Citation

Wallace MD, Crissey BL, Sennott LI. J. Peace Res. 1986; 23(1): 9-27.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1986, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/002234338602300102

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Recent developments in strategic weaponry have led to increasing fears that the danger of war by accident or inadvertence is growing. In particular, the deployments of 'fast-attack' systems with short flight times, combined with the growing complexity and automation of strategic warning and command and control systems, has given rise to the belief that during a major international crisis there would be insufficient time to distinguish false alarms from an actual warning of an enemy attack. An examination of a mathematical model of the warning and launch sequence that would follow from a strategic alarm suggests strongly that there would be almost no time to make such a decision unless a 'launch-on-warning' strategic posture were adopted. There is evidence to suggest that in fact both superpowers believe they would be forced to adopt such a policy in the event of a serious crisis. Given a 'launch-on-warning' posture, an examination of available data on false alarms provided by NORAD leads to the conclusion that a false alarm sufficiently severe to trigger a strategic attack would occur about 50% of the time during a lengthy crisis. This finding highlights the urgent need for the superpowers to undertake co-operative measures to reduce the risk of war by accident, including the dismantling of short flight time systems and undertaking major improvements in their ability to communicate and to co-ordinate their actions in time of crisis.