Editorial: A real doomsday scenario

Monday, Oct. 9, 2006 | 7:31 a.m.

An electronic glitch was the culprit in the 1964 movie "Fail Safe," in which a group of American bombers streak toward the Soviet Union with what their pilots believe are valid orders to initiate a nuclear attack. A case of mistaken identity could be the glitch in a real scenario at some point in the near future, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin and two American university professors.

The basis for their worry is a Pentagon plan to remove the nuclear warheads from several intercontinental ballistic missiles carried aboard submarines, and replace them with warheads packing conventional explosives. The Pentagon's goal is to have the intercontinental missiles, carrying their new payloads, aboard the submarines within two years.

In a story by Hearst Newspapers, Putin is quoted as saying, "The launch of such a missile could ... provoke a full-scale counterattack using strategic nuclear forces." The newspaper group also quoted two physics professors who specialize in national security, Ted Postol of MIT and Pavel Podvig of Stanford University, echoing Putin's ominous remark.

The worry is that the tensions between the U.S. and North Korea could disintegrate into a shooting war at some point, and that Russia, whose tracking technology has greatly deteriorated since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, might not have the capability of plotting trajectory or identifying the threat within the short time it would have to decide whether to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S.

Podvig told Hearst that the Russians have no way of discriminating between a missile with a conventional payload - for blasting underground bunkers - and one that is tipped with a nuclear weapon.

"This expands the possibility for a misunderstanding so widely that it is hard to contemplate," Podvig said.

We need greater bunker-busting capability, but not at the risk of annihilation. The Pentagon should listen to Putin, and our own experts, and make whatever technical changes are necessary before putting this plan into operation.