Computers in Battle

This is the twentieth anniversary of Desert Storm, the first Iraq War. Desert Storm was a transitional war. It occurred right after the end of the Cold War and at the beginning of the digital age of warfare.

On 25 February 1991 a SCUD missile fired by the Iraqis landed on mess hall in Dahran killing 29 soldiers, the largest loss of US life in a single incident. A Patriot missile fired at the incoming SCUD but literally missed by a mile. An investigation was conducted by the GAO which showed that the clock on the computer had drifted and made the wrong calculation about how fast the SCUD was moving based on radar data. Though a lot of fingers have been pointed to explain this, the reality is that the Patriot was designed for a different war. It was designed to shoot down planes, not ballistic missiles.

Missile defense was an unanticipated by-product of a desperate need to do something against TBMs. The Patriot was also meant to be constantly be mobile during the Cold War to avoid Soviet attacks. Every time it moved the computer was turned off and rebooted at its new location, resetting its clock. It was never meant to stay stationary for two weeks at a time -- a long time not to reset and enabling the clock to drift enough to induce large (but not noticeable to the operators until launched) errors. And because the Patriot had been designed for Cold War requirements, it was never tested without moving every 100 hours so no one knew that this would happen.

The Patriot story is a lesson about how technology and our understanding of its utility are always out of phase. Our ability to predict the future is about the same as the computer on the Patriot with an out-of-sync clock. You don't know what you don't know.