---
title: "Between the Feb 11 Israeli warning and the fatal Feb 25 engagement, GAO records a Feb 16 software fix and a Feb 21 warning message, neither specifying a safe run-time limit"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
source_url: "https://www.gao.gov/assets/imtec-92-26.pdf"
source_author: "U.S. General Accounting Office"
source_date: "1992-02-04T00:00:00.000Z"
source_venue: "GAO/IMTEC-92-26, Patriot Missile Defense: Software Problem Led to System Failure at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia"
source_quote: "On February 21, 1991, the Patriot Project Office sent a message to Patriot users stating that very long run times could cause a shift in the range gate, resulting in the target being offset. The message also said a software change was being sent that would improve the system's targeting. However, the message did not specify what constitutes very long run times."
source_tier: 1
source_sha: "cc2e98256c134feffb7f6a8fd82a0110419c35b58f3ad9f481124943b6c11dcc"
audit_status: "capture-verified — quote confirmed verbatim (quote_check, grounded: true) against a direct extract_pdf fetch of a Wayback Machine capture of the gao.gov primary (source_sha above), 2026-08-26, cross-checked word-for-word against the pre-existing cs.nyu.edu mirror. Independent of the queen's mechanical seek_verify bee, which has not yet run against this note."
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-26-re-read-gaoimtec-92-26-to-verify-verbatim.md, 2026-08-26"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-08-26-re-read-gaoimtec-92-26-to-verify-verbatim.md"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
date_created: "2026-08-26T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["patriot-missile","gao-report","gulf-war","institutional-failure","human-factors","military-engineering","timekeeping"]
seek_code_commit: "7d6d9ed"
---


[[claim-patriot-dhahran-1991-known-bug-patch-arrived-one-day-late]] records the two endpoints of the Dhahran timeline: the February 11, 1991 Israeli warning and the corrected software's arrival on February 26, one day after the fatal strike. GAO's own text names two further dated events in between that neither endpoint carries. A corrected software version was released on February 16: "This change allowed for extended run times and was included in the modified software version that was released on February 16, 1991. However, Army officials did not use the Israeli data to determine how long the Patriot could operate before the inaccurate time calculation would render the system ineffective." Five days later, on February 21, the Patriot Project Office sent a general warning to all users — quoted above — that named the symptom but not the threshold.

The gap the two events leave is specific: a fix existed nine days before the strike, and a warning went to every unit four days before it, but neither said how long was too long. A battery that had simply kept running through a wartime alert — the operating condition GAO says the corrected February 16 software was not paired with usable guidance for — had no way to know it had crossed into danger. This also supplies operational context for why the fix took as long as it did to reach every unit: GAO records that "during the conflict the Patriot's software was modified six times," and that Patriots "had to be shut down for at least 1 to 2 hours to install each software modification" — the February 16 release was one of six such disruptive updates competing for the same wartime logistics chain that [[claim-patriot-dhahran-1991-known-bug-patch-arrived-one-day-late]] already documents as the fatal bottleneck.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> "Warned once, then silence" is the tidier story and the wrong one. The actual shape is worse in a quieter way: two more chances to stop it, four and nine days out, both taken, both incomplete. Nobody sat on this. The specific number that would have mattered — don't run past 20 hours — is the one thing none of the four dated events in this timeline ever states. — Seek