NORAD screens show a massive Soviet strike; satellite and radar checks find no attack
On November 9, 1979, NORAD's computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center at Fort Ritchie, Maryland, showed what looked like a massive Soviet nuclear strike. A technician had loaded a test tape without switching the system status to "test," and the false warnings spread to two continuity of government bunkers and to command posts worldwide. Officials reviewed the raw data from satellites and checked the early-warning radars. Neither showed an attack, and the alert was cancelled.
The scare showed that a drill could be mistaken for a real attack. It led to improved procedures against false alarms and fed a growing awareness of nuclear miscalculation, and with it a worry about how much to trust machines.
QWhy was a false alarm at NORAD never purely an American problem?
NORAD was set up on September 12, 1957, as a bi-national mutual defense organization between Canada and the United States, so the system that misfired in 1979 belonged to two countries. Its structure reflected that: it was divided into three regions, the Alaskan region, the Canadian region, and the American Continental region. The radars and computers served both nations. The error of a single technician was therefore an error inside a shared Canadian and American machine.
QHow many more times did the warning machinery misfire within the next year?
Twice more, in June 1980. On June 3, 1980, and again on June 6, 1980, a computer communications device failure caused warning messages to flash sporadically in U.S. Air Force command posts around the world, announcing that a nuclear attack was taking place. The cause was different from the November incident: broken hardware this time, not a test tape left in the wrong mode. Three failures of the same warning system fell in a span of under a year, and each one reached command posts far from NORAD itself.
QHow was NORAD's territory divided, and which regions made up the command?
NORAD was organized into three regions: the Alaskan region, the Canadian region, and the American Continental region. The split reflected the bi-national character of the command, with Canada holding a region of its own beside two covering U.S. territory. The false warnings of November 9, 1979, still reached beyond all of them. The false warnings of November 9, 1979, reached two continuity of government bunkers and command posts worldwide.
