PROLIFERATION MAKES ACCIDENTAL LAUNCH LIKELY (Nathan Busch, Professor of Government at Christopher Newport University, 2004, No End in Sight The Continuing Menace of Nuclear Proliferation p 281-314) Will Emerging NWSs Be Likely to Avoid Inadvertent Use This study has demonstrated that the further spread of nuclear weapons would probably increase the risks of inadvertent use. As we have seen, the risks of inadvertent use are relatively high among current NWSs, and there is little reason to think that emerging NWSs will avoid these risks. The pressures to build survivable forces caused both the United States and Russia to develop systems that allowed for launch-on-warning. In order to allow for LOW, they placed their nuclear weapons on permanent alert in the early s, which would allow the weapons to be launched within fifteen minutes from a detected attack. They also developed sophisticated early- warning systems to detect incoming nuclear attacks. As pessimists have argued, the policies of LOW require rapid decision-making, which significantly increases the risks of panic-launches due to miscalculation or false warnings.
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