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.
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
The ultimate pinball anti-cheat switch.
Is there a Wikipedia article less likely to be factual?
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.
What does that mean?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think it was their own guy who hit them, though...
How do you know that?
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?
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.
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.
Seems a bit more complicated than just unhooking the trailer and driving off.
This isn't the 18th century, anymore. A semi carrying stolen cargo can't just bushwack its way away with the loot.
Air superiority is still assumed.
"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.
Also, by this point, the conspiracy is so vast, you're not going to keep it under wraps.
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 .....