Russian Roulette: The Vulnerability of Russia's Crumbling Nuclear Arsenal to Y2K Problems Poses a Global Threat

On September 26, 1983, at a secret military bunker just south of Moscow, officers of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces expected yet another uneventful night of monitoring the constant data stream supplied by Russia's early warning satellite network. Suddenly, the warning system's computer indicated that a potentially massive American strike had begun. Five distinct Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launches were reported by space sensors. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was responsible for judging the data's veracity and informing superiors at early warning system headquarters. His superiors would report immediately to the General Staff of the entire Soviet military, who in turn would communicate with top political officials. All of these decision-making steps, including individual analyses and small group teleconferences between command posts, were to be completed in less than 12 minutes to allow an equal amount of time for the issuing and implementation of launch orders if needed. After minutes of confusion, Petrov decided that the data simply were not valid. Ground-based radar deployed around Russia's perimeter backed up his claim by failing to detect any signs of advancing missiles or warhead reentry vehicles. The General Staff gave the order to stand down alert levels. Weeks after this incident, Russian investigators determined that computer software onboard one of the Molniya early warning satellites had mistaken intense sun glare for the signature of ICBM rocket plumes. As Lieutenant Colonel Petrov would later explain to Soviet military tribunals and Western reporters, his decision was mostly an educated guess. When people start a war, he said, they don't start it with only five You can do little damage with just five missiles. (1) Many would scoff at the idea that the Y2K problem could lead to a panic-generating military crisis like this one. Yet in 1993, when computer technicians at the North American Aerospace Defense Command in the United States simulated a century-rollover for data processing computers, the result was systemwide screen blackouts. Nuclear Glitches Exactly how could Y2K errors affect the Russian nuclear arsenal? First, the good news: Y2K-related glitches will not cause a spontaneous, unauthorized launch of missiles or the explosion of nuclear warheads. For both the United States and Russia, safety devices--in the form of weapons unlock or go codes--prohibit nuclear launch without command authorization. Other devices also prohibit detonation of the warhead itself in the absence of the proper environmental conditions, including variables such as trajectory and acceleration. Instead, the potential danger of Y2K is posed by those systems supporting Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) operations. The vulnerability of these nuclear operations to Y2K-related errors is not surprising when one considers the absolute dependence of human analysts on computer processing in the interpretation of data. The ability of the United States and Russia to detect missile launches and track through time the flight and delivery of warheads depends on a highly interdependent conglomeration of radar arrays, satellites, communications networks, and data processing stations. Within the first minute after hardware sensors receive readings, automated computer systems filter and correlate early warning data so that human analysts can understand the implications of millions of instantaneous electronic signals given off by satellites and radar. At the same time, automated telecommunications systems transfer continuous streams of data from the highly dispersed, ground-based receiving sites for satellites--or from ground-based radar--to the relevant command posts for human analysis. Finally, automated telecommunications systems--with routers and switches that depend on microprocessors--allow real-time verification of data by linking command posts in large teleconferences during a nuclear alert. …