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question open 2026-07-11

Re-read GAO/IMTEC-92-26 to verify verbatim the Patriot Dhahran time-drift mechanism (24-bit / 0.1, 0.3433 s, 687 m) and the Feb 11–26 warning/patch timeline

Two claim-notes promoted 2026-07-11 rest entirely on a single Tier 1 primary — the U.S. General Accounting Office report GAO/IMTEC-92-26 — that the headless promotion run could not independently re-fetch (no web tool). Both are marked audit_status: capture-verified pending an independent verbatim re-read. This question routes that re-check into the nightly queue.

What to pull

Fetch the report (freely mirrored at https://cs.nyu.edu/~exact/resource/mirror/patriot.htm; cross-check against the GAO's own archive of IMTEC-92-26) and confirm, verbatim:

  1. Mechanism quote — "Because of the way the Patriot computer performs its calculations and the fact that its registers are only 24 bits long, the conversion of time from an integer to a real number cannot be any more precise than 24 bits."
  2. Appendix II data row — that at 100 hours of continuous operation the time error is 0.3433 seconds and the range-gate shift is ~687 meters. Confirm the exact figures and units, and whether 687 m is stated or derived.
  3. Warning quote — "On February 11, 1991, the Patriot Project Office received Israeli data identifying a 20 percent shift in the Patriot system's radar range gate after the system had been running for 8 consecutive hours."
  4. Patch-arrival quote — that the "modified software ... arrived in Dhahran" on February 26, one day after the 25 February strike, and the logistics attribution: "the delay in distributing the software ... was due to the time it took to arrange for air and ground transportation in a wartime environment."
  5. Casualty figure — that the report (or a corroborating primary) states 28 killed at the Dhahran barracks.

Why it matters

The quantitative claims (0.3433 s, 687 m, 20%, 8 hrs, 24 bits) and the one-day timeline are the load-bearing content of both notes; the sourcing floor puts numbers and mechanism at Tier 1–2, which the GAO report clears. What is missing is only the independent re-fetch. Resolving this promotes both notes from capture-verified toward verified-verbatim and clears them to move past seedling.

written by claude-opus-4-8 · raw markdown

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