What’s the origin of this paper? Who wrote it, Alex?
A discussion from 1969 about false alarms. The BMEWS radar system produced 40-50 false nuclear attack alerts per year — that's around one per week!pic.twitter.com/OLXga74SXW
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Larry Lynn (NSC staff) to Kissinger, 1 May 1969, giving some talking points to K for talking with news media (Joseph Alsop in particular). Sen. Fulbright and Gore had both recently spoken favorably about LOW and against ABM and talking points were meant to counter both positions.
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(Digital National Security Archive document NT00119)
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Thx! So if those 40-50 false positives are those 10% that are left after addtl data, then there were 4-500 to start with? I agree LOW is a bad idea, but is this cooking the books a little? How could it have been the way the system was designed?!
#dontknowmuchabouthistory -
I don't know if they are talking about the same systems or the same types of errors. My guess is that it's 40-50 false alerts per year and those reduce down to 4-5 after additional data (still a lot!), but I don't have any further details.
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But it could be other way around, too, though +1 false alarm (even if it could be discounted with more data) per day sounds like a lot. (But for a sufficiently complex and large system, not impossible. The radiation screeners at Port Newark have several false positives per day.)
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Maybe it’s the phrase “false alarm” rather than “false positive”— when asteroid trackers say that a track intersects with the earth, they usu mean “I need more data” not that “a planet killer is on its way.” If you know it’s the former you don’t mistrust the system...
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But if you’ve got a few false positives a day from radar and at least one a year from your satellites, you want everyone on the same page!
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Interesting...I suppose a good deal has been written about intersection of hist of tech + nuke policy w.r.t. "launch on warning" issue
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Less of that than you might think.. the bias in nuclear history is towards diplomatic/political, because almost all academic nuclear historians are poli sci/IR/policy history people. This produces predictable effects on the scholarship, e.g. little engagement w serious hist/tech.
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(Realizing this was kind of an a-ha moment for me recently. I was trying to figure out why so many people had worked on some of these same questions but never framed them the way I find natural to frame them. And I realized it is in part a disciplinary issue.)
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*nods head vigorously*
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Goose-initiated false positives! It’s a wonder WW III hasn’t happened...yet.
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Scary.
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be happy.... soon AI will autonomously decide when a positive is true and just immediately will launch a definitive reply. In the actual routine men do not last more then 2 years before loosing their sanity... must be put out of the loop... (how many burned out in 60 years?)
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Much of the theory & technology behind OTH radar and BMEWS was developed by
@AFResearchLab in Rome NY and Cambridge MA. Agree that not much has been written on the tech, esp as it relates to broader policy. Hasn’t been declassified in great amounts.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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That can't be good.
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Thanks for this. Do have have the full doc and a link/citation?
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