why shouldn’t it be? I found it thought-provoking to consider how nuclear weapons are maintained and the challenges of keeping that running for decades.
“Command and Control” by Eric Schlosser was a fascinating treatise on this whole subject. You really get a sense that the nuclear arsenal is a giant machine that needs constant maintenance and supervision to ensure they are safe and usable.
Its a complex legacy system still in use that needed to have parts reverse engineered in the past because the documentations no longer existed. This is the next iteration of that problem, there is noone left that understands them.
Working Effective With Legacy Missiles
The first step is to develop some unit tests. Unit testing the missiles themselves is not too challenging, remove the nuclear warhead and announce it ahead of time. Fire it somewhere into the Pacific. Unit testing a nuclear warhead, however, is more difficult. You may need to break some treaties first.