US nuclear missiles go offline after computer glitch: Report

WASHINGTON: A series of suspected computer glitches took a ninth of the US nuclear inter-continental missile stockpile offline over the weekend, CBS News reported Tuesday.

CBS said 50 of the 450 ICBMs in America's arsenal went out of communication for about an hour on Saturday at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in central Wyoming, one of three holding bases -- the other two are in neighboring North Dakota and Montana states.

President Barack Obama was only briefed about the event early Tuesday -- after Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to the television station.

Citing an Obama administration official, it said the president's ability to launch missiles was not hampered by the failure.

A military official meanwhile said the incident triggered an emergency protocol, with sentries dispatched to verify that all of the missiles were safe and secure.

Sabotage has been ruled out, CBS said.

It quoted a defense official as saying a launch control center computer managing a group of five missiles began to "ping" out of sequences, which created a disturbance or "noise" throughout the system. The base did not lose power during the event.

Because the computers seek information from each missile in a sequence, receivers on the missiles send out error codes if the computers send signals at the wrong time.

Missile handlers tried quick fixes to the problem but when a growing number of missiles began to show error settings, they decided to take the center's five malfunctioning computers offline, leaving the 50 missiles in the dark.

The missilemen then restarted all but one suspect computers successfully.

The computer failure was similar to two previous incidents that took place 12 years ago at Minot Air Force Base in Nebraska and Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.