E-6B Mercury airborne command just went active on east/west coasts | Hacker News Reader

E-6B Mercury airborne command just went active on east/west coasts

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75 pointsthemgt28 comments

Counterclaims:

https://twitter.com/trbrtc/status/1311930485959004161

> There's a lot of chatter about those “airborne nuclear command centers”, but these two Boeing E6A Mercury aircraft were indeed flying almost daily since over the past month, publicly available flight data shows: the AE0414 flew at least on 20 days, and the AE0415 at least 14.

https://twitter.com/marcambinder/status/1311921340354564096

> And again, these planes fly daily and there’s a squadron at PAX. This is noise. Attend to your thought patterns and cognitive biases here. I will try do the same. Reality is unsettling enough!

I suspect if there was thought to be a real threat then those flights wouldn't be visible on commercial flight tracking sites!

I don't believe there was something unusual going on, but I would not put any weight on visible on commercial tracking on or not.

If it's something clandestine, it may be smarter to hide in "normality" rather than looking obviously "stealthy".

Well, I guess one reason for keeping it public is literally to demonstrate to other nations that the US is prepared for this kind of thing - but I suspect everyone who needed to know that already knew...

"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?"

Given that JCS seems to have leveller heads than POTUS (witness their responses to his suggestions of persian gulf aggression or of domestic deployment), I find it reassuring.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War room!"
Gutmang na kang du kombat xiya, fo xidawang da imbobo da kombat!

Power and vigilance displays are most effective when seen.
Nuclear strategy accurately reflected in Dr. Strangelove with the (fictional but strategically accurate) Soviet deadman switch, whose effectiveness was blunted by being secret rather than known.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand

Development beginning in 1967, three years after the release of Dr. Strangelove, and mostly not functional until the 1980s. Whether the film merely anticipated or actually inspired the weapons management system isn't clear.
American Cold War strategist and generally charming sprite Herman Kahn's 1960 book On Thermonuclear War inspired Kubrik.
https://archive.org/details/onthermonuclearw00kahn/page/n5/m...

If I understand correctly, they started flying just 20 days ago. Which may indicate time when the President was diagnosed with C-19. Here is some unusual activity 9 days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryAviation/comments/iy14a9/se...

I wouldn't read too much into large scale exercises nine days ago. These things do happen routinely. Further, it's a very common practice among US government departments to burn off their remaining budgets at the end of the federal fiscal year on September 30th. Large scale exercises are a good way for the DOD to get rid of money it doesn't want.
It's not cause for concern unless unusually high levels of activity continue into October--and even in that case the general purpose will be deterrence rather than fear over any real threat.

Yep. I watch flight trackers sometimes that show military aircraft, and there’s a great deal of activity that you wouldn’t expect at first.
There are often electronics intelligence aircraft (EMARRS) circling over Kansas City, I want to say. I first thought that was something to do with protests there, but upon investigation it’s only that there is a nearby base and they’re likely simply training missions. They certainly predated the protests and their frequency didn’t appear to change.

Before we get too excited: How often do they do this? When was the last time?

There are some scenes in the movie The Day After showing the mission I believe these plans flyes: https://youtu.be/jlPEBROvR9w?list=FLrpVP7xy6WjESfTl1-XV-hw&t... The US used to have one or two airborne at all times during the cold war.
Quits scary.

Not to be confused with EA-6B Prowler; this one is modified cargo Boeing 707 upgraded with 737NG/A340 engines for strategic command purposes under doomsday scenarios.
(TIL)

Wide knowledge about these planes basically makes them worthless.
Theoretical agressor would make sure to track and take all of these planes out first, together with other command centers, satellites, relaying stations, etc.
Russian version - “dead hand”, uses hidden underground rocket silos (and mobile as well AFAIK). Upon loss of “ping” from a command center, rocket is launched across whole country, broadcasting launch codes for all nuclear rockets to start.
Likely US has something similar as well. Maybe even E-6B is a decoy/honey pot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war)

Will they stay active with E6 planes continuously in the air until the president recovers?

According to Twitter this is related to Trump's covid diagnosis, but I don't get why. What's an E-6B?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-6_Mercury
>The Boeing E-6 Mercury (formerly E-6 Hermes) is an airborne command post and communications relay based on the Boeing 707-320. The original E-6A manufactured by Boeing's defense division entered service with the United States Navy in July 1989, replacing the EC-130Q. This platform, now modified to the E-6B standard, conveys instructions from the National Command Authority to fleet ballistic missile submarines.

Show of force. Basically telling everyone that the US is still ready for war even though Trump could be sick.

If I understand this correctly those planes play a role in coordinating nuclear strikes; is this just normal posturing in case someone might think of launching at the US in the confusion a severe progression of Trump's illness would cause? Is this something to be worried about?

It's a backup command center, in case of a decapitation strike. You could make a case for being more nervous, since a higher state of alert could either provoke more mistakes, or cause ambiguous moves to be interpreted as hostile ones.
Or, from a perspective of posterior probability, you could not be worried at all, since nuclear war has never before happened.

"Domestic animals expect food when they see the person who usually feeds them. We know that all these rather crude expectations of uniformity are liable to be misleading. The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken."
I understand communications from boomers' spouses are sent by radio in the clear (from platforms such as an E-6B?), so everyone gets to appreciate the rare occasions when double entendres are slipped in past the censors.

Yes, and what so? I think this is a standard protocol for almost all countries to activate reserve command centres in case of military leadership being incapacitated/dead/or in risk of captivity.

I was in Singapore the day that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. All of Singapore was on high alert and soldiers were everywhere even though it’s half a world away. It’s basically a basic level of readiness when something out of the ordinary happens. It shows the world that even if you tried to sneak attack the US with nukes that the US was capable of retaliating. The entire point of Mutually Assured Destruction requires the ability to strike back as part of the defense otherwise attacking first becomes a better solution.

MAD as a concept faded out in the early 1980s. Improved accuracy led to the policy of counterforce ( against enemy military assets ) instead of countervalue ( cities and social structure ).
MAD was a necessary compromise when delivery accuracy and certainty were insufficient to target individual threat sites. It led to enormous megatonne weapons. Whereas modern counterforce involves small-yield warheads placed accurately.

I was going to say that can't be correct, otherwise some civic-minded third party could swat a global thermonuclear war, saving us all. But https://fas.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/WarheadInventorie... agrees, even if it is by warheads and not by megatonnage. So if I'm in a third world country with no foreign bases that has emergency plans for autarky, I'd not be likely to come off too poorly were everything to go elliptical?
Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecPeSmF_ikc
Edit: https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapons (which also shows that both the hexagonal "Force de dissuasion" and Airforce One's Tridents are in the noise)
> "These weapons have the capacity to kill millions directly and through their impact on agriculture have likely the potential to kill billions."
Maybe swatting RU/US wouldn't be so civic minded after all.

There's a story on aljazeera.com about how the Trumps have tested positive for COVID-19. I think I got there from this article but the internet seems to have melted down for me at the moment.
EDIT: FWIW there's a story on my local paper's site about it too.

The news first broke, AFAIK, from Trump's own Twitter account.

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