Word: alertness
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...next step in an alert, involving higher ranking personnel, is a "threat assessment conference." If the threat seems to be a real one, a "missile attack conference" may be called, bringing in the president and all senior Cabinet and 'White House personnel. There has never been a missile attack conference, and no detailed information about who would make decisions in such a situation is available to the public. The number of times the displays have had to be discussed is strikingly large. From January 1979 through June 1980 there were 3703 routine missile display conferences--an average of about...
June 3, 1980: A faulty circuit in a NORAD computer caused false messages to be sent to two command posts. Alert bomber crews were ordered to start engines, and the Pacific Command aircraft took...
...extremely important for the United States not to launch a single nuclear weapon because of a false alert or--by making mistaken preparations--cause the U.S.S.R. to launch a real attack. And yet, the events cited above indicate that both of these scenarios are very real possibilities...
Sens. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) and Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz), both members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, recently issued a report on the June 1980 alerts. Their report emphasized that it took only a few minutes to discover that there was no real attack, and that many steps must be taken before a missile can actually be launched. However, during the June 3 false alert the Pacific Command took off after the Commander of NORAD had confirmed that there was no threat. In the words of the report, "There seemed to be an air of confusion...
...entire country to a standstill in half an hour. To prove his point, union members in Bydgoszcz and the neighboring province of Torun called a two-hour strike. As sirens wailed and church bells pealed, 500,000 workers laid down their tools. Solidarity also mounted a national strike alert, meaning that unless the government takes satisfactory action against the Bydgoszcz police the country could be hit by a general strike...