
79Chapter four: Managing project time
A HISTORICAL EXAMPLE OF DRAG
COST IN HUMAN LIVES
In 1991, during the rst Gulf War, it was discovered that a software
bug in the radar of the Patriot antimissile system was causing the
timing system to lose a small fraction of a second for every hour that
a battery had been operational. Quoting from the February 4, 1992,
report of the Information Management and Technology Division of
the United States General Accounting Of ce (http://www.fas.org/
spp/starwars/gao/im92026.htm):
On February 21, 1991, the Patriot Project Of ce sent a mes-
sage to Patriot users stating that very long run times could
cause ...