What’s it like hauling nuclear weapons across the country? | Hacker News Reader

What’s it like hauling nuclear weapons across the country?

freightwaves.com

131 pointsStratoscope211 comments

> The salary range for an NV-01 (basic) federal agent NMC is $48,682 to $76,981.

For the amount of training required for this job and personal risk, I’m shocked at the low salary band.

Nobody does it for the money. Everyone does it for the bennies.

This is probably the least risky OTR trucking job ever since you have so many people making sure everything goes right and you don't have dispatch pushing you to do insane shifts that stretch the law.

Imagine the security going on behind the scenes that the drivers never even know about…

Yeah and I’m guessing the vehicles are unmarked, vanilla trucks that we pass on the roads all the time without knowing.

That was the idea.

The truck manufacturer has been out of business long enough now that seeing a surviving example is relatively rare.

Peterbilt? I believe they still make trucks.

The trucks the Peterbilt's replaced.

Based on the article picture, you might be able to pick them out by the bulletproof windows.

I bet 2/3rds of them aren’t even hauling actual weapons.

> Nobody does it for the money. Everyone does it for the bennies.

Is that based on experience?

>Is that based on experience

Yeah pretty much. Ask any government worker why they're still working for the government and they'll tell you something about benefits and stability.

Government workers I know seem to primarily credit reasonable hours (e.g., government coders don't get 100+ hour weeks; they go home at 5) and decent management (i.e., actual professional management, not screaming morons), but certainly stability and benefits too.

Every government dev I know who isn't a manager will strongly disagree with the "professional management" take. People generally don't become managers of government dev shops because they're great at managing people. They become managers because they're what's left after everyone else has gone on to do other things.

+1 to this

Public sector is serious brain drain

The counterpoints are people so uninspired and risk averse that it is the same as brain drain, and a subset of them are the people that began with a “serving the public” ideal and accidentally accumulated too many obligations by the time they figured out they wanted to live in a nicer neighborhood or send their children to a good college

The good talent are people that took a plea deal for non prosecution that included public service

> The good talent are people that took a plea deal for non prosecution that included public service

Wait, wat? This is a thing? Did you mean "community service" instead of "public service"? Or do you mean people like Frank Abagnale?

Beyond insulting intelligent, motivated, highly capable people I know in public service, do you have a basis for that?

This article is illuminating:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/14253/the-us-moves-nuk...

"The expose painted a dismal picture of an overworked and underpaid organization where over a third of the personnel would put in more than 900 hours of overtime each year, equal to more than 35 extra days on the job. Couriers and agents spend most of that time on the road on long, boring drives unable to stop for protracted periods or even leave their vehicles in many circumstances. If they get pulled over by local law enforcement for some reason, the truck drivers aren't even allowed to speak to the police without the security force commander being present during the conversation.

Underscoring these issues, in 2010, the Department of Energy's Inspector General cataloged 16 alcohol-related incidents within OST in the preceding three years, including an incident of public intoxication where a courier was arrested and another where two employees ended up in police custody after getting into a drunken bar brawl. The report uncovered New Mexico court records showing the office's top executive had gotten a DUI after police came across him parked on a sidewalk apparently drinking in the car with a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent."

Reading between the lines they're making a killing on OT and while the job is mind numbing these guys party it up real good when they're not on duty.

Sounds a lot like gambling auditing TBH.

I thought “bennies” was short for Benjamins - $100 bills, I.e. the money?

Or they provide benzodiazepines on the job now?

I assumed "benefits", i.e. perks beyond the basic salary

As a non-American living in the US the way people talk about tangible public-sector benefits (or lack thereof...) led me to think otherwise. The only significant "benefit" people do talk about is job-security, I guess because people are hard to replace if they're being underpaid...

Just speculating, but is it possible that this provides a path to other, more senior federal agent gigs?

I would be shocked if higher levels of gov't job positions don't start to include minimum requirements of X years in job, education levels, etc just as any private sector job would.

I'd bet they have pretty low personal risk. Where would the risk come from? I could see being close to radioactive materials as a risk - though hopefully there is sufficient shielding to negate that. I don't see much risk from people attacking you to take the nukes. I feel like that doesn't happen very often. Maybe some risk from lots of vehicle miles traveled.

It seems like an awesome job for someone with the right set of preferences. Spend half your time training, working out, going to the range. Half your time on long road trips. Huge responsibility, but extremely low chance you'll ever need to actually do much. Kind of like being a cop who never has to arrest or deal with people.

> I feel like that doesn't happen very often.

It has been the plot of several movies/books/etc.

Any that were non-fiction?

The documentary Command and Control [0] included a small part about the recovery and transport of a warhead after an accident in which they missile it was mounted on exploded.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(film)

That still wasn't an attack, though. (Though it might have been as dangerous as if it were...)

And it was also caused by a maintenance accident at a silo if I understood the wiki correctly. Not a transport incident at all.

Fiction writers often create a compelling story by making something reality-shaped out of low-probability dangers.

Hate to burst your bubble but we don’t actually live in a movie. I think.

That being said, the quoted line kind of raises the question: how do we know?

I suppose given the use of the word “feel” the GP doesn’t actually know, but that’s not really my point anyway. My point is rather – if there in fact were incidents involving these nuclear material couriers, would it make the news or remain secret as a matter of national security?

>Hate to burst your bubble

Burst all you want, but it doesn't mean my comment wasn't true. You can want this conversation to only go one direction (real life), but it's the internet and conversations can diverge. The fact that it has been involved in plots is still relevant. Some people might actually find it interesting even if it steers the convo in a manner you don't approve.

A: I wonder how often event X occurs? I imagine it's not very often. B: It happens in movies a lot.

To me, as a native English speaker, B is clearly implying (with their "technically true" statement) the statement "Event X happens a lot in fiction, therefore I infer that Event X happens a lot in real life". Statements are read in the context of the preceding conversation.

> I think.

I dunno, I feel like I'm living in a future designed by folks who looked at Robocop, Starship Troopers, and a few other bits of dystopian sci-fi and instead of treating it as a warning decided that it would make a swell instruction manual.

Hmm... maybe its my german heritage, but i don't see Starship Troopers as THAT dystopian:

Every politican has skin in the game (mandatory military service for gaining the right to vote or be voted for)

No racism or sexism or other discrimination, at least there are no traces for that in either the movie nor the novel.

If you don't want to join the military: No problem, you don't have any major disadvantages (besides no political participation), see the wealthy family of the protagonist.

Science seems to flourish

Ehm... sorry for the digression... what were we talking about?

Well, the book by Heinlein certainly wasn't meant to be dystopian, so there are sane elements in it.

But the movie was a bit different - maybe you watched the german version? That was a bit softer - the teacher didn't made jokes about the anhilation of Hiroshima there.

It was a deeply militarized society. Brutal. Top down. But yes, at least the politicians had to be part of that, too. (but in reality ... I think you can be in the military and be far away from any danger, like Bush was a fighter pilot, but not deployed at Vietnam.)

Interesting... i think i have to do a rewatch of the movie (this time in english), yes, i have watched the german version, which was "over-the-top", but not THAT "over-the-top"...

> Well, the book by Heinlein certainly wasn't meant to be dystopian

It literally starts out by re-contexualising the ex-millitary putsch attempts in Weimar Germany as a Good Thing.

Ok, I have to admit I did not read the full book, just the beginning, but do not remember this. But I was told it was not meant to be dystopian. On the other hand, Heinlein did had some extreme views, though, so I am not sure, what the message of the book actually is.

I think 1984 was used more as a manual, than a warning, despite so many people throw the name around, despite never having read it.

And I always kind of assumed, that Bush watched Swordfish (where the bad guys are only bad, so they can fight terrorism, so are the "good guys") and would have gone on a war on terror, even if 911 would not have happened.

By "happen", most of us mean "happen in reality", not "happen in fiction".

Although, it might be a bit relevant. You feel cooler when you tell people what you do if it's fictionally cool, even if in real life it's not all that great.

From having watched lots of dash-cam videos recently, I would guess traffic accidents are the riskiest things they regularly deal with.

If the truck is still operating afterwards, I expect they don't stop - they let another vehicle that is full of federal agents from the convoy deal with it.

> I don't see much risk from people attacking you to take the nukes. I feel like that doesn't happen very often.

given that Russia didn't lose any nuke in the chaotic 199x (didn't lose or they were quickly recovered) I think there is no credible/feasible/capable interest/threat for the nukes.

> given that Russia didn't lose any nuke in the chaotic 199x

Serious question (in more ways than one): do we really know that to be true? How?

Of course it's possible that some Russian nukes were stolen, and someone's been keeping them in a warehouse for the last 25 years, and we'd never know. But I find it likely that if someone had stolen a nuke, they would have sold it, and the kind of people that would buy it would have used it by now.

I'm making two assumptions:

1. you don't steal a nuke unless you're going to sell it or use it

2. you don't buy a nuke unless you're going to use it (for blackmail or to blow something up)

And (2) would have been easily noticed.

I think there's one other possibility. It could be stolen to study and reverse engineer. You're probably looking at state actors instead of random third parties, but enemies of Russia would probably want to see the level of technology they're using. And states trying to develop their own nukes might be able to learn a lot from having a first hand example.

I'd be quite surprised is someone who lost/had stolen and then recovered a nuc would admit to this taking place. I really don't think we would know if this had happened.

The US government spent a lot of money upgrading Russian nuclear security and paying personnel in the 90's so precisely this would not happen. Same with the rocket scientists.

I have heard that one of the recent projects to redefine the kilogram independently of an artefact was essentially a job creation scheme for unemployed Russian nuclear scientists to stop them being hired by people with more nefarious intentions.

Source? I'd be somewhat surprised if these job creation projects are happening much anymore given that a lot of the 90's era scientists will have retired or emigrated by now. I think most emigrated.

It might have been a while ago- here [0] is a link to a press release from 2005 saying that the isotopic enrichment of silicon-28 for the Avogadro Project (to redefine the kilogram using a perfect sphere of isotopically pure single-crystal silicon-28) was done at two Russian institutions.

Here [1] is a 2004 press release from the International Science and Technology Center, whose first objective is to "Provide weapons scientists in the CIS the opportunity to redirect their talents to peaceful activities." Page 9 describes their involvement in the Avogadro Project.

Here [2] is the project description on the ISTC website.

[0]https://www.ptb.de/cms/en/presseaktuelles/journals-magazines...

[1]https://www.istc.int/upload/files/6yoyjz8txt44oc0g8cs8.pdf

[2]https://istc.ru/istc/sc.nsf/html/projects.htm?open&id=2630

> Spend half your time training, working out, going to the range.

That right there makes it pretty attractive. Lots of people do those things for fun. If that's half your "workload", it totally makes sense to do a job like this, especially if you're not a city person since that's a solid salary if your not in a high cost of living area.

You familiar with government pensions and benefits? That's your answer.

But actually though! People don't realize how much having a federal pension + healthcare changes your income calculus.

Hrmmm, have any of these agents ever been assaulted in connection with their official role? I guess we wouldn't know but also I guess not. Seems not too bad for personal risk.

Huh?? That's just entry-level base pay specifically for the Albuquerque-Santa Fe-Las Vegas, NM locality with 3 additional levels of opportunity above that[1], and you'd be getting paid the entire time to train towards a CDL + small arms + tactics qualifications...not to say anything about additional unadvertised compensation and standard fare of benefits that accompany typical blue collar federal jobs.

I suspect the biggest general public barrier to entry here would be competing against a glut of qualified applicants with 5-/10-point veterans' preference, assuming time was taken to put notification hooks in place for immediate action on job postings that'll close almost as soon as they're announced.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/downloads/nnsas-demo-pay-system-...

I've heard that NNSA recruits pretty actively among people separating from the service.

The entire federal government recruits almost exclusively from people separating from the service due to veterans preference.

The article says they recruit people with military and police experience. There’s a good chance this job is full of 40-50 year olds who retired early and need a way to keep busy.

Just like in the military, they pay for the training

Outside the HN bubble, that is actually a pretty good salary. Median personal income is about $36000.

First of all, that sounds like a great plot for one of those mindless-yet-entertaining summer movies. Something like "White House Down" on a road trip. With trucks.

Second, how comes that all these federal agencies in the US demand "law enforcement experience"? Are you supposed to do a stint as some local Sheriff's deputy somewhere or go into a local police school (if that's a thing) first? Isn't that awfully inefficient? Shouldn't the federal government (as well as state governments) try to get the youngest, fittest, and brightest recruits?

"I'm not sure what's more disturbing -- the fact that you lost a nuclear weapon, or that it happens so often that there's a term for it." -- Broken Arrow

They do try! A few years enlisted as an MP is a common start.

This page loads fine for me the first time I access it on any particular device. But if I reload it later, it blocks the content with a non-closable subscription popup.

One way to fix that is to tap the padlock icon next to the site URL and clear the site's cookies. Or you can open the link in an incognito/private browsing tab or window, or view it here: https://archive.is/8ipwc

Disabling JS also works.

For me in addition to that nuisance you described it also has an autoplaying video, connects (or at least attempts to connect) to 56 (!) domains, with 38 blocked by default uBO. The bloat on that site is just enormous.

The UK also has regular road convoys carrying nuclear warheads between the Atomic Weapons Establishments in Aldermaston and Burghfield and the Royal Navy Armaments Depot in Coulport.

These are a lot more obvious than the US ones (the vehicles are all marked, and they have police escorts which stop traffic at side roads). Probably also have a lot less of the James Bond kit.

painting the cab anti-flash white is a nice touch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-flash_white

It's probably just titanium dioxide white, which is common for fleet vehicles because it's cheap (especially government/military fleets)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_fleet_%28military_vehicl...

Funny factoid, Pakistan purposefully carries its nukes in inconspicious white Isuzu vans, allegedly intentionally bought second hand to make them stand out even less.

I don't know the security, of course, but because of the value to some parties of a nuclear weapon or some of its components, I wonder how it could be adequately secured in a convoy on the open highway.

The problem with highway robbery is that you have very limited means of getting whatever you stole transported somewhere else.

This isn't the 18th century, anymore. A semi carrying stolen cargo can't just bushwack its way away with the loot.

1 word: Sikorsky

Why wouldn't they bring a couple manpads along when they're moving the nukes around? It's not like airborne attack is a particularly odd scenario.

I’d guess there is a fighter jet nearby on standby.

Air superiority is still assumed.

But the manpads is more awesome.

Even though they are super cool I'd assume that if they didn't have air superiority they wouldn't transport the nuke!

British Nuclear Fuels has posted some YouTube videos of how they move nuclear fuel by train. Manpads don't quite cut it:

"The flasks are very robust - they weigh around 50 tons and have walls 35cm thick. 16 bolts, each able to take a load of 150 tons without breaking, secure the lid. The flasks are forged out of two block of steel."

I'm not sure the kinetic and explosive energy of a manpad, but they have done tests with three locomotive engines smashing into a flask at 100mph, and the flask remaining intact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jzugX2NMnk

Edit: having wrote all this, I realize you may have meant that the defense crew have manpads...

That being said, I think the above is good knowledge.

Perhaps British Nuclear Fuels isn't providing the public with accurate information on such a sensitive topic.

Two words: Radar, and 'surrounded by two oceans'.

Also, by this point, the conspiracy is so vast, you're not going to keep it under wraps.

And further: Even if you had the resources of a James Bond villain and by some miracle of luck managed to attack the convoy, extract the weapon, and scurry off with it, you still couldn't use it. Nuclear weapons are designed to turn into bricks under any scenario of misuse, and the mechanisms to ensure this are some of the most devious and elegant engineering artifacts in the history of the engineering profession. This article gives a brief overview of these mechanisms but of course it is not comprehensive.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link

AFAIK much of the security comes from the willingness to destroy the weapon in question rather then allow it to be stolen.

Rumor mill is that the trucks carrying the warheads are configured to be capable of destroying their own axles and flooding the trailer with a quick set concrete to make it extremely difficult to access. That's only keep it from moving easily though. Air force or air national guard keeps some fighters on alert nearby with orders to bomb the convoy if it does go south and security forces can't repel the attackers.

Again, all rumor mill though.

Edit: Wikipedia as an article on the trucks used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguards_Transporter

>Finally there is an inclinometer - if the trailer becomes off level by a certain degree, the entire inside of the trailer is filled with expanding, fast-hardening foam.

The ultimate pinball anti-cheat switch.

The axle thing is not a rumor, or at least it has been reported as fact in the past, although I can't seem to find the source now. Never heard about the concrete though.

> Wikipedia as an article on the trucks used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguards_Transporter

Is there a Wikipedia article less likely to be factual?

The security is designed by DOE PHD's at the national labs who are working with essentially an unlimited budget. The full resources of federal police agencies and the US military are also available for use.

What is that based on?

The only high risk areas are where you start, and where you finish, because those are known positions. Everything else can be variable....and nobody is any the wiser, because the only thing that's really different is that the trucks have zero DOT/MC numbers on the side and they have GSA plates on the truck/trailer....and I highly doubt that they stop at Weigh stations along the way. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyjQb3oJi80 -- this is a video of how the military transports warheads around: I'd assume many of the same types of transports are similar in nature between the NNSA and the DOD.

Just don't be the guy in the escort vehicle who rear-ends the trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwlV_94kPE

Back in the 1940s or 50s, they were trucking an atomic bomb casing (no nuclear material, just the case, but that was still highly classified) between Sandia and Holloman Air Force Base. This was in a standard army truck, not a semi. In downtown Albuquerque, they got in a collision, and the tailgate fell down, and the bomb casing fell out in the road.

I don't think it was their own guy who hit them, though...

My stepdad told me a story years ago about a nuke getting left on the tarmac when he was stationed in Korea. Apparently they thought it was a practice bomb but it was an actual live warhead. I don’t remember the details except “it was a big deal and we all got in a lot of trouble”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_n... was a fairly recent similar incident where a set of live warheads sat around for 36 hours unguarded.

> the trucks have zero DOT/MC numbers on the side and they have GSA plates on the truck/trailer

How do you know that?

There's a significant escort. Even if someone were to attack the convoy with a force big enough to overcome the escort, I'd expect the truck to be armored (and easily immobilized), and by the time they've cut through the armor to get to the loot, the air support will be on site...

The first thing any bad actor would do is unhook the trailer and hook it up to their own truck and drive away.

I'm not sure you can just pull the hitch pin. The trailer itself is also designed to blow it's axles if required.

The first thing they'd have to do is either trick the convoy and its screening vehicles into a roadblock and assault the convoy, or use IEDs to stop the convoy and assault what's left. A number of people have commented on how the semi has its own countermeasures, but it honestly would take an awful lot of effort to even get to the point that such a thing is necessary.

Wikipedia says all LEO or military authorized to assist the convoy are given a countersign. This is to prevent tricking into a roadblock like you suggest.

It also means that legitimate LEO who try to assist will be fired upon by the convoy. If that happens they are just supposed to take cover until the authorized ones show up and take over.

> Wikipedia says all LEO or military authorized to assist the convoy are given a countersign. This is to prevent tricking into a roadblock like you suggest.

I wasn't suggesting anything in particular, but I think the sort of roadblock you'd use to slow down a convoy like this would involve a staged accident to force a detour of the convoy to a less secure route. An awful lot needs to go wrong for that to even be possible, and at the end of the day there's still combat with heavily armed law enforcement needed to get near the cargo.

It seems pretty futile, since the end result of applying even an overwhelming (and somehow previously undetected) force to the convoy is probably going to be a ruined road, a ruined semi, and a difficult to open, boobytrapped vault on the road that weighs so much you'd need a crane to move it.

Forget what Wikipedia says about confidential security information. Is there a basis in reality for that?

So, if this is such an obvious thing, why wouldn’t you think there are countermeasures for that? As people have said, the trucks have (or very likely have) axels that self-destruct. They also could have a trailer hitch that self-destructs if you attempt to disconnect it. The hitch could also be custom made to be too large/small/wrong shape for a traditional hitch. The lines that connect to the air brakes (that lock up without air pressure) could be custom made to not fit, or self-destruct, or both. The cab could have a kill switch that destroys or disables the engine. And of course, we don’t actually know which of these are actually used, and what additional security measures there are. So any bad actor would have to gain access to detailed security plans without it being discovered or attack blind and hope they have accounted for everything and can overcome known and unknown security.

Seems a bit more complicated than just unhooking the trailer and driving off.

They are extremely well secured. They don't travel alone; you may not notice that. They are surprisingly armored like a bank vault. And a report of attack can be responded to by any LEOs, and the military. Getting away with a weapon is as close to impossible as it gets.

We had one come in one afternoon, a bit late. We stay on standby to receive. They can't get the doors to open correctly. This is no small matter; they have to open just so. After us faffing off for a couple hours watching, they decided to drive down to Rocky Flats, and come back tomorrow. They aren't allowed to spend the night just anywhere; it has to be a secure installation.

Next day, they come back. The techs at Rocky Flats figured out their doors.

FYI, the US military has a strong policy against recognizing hostages.

> recognizing hostages

What does that mean?

It means if a theoretical attacker were to take the security forces hostage, there is no leverage gained for the attacker in that scenario. And yes, that means exactly what it sounds like.

Keeping the drivers as hostages doesn't stop the airstrike.

If you remember the thread a couple months ago about DoD personnel putting sensitive information into online flashcard sites, a number of them had the specific location on base where the OST convoy would be directed to park during a Safe Haven operation (not that it wouldn't be hard to spot them from the air anyway). So I'm guessing that most any military base is a possible location.

I remember reading on Reddit quite some time ago that a federal LEO said their office could be used as a stopover as well, although I can't find the thread now.

Does this information come from factual reporting, or from HN and Reddit threads?

> FYI, the US military has a strong policy against recognizing hostages.

As a former member of a US military unit specifically tasked with hostage rescue, if your implication is hostages are expendable, you are 100% pulling shit out of thin air, movies, or both.

No, not at all. Nuclear policy when I was serving was to use all available means to prevent nukes from being taken. In other words, our presence on the ground wouldn't prevent an air strike. F-16s were twelve minutes away, so it wasn't beyond the pale. And yes, that meant if we somehow became hostages, we might be expendable. I'm sure USAF would have mounted a rescue if practical, but priority was no nukes lost. None of this is out of my backside, rather out of the mouths of officers during training and serving.

I have a friend who works with the DoE and this squares with what I've heard. Nuclear/DoE tends to go above and beyond even other sensitive fields.

It would not surprise me in the slightest to hear that contingency plans prioritized preventing material from falling into the wrong hands over basically all forms of collateral damage. I'm sure the NMCs are well aware they'd be hellfire missile'd before letting a nuke slip away, if those were the only choices.

Your friend shared top secret nuclear security plans with you?

No, lol. But they've made it abundantly clear that when it comes to the Fed and anything involving nuke sec, personnel are basically dogmeat in any situation where the poop hits the fan. Anyone ex-mil or who runs in those circles knows this; it's hardly a secret.

Of course, you are expected to not let it get to that point. But re: the comment about hostages, yeah, Uncle Sam would not hesitate to disable a nuke or material, even if it meant casualties of NMCs held hostage.

Civilian casualties, no idea. That is the kind of fodder of actual classified conops. But in the metaphorical trolley problem between "N civilian casualties" and "nuke gets away", yeah my guess is N will be nonzero.

What is that based on? You actually have access to confidential info and are sharing it on HN?

> I wonder how it could be adequately secured in a convoy on the open highway.

Another poster shared a youtube video of such a convoy. This consisted of the semi with the payload, surrounded by three pickups carrying Federal law enforcement and seven military light armored cars. Four of the military vehicles at the end of the convoy appeared to have unmanned fifty caliber guns on top.

They seem to be taking for granted that their adversaries will not have military attack aircraft or main battle tanks. They're pretty well equipped to traverse the continental United States?

US interceptors are extremely fast. It's likely that the planned route has alerted interceptors at nearby bases. In all likelihood there are shoulder mounted rockets in the guard vehicles too.

If it looks like Zee Germans are coming, they'll probably just take the day off and move nuclear weapons around some other time.

Seems pretty reasonable. If a would be attacker managed to get main battle tanks or military aircraft into the continental US and on the highways in order to hijack the convey, the military probably has bigger problems to worry about.

20 odd years ago I was travelling from SF to LA on I5 on the Wed evening before Thanksgiving .... there was a semi on fire 100 miles south of us and everything stopped for hours ....

Next to us was one of these trucks fore and aft of it was a big range-rovery thing (not a hummer but close to that class) both were beige/green with big HF antenna on the back .... as everyone got out of their cars to stretch and pee on the side of the road the guys in those vehicles got obviously antsy .....

Last year they tested the Mobile Guardians Transporter being hit by a rocket sled at Sandia National Laboratories.

https://newatlas.com/military/nuclear-weapon-transport-truck...

"one of the toughest and most secretive jobs in the transportation industry"

I see lots of faces of people I can track and even a license plate. Maybe not that secretive.

If I wanted to find out where the weapons were I could identify everyone in that photo and track their whereabouts.

Honestly, you could just Google it… it’s not exactly a secret where the nukes and their various major subcomponents components live. Pantex, Y-12, LANL, etc.

Sort of surprised that truck drivers are still providing nuclear transportation services--air transport is much safer considering almost any hazard.

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

While routine transportation of nuclear devices by air is a different ballgame than, say, Operation Chrome Dome, there isn't exactly a stellar record to look back to.

What is the procedure when someone accidentally hijacks one of those trucks? If I understood correctly sometimes those trucks will not have an escort.

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

> When traveling, the tractor and trailer are typically escorted by three dark colored Chevrolet Suburbans, each containing four armed crew members. Additionally, all missions include heavily armed aerial support. The semi-tractor(STG) itself is heavily armored, and equipped with a Caterpillar diesel engine coupled to an automatic transmission. The cab-over tractor is a sleeper design, but instead of a bed, it has two seats containing additional armed support crew. The tractor also contains firing ports, run flat tires, and automatic sanders for slick roads.

You're not going to accidentally hijack one.

Also

> If a SGT comes under attack, unspecified security features in the vehicles give them, according to the NNSA, the capability to "surprise and delay even the most aggressive adversary". The full range of defensive components in SGTs is unknown, but according to some media reports the vehicles are equipped with autonomous weapons systems and other "high-tech surprises" that allow them to independently engage and repel attackers even if all human crew have been killed or disabled.

> but according to some media reports the vehicles are equipped with autonomous weapons systems and other "high-tech surprises" that allow them to independently engage and repel attackers even if all human crew have been killed or disabled

For some reason I'm imagining the scene from one of the F&F movies where the side panels of a bus pull up and a bunch of revolver cannons come out. In reality it's probably more something like ejectors for smoke screens, grenade launchers for concussion/flash grenades, stuff like that since the line says "independently engage and repel attackers" not "everything with a heat signature within X meters will be mowed down by autonomous gunfire".

And soon, I expect they'll have some form of EW suite to jam and combat drones.

Assuming they don't already given the rise in popularity of drones.

There's YouTube videos of these things being escorted by 3 to 5 large suvs, armored, presumably filled with well-trained armed men. You would need probably at least a several platoon sized force to attempt to take one of these on the road.

Or an IED

You would need multiple IEDs and effectiveness might be limited against armor...

Lets assume they do kill off all security personnel.

Truck disables itself, axels blown off, fills itself with quick setting cement and poisonous gas. It also actives autonomous weapons to defend itself.

Truck is also heavily armored so IEDs won't reach payload.

Then, 1 minute or less air support is on the scene and bombs it and everything close by.

You would need an army as OP said to withstand air attack and disable defenses and move the now disabled truck

This sounds good against external threat actors. How about an inside job? As in several individuals that know how to fast disable all security and have it fast load it in another truck. Then what?

Crew can't access payload without triggering defenses. (cant physically open, knock out gas if they manage to get in, inclination sensors triggering self destructs, etc)

Assuming they somehow are able, remote monitoring both in the trucks and outside. If something duspicious or it deviates it triggers response.

Assuming that's also bought, then you have local law enforcement along military, they can signal weird behavior and would be a lot of people to buy off. It would also mean lots of people live streaming this if they switch in populated area... triggering response.

Aasuming that's also bought, you have sattelite surveilance, normal surveilance and checkpoints.

If that's also bypassed then yeah...

Moving it is another matter, tritium detectors in most ports and cities... they'd ring alarm bells pretty fast.

Using it is another matter, so many kill switches you'd have to be the president or close by to actually use it... and you could directly in that case.

Why road transport at all instead of via military aircraft/helicopter instead, at least for the majority of the way?

> Why road transport at all instead of via by military aircraft/helicopter instead, at least for the majority of the way?

Failure modes. Trucks crashing are, while more frequent, less energetic than planes. There's an elevated risk of capture, but that is more manageable.

Nukes are never transported by air. After some nasty crashes in the 50's and 60's, the DOE decided that air transport was a bad idea (the DOE owns all of the nuclear weapons).

> Nukes are never transported by air.

This is definitively not true, just look up PNAF if you don’t believe me.

Yep.

62nd Airlift Wing, Air Mobility Command, McChord Field.

C-17's.

I'm thinking that is for overseas transport. CONUS is ground only.

Nope, PNAF does CONUS flights too. There’s even a famous flight not fifteen years ago where they accidentally flew six nukes unsecured and the plane sat on the tarmac for like 36hrs. If you search PNAF as I suggested, you can read a bunch of bulletins and operating procedure docs and learn more than I can say here on the topic.

We sometimes do move them by air, but rarely. We had an impressive string of accidents from carrying them in bomb position on bombers and fighters, dropping them in the ocean, various US states, other countries, etc., until about 1970 we dropped four on Franco's Spain. We took a while finding one of them, Franco threw us (US Nuclear Program) out, and we stopped transporting them bomb ready.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_acc...

They're heavy, and when you transport them on the road, you can a) add more (heavy) impact protection b) work at lower speeds, reducing the risk of a severe accident. Might also be cheaper, and easier to secure (if you transport it by plane/helicopter and it goes down by accident or attack, securing the crash site would be a nightmare).

Yep.

F = 1/2 * mass * velocity^2

Okay, sorry, I guess this comment didn't help much. Also the formula is confusing 'F' denoting "force", rather than talking about kinetic energy.

In the transport of hazardous materials of any kind, if a mishap occurs and the shipping containers crash, the energy of the collision is going to go up as the square (second power) of the velocity. Air transport typical speeds are in general 2-4x as fast as ground... So ground transport could involve overall lower risk than air.

This is naïve hand-waving on my part.

I have a lot of experience of this from playing Blast Corps

I just imagine you could pull a Joe Dirt and duct tape yourself to it and create an incident if you were desperate. Although, these are real as opposed to a poop tanks.

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