The President and the Bomb, Part IV
blog.nuclearsecrecy.com
blog.nuclearsecrecy.com
First we got the bomb and that was good, 'Cause we love peace and motherhood. Then Russia got the bomb, but that's O.K., 'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way! Who's next?
France got the bomb, but don't you grieve, 'Cause they're on our side (I believe). China got the bomb, but have no fears; They can't wipe us out for at least five years! Who's next?
Then Indonesia claimed that they Were gonna get one any day. South Africa wants two, that's right: One for the black and one for the white! Who's next?
Egypt's gonna get one, too, Just to use on you know who. So Israel's getting tense, Wants one in self defense. "The Lord's our shepherd, " says the psalm, But just in case, we better get a bomb! Who's next?
Luxembourg is next to go And, who knows, maybe Monaco. We'll try to stay serene and calm When Alabama gets the bomb! Who's next, who's next, who's next? Who's next?
The Premier could only activate the "Dead Hand" system, which allowed a launch only after 1) nuclear explosions had been detected near Moscow, and 2) communications had been lost with the General Staff bunkers. Even then, all it did was give the codes and authority to regional commanders to launch. So the Premier could effectively order a retaliation strike, but not a first strike.
This is tighter control than the US had, or has. Not only does the US president have launch authority without congressional approval, there was a period during which SAC had their bombs set to an arming code of all zeros, so that they could drop them without authority from higher.
Did they know that the codes were all zero? I mean, terrible security either way, but...
The government (executive + civilian agencies) saw it as an authority (command/control) issue, but the military saw it as readiness and ability to always respond to an attack.
In the context of flying bombers around the clock to ensure a first-strike survival, you don't want to have your counter-strike hindered by a misplaced code. This was also before the survivable comm systems were fully deployed, so some autonomy was required to ensure MAD as a deterrent.
Anyway, there was a government mandate for the bombs to be secured with a code. The military commanders didn't want this, saw it as impeding their mission, and instead of fighting the rule, they "complied" by implementing the systems, then loophole-ing it by setting all zeros.
To elaborate some on the military thought process: The previous methods of arming were more about safety than security (ensuring the bomb wouldn't be armed during takeoff/ landing, a crash, in the event of a bail-out, etc). One design was pulling a pin to drain ball bearings, but was mechanical and failed too often. Also, I believe it usually failed safe (or uncertain), which the military also saw as a problem.
Before that, the package actually had to be installed (or at least opened and activated) in flight. Which had it's own problems.
Point being, the military had spent years trying to streamline the arming process while making it more reliable, and now they had to comply with a rule that they viewed as unnecessary and in contradiction to their stated mission of readiness.
There was also a political struggle of bomb custody, as initially the bombs were to be (and were) in the possession/control of a civilian agency, and only a fraction in possession of the military at any given time (during peace). So there was some ongoing tension from that also playing into things.
To borrow from Dan Carlin, there was some logic to the insanity.
The whole history of it is fascinating, and this is only one tiny aspect of one of many many topics.
Secondly, I can’t see it ever being a good tactical decision. The highest yield conventional bombs are on-par with the lowest yield nukes. If you want to launch a single massively destructive device, there’s already better options. If you want to target an underground facility, then weapons designed to target underground facilities are going to do a better job than just scaling up the yield anyhow. If you’re just looking for a massive effect on target, then a barrage of smaller weapons is going to do a better jobs of that anyway, and do so more reliably.
Finally, even if you find the perfect tactical use case, it could never make sense strategically. Using a nuke of any size will provoke the maximum response from any potential adversary, regardless of whether they have any stake in the conflict to begin with, and will deter any hope of support from our allies. This is plainly obvious to anybody.
All of this is nothing more than an implausible and baseless “what if”.
The whole point of the military is that you have no idea whether or not the order you are given is a good, or just idea, and it's not your job to make that decision. You carry the order out.
People who get into ethical quagmires while holding their finger on the trigger of an end-of-the-world weapon don't get posted in Minutemen nuclear bunkers.
Also, the beauty of MAD is that even if 90% of your silos refuse to carry out the order, 10% will - and then the other side will retaliate, and because most of your silos did not launch, their retaliatory strike will be far more destructive.
So if you're the guy who didn't launch the missiles, when given the order, you're the bad guy, who let millions of his countrymen die - because your missiles, which you refused to launch could have destroyed enemy launch sites. Since someone on your team will launch (Thus starting a war), upon receiving on order, if you want to minimize casualties on your side, you have to launch as well.
All in all, it's complete lunacy to give two men the power to end the world.
This simply isn’t true. Silo staff will know if the US is suffering a massive ground invasion or ICBM bombardment, and will have a very clear idea of whether launching nukes is reasonable. Even given your maximum implausibility example of all silos ordered to launch all nukes, to get even one launched a number of people in the chain of command need to be convinced that risking the destruction of human civilization is justified, knowing full well that no order will protect them from war crimes or crimes against humanity charges. The only post WWII example in history (I’m pretty sure it’s only happened once) of an order being given to launch a nuke was refused by the officer in charge. You haven’t added any basis to support this “what if” speculation.
Your scenario also ignores the fact that there are other better (and better readied) tactical options. There is no scenario where the US will be tactically dependant on using a nuke to destroy a site, so your “if I don’t launch the nuke Americans will die” scenario is perhaps the least plausible part of your comment.
IIRC there was even one such incident where a nuclear unit got some sent some routine training codes that turned out to be the codes for "launch against China" codes. They basically called back and asked to triple check the code and eventually it all got sorted out without any nukes being launched.
What happens when the correct codes are sent to all the silos?
So, you get on the phone, and call someone at HQ, to confirm the orders.
And they confirm that the orders are, indeed, correct. Command sent them down 5 minutes ago, and yes, we confirmed it.
What are you going to do?
If your answer is 'Not launch', you are not silo material, and have probably been weeded out long before you got to the point where you can ask this question.
"launch against China" codes
If they are being ordered to carry out a first strike, they have no idea of whether or not that first strike is reasonable, or not. And it's not their job to second-guess.
> There is no scenario where the US will be tactically dependant on using a nuke to destroy a site, so your “if I don’t launch the nuke Americans will die” scenario is perhaps the least plausible part of your comment.
Tactical nuclear strikes aren't launched out of silos. If a silo gets an order to fire, it's not a tactical launch, it's a strategic 'the world is ending (Possibly because we decided to end it)' launch order. Most silo operators will carry that order out.
A first strike of nuclear ICBMs is never going to be reasonably justified. Even if we ignore the fact that there is absolutely no basis for speculation that the POTUS would ever order such a strike, there is no basis to speculate that silo personnel will comply with an order that is clearly unlawful, a crime against humanity, a war crime, and risks the complete destruction of human civilization. Out of all speculative scenarios, this has to be the least plausible.
The facts are:
1. The United States has a first-strike policy, and has invested billions of dollars in making sure that it can actually carry it out.
2. It adheres to it on the basis that its command staff believe that there is some moral calculus under which a first-strike is not genocidal or unlawful.
3. A first strike is not even abhorrent to average Americans. Around half of American citizens support a nuclear first strike if it results in saving American lives.
4. There are morons that believe that a nuclear war is winnable. Some of those morons become politicians, while others become generals. As far as I'm aware, there is no anti-moron filter on either occupation, that keeps those people away from positions of power.
You may observe that your moral hangups, and the international-court legality of a first strike has zero bearing on any of those four points. And those four points are what will drive people to act the way they will act.
Let's recap:
* A first strike is not illegal under American law. It is a heavily studied topic, on which hundreds of thinkers, paid by the Pentagon, have produced thousands of documents that argue about when it can be used, and how it can be best used.
* A first strike is not ever going to be an out-of-the-blue-POTUS-woke-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-bed event.
* It is going to be a decision that is made in the middle of a geopolitical crisis, after weeks, or months of threats, escalations, and counter-escalations, and the occasional shot, or shell, or conventional missile being fired. It is going to be a dramatic, but possible decision to make in that context.
* Because it is permitted by law, and because it has been argued for so exhaustively, and because the military has deliberately implemented procedures for carrying it out, the people who will be arguing for it will not have the same moral revulsion that you and I hold against it.
* Those people also happen to be convinced that there is such a thing as a winnable nuclear war.
In this context - when a silo operator receives the order to fire, when they know that there's a military and political crisis going on, and people are dying, many of them are going to follow their orders. After, they will have plenty of time to ponder whether or not the International Crimes Court at the Hague is going to hold their decision against them.
What we need is a modern "Day After" moment. It's been a generation and a half since that film. The new crop of armchair generals, politicians, and office holders, who grew up with no memory of war, need to be reminded of its horrors.
If a media mogul who owns a national television station is reading, I emplore you to consider broadcasting that film on the next Fourth of July. Or, alternatively, after the next State of the Union address.
This is simply an outright fabrication. The US has a qualified No First Use policy, stating:
> The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations
And
> It is in the U.S. interest and that of all other nations that the nearly 65-year record of nuclear non-use be extended forever
The policy specifying when nukes can be used lists:
> significant non-nuclear strategic attacks
> attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities
> in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies and partners
And regarding low yield nukes, that their purpose is to:
> help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4365530-2018-Nuclear...
Your claim that “The United States has a first-strike policy” is so demonstrably made-up, that you should honestly be ashamed of yourself.
We should be more civil in contentious matters. The US and almost everyone (except China) have a qualified First Use Policy.
Though it is their job to refuse to carry out the order if it is unlawful (under both US and international law), which a first-strike may well be (as any first-strike is quite probably an act of genocide).
The obligation not to follow unlawful orders (like killing civilians) while also their entire job being firing a weapon meant to kill indiscriminately is… interesting.
I won't disagree that anyone who is likely to consider questions of indiscriminate murder of civilians and other such things prohibited under law will likely be structurally excluded from being put in such a position by the military.
The tour itself, when I went, was given by an officer who used to be stationed at the silo when it was operational (being an Atlas, they were only in service for a short time), so I believe that was in the 50s. I asked him more or less this exact question, and here's how he explained it (and I remember it).
They were on 2 week shifts, with 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. When you enter the silo, you were ID'd over a camera on the outside, and only then would the officers being relieved unlock the door and let you in. If you got launch codes, you verified them with your partner (every place near the launch area was a 2 man zone), and then you both had to turn a key within a few seconds of each other. The keys were not within reach of each other.
Once the launch sequence began, you basically powered everything down. Once the keys are turned, it is autonomous, and you basically aren't needed anymore. You didn't know if it was real, or if it was a test, and you were not aware of whether the missile would even launch or not. When it did launch, and it ended up being a test, you were notified more or less by the arrival of the next shift. As he put it, if the next shift didn't arrive, then you'd wait it out until you ran out of food, and then figure out what you would do. But he discussed the overall setup, and said he'd turned that key many times, as had all the other officers.
The silo staff aren't going to know if its a legitimate launch or not, they are not trained to ask that question, and they are specifically conditioned in a way that leads me to believe that if an order came down, no matter how crazy, it would be executed by anyone who was outside of the decision hierarchy.
The Soviet submarine example is an interesting 'what if' because the same Soviet rules of engagement that entitled the crew to decide to launch tactical nuclear weapons against potential threats required unanimous approval from all senior officers, and only one of the three argued against a launch. We're obviously talking about relatively small tactical nuclear torpedos against a naval fleet rather than wiping out cities here, but I'm not sure that example of one in three opposing a nuclear response supports the narrative that we won't find any people willing to fire low yield nuclear weapons against [notional] military targets in the event of a presidential order against a recognised hostile power, even if there are others in the military who would try to stop it.
There’s clearly no basis for thinking anybody is likely to want to use one, and the hypothetical examples of where use would be most plausible are frankly still very, very implausible.
This is the most likely scenario for tactical nuclear to happen in the current state of things, especially given Iran's facilities. Not saying likely, just most likely.
I don't know if it's a technical limit, or just what happens to be currently available, but:
>the GBU-28 used its large mass (2,130 kg or 4,700 lb) and casing (constructed from barrels of surplus 203 mm howitzers) to penetrate 6 meters (20 feet) of concrete, and more than 30 metres (98 feet) of earth.[11] The B61 Mod 11, which first entered military service after the Cold war had ended, in January 1997, was specifically developed to allow for bunker penetration, and is speculated to have the ability to destroy hardened targets a few hundred feet beneath the earth.
I assume we could design a non-nuclear to penetrate to comparable depths as the nuclear, but the nuclear will always have the yield advantage, and therefore greater effective depth.
But these guidelines were documented and well-known.
There's a good case to be made for the use of tactical nuclear weapons at some extreme case, the nature of that case might vary. But it is very important to make sure everybody knows what conditions have to be met for this to happen.
We have many more weapons that are much more dangerous than tactical nukes. If we want to isolate them because of the fear of escalation, that's fine. If we want to include them in the mix of options that's fine too. But what we can't do is keep potential adversaries in the dark and then spring them on them. That's because the problem with nuclear weapons is their unlimited ability to quickly escalate destruction. That's the much more severe problem to deal with than what kind of guts make up a particular delivery system.
Dr. Strangelove: "Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?"
Not much of a deterrent if no one knows about it.
That seems like a very good strategy if you want to use nukes as a deterrent. I don't think this follows if you are planning on actually using them.
> That's because the problem with nuclear weapons is their unlimited ability to quickly escalate destruction.
This is tempered quite a bit by the target's economic ability. South Africa doesn't have an "unlimited ability to quickly escalate". Neither does Pakistan or North Korea. Those countries do have nukes, but they are so poor, it's just not plausible they have many, or particularly high yield ones at that.
Your point does hold for the US, Russia and China, though.
You probably know better than I do.
I tend to believe that once countries get nukes, they don't tend to give them up, but I could certainly believe that South Africa doesn't have any anymore.
Well of course not. It's the nation state equivalent of being able to defend yourself with lethal force. It means that anyone who is an existential threat to you must reckon with the fact that you can be an existential threat to them if sufficiently backed into a corner. No nation is going to give that up.
But that only gets you one free surprise use. After that the world knows your intent and capabilities. So you'd still have to be prepared for an all out nuclear war.
So it seems like if the president cares anything about self preservation, then nuclear weapons would only be used as a deterrent.
You may be thinking about strategic nukes.
What we're seeing is a breakdown of the bipolar world. At the same time, we're seeing the potential for massive destruction from a number of new attack vectors, and smaller and smaller actors are capable of wielding them. And warfare itself has changed from army-on-army to desultory, infinitely-lived affairs many times done using proxies and fake information.
That changes a lot. The _message_ of using tactical nukes may very well be more important to control than the actual use of them.
I am quite curious what he thinks. I just don't see how there is time.
15 minutes. That's the time you get to respond before the nukes hit you and you potentially lose any ability to strike at all.
It's unnecessary and dangerous to try to decide the fate of the world in 15 minutes.
With higher accuracy from ICBMs, the US ends up needing fewer bombs to hit the same number of targets. Meaning we might be able to assume that enough silos (plus subs) would survive a first strike to delay a response decision.
A flip side is that the new fuzes allow lower dial-a-yields, and combined with more precision, strategic weapons can technically take on a more tactical role, potentially increasing the justification for their use. (Which might also play into the whole mid range missle treaty collapse.)
There are obviously many other angles to consider, but the US response window is likely to at least shift, if not completely change.
If you want to be extra cynical about it, it would seem that the military industrial complex stands to make much more money off of continuous low intensity conflict, where they can develop advanced conventional weapons, bill the US government for the R&D, and then sell watered down versions to ~1/4th of the world. Nuclear weapons are just a little too good at their job, making them bad for business.
>that isn’t how mental illness works (it tends not to flare up in a totally unexpected way among otherwise “sane” people)
This might not be how Mental Illness works, but it could present itself in the case of Alzheimer's/dementia. I don't have a study to link to, but plenty of anecdotes having worked as a caregiver. I've worked with patients in early stages of dementia that could go from being completely lucid and rational, to being completely unaware of their surroundings, and back to baseline within the span of a few minutes.
I'll leave any speculation on Trump's cognitive facilities to somebody else.
Anyway, to answer your question, I'm just a layperson, so I can't speak to exactly what is happening 'under the covers' when someone in the early stages of dementia experiences an acute episode. Trying specifically to recall my experiences as a caregiver, I'd say there is just a general confusion. They would seemingly not be aware of things like time (i.e. what year), no idea where they were or why (my experience was working in homes and in a hospital as a pca), no idea who I was, no idea who family members were, etc. Asking for deceased loved-ones was pretty common, they might even try to call them on the phone. It's all pretty variable. The point is, it's not hard to reason that having anybody in such a state being in charge of military power is a bad idea.