Note to editors: check something else out

Check out the insanely thorough lithium battery article or the F-22 article first, because at the moment this is just a teaser.

Before the jump title: SAGE Erections and Impotence

Remember that SAGE computer controlled air defense system Brian Lam write about with revere last year? Well, I'm here to tell you it only did one thing well, and that was to serve as a momentary deterrent. The reality is it was a complete operational joke. Want to hear some funny stuff that was covered up? Jump already!

After the jump...

Here is a TINY sample of the utterly hilarious nature of these problems. Oh wait this could have been our doom, thats not funny. Ok Russians its your chance to laugh. Heres a quote from a man who helped build it:

" I worked on SAGE during 1956-60 and one of our responsibilities was to integrate BOMARC[NUCLEAR TIPPED MISSILES!-ed]into that system. This led us to review the handling of launch commands in various parts of the system. In the course of this review, one of our engineers noticed a rather serious defect -- if the launch command system was tested, the missile would be in a state of readiness for launch. If the "test" switch was then returned to "operate" without individually resetting the control systems in each missile that had been tested, they would all immediately erect and launch! Needless to say, that "feature" was modified rather soon after we mentioned it to Boeing."