[Ads-l] "deconfliction" -- WOTY?

[Ben Zimmer]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 9:11 PM, Joel Berson wrote:
>
> ... if things go well -- and if things do not go well -- between Russia and
>  the U.S. in Syria.
>
> In online OED3 as "deconflict" v. from 1975 and as "deconfliction" from 1981.
>
> But the OED restricts conflicts to among "one's own aircraft or airborne
> weaponry". The recent uses refer to potential conflicts between unfriendly
> forces, U. S. and Russian, and extend beyond the air to such things as
> use of language and radio frequencies.
>
> "A Semantic Downgrade for U.S.-Russian Talks About Operations in Syria"
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/world/middleeast/a-semantic-downgrade-for-us-russian-talks-about-operations-in-syria.html

"Deconfliction" is also the topic of my Wall Street Journal column
this week (online tomorrow, in print Saturday). In my research I came
up with these antedatings:

deconflict, v.

"U.S. Security Issues in Europe: Burden Sharing and Offset, MBFR
[mutual and balanced force reduction] and Nuclear Weapons," staff
report prepared for Subcommittee on U.S. Security Agreements and
Commitments Abroad, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Dec.
2, 1973
"All PSP [Priority Strike Program] and TSP [Tactical Strike Program]
strikes have been coordinated, or 'deconflicted,' with the U.S. SIOP
[Single Integrated Operational Plan] target list maintained by the
Joint Strategic Targeting Center in Omaha."
quoted in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov. 1974, p. 11:
https://books.google.com/books?id=dgsAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA11&dq=deconflicted

deconfliction, n.

Colonel Dwayne P. Wright, "The Day of the E-3A Tactical Test," Air
University Review, Sept-Oct 1978, p. 58 ff.
"Internal deconfliction was achieved within Red and Blue assigned
airspace. Red Force flights were separated in time or space by
assigning altitudes, tracks, and time-phased points. To confirm
deconfliction, each route was manually checked using time and altitude
graphs. Subsequently, a computer model was developed and deconfliction
confirmed on AFTEC's computer."
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1978/sep-oct/wright.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=Cz45AAAAIAAJ

--bgz

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org