployment of anti-missile systems that don’t work. But that is another story.
<snip>