The Presidential Nuclear "Football" from Eisenhower to George W. Bush
nsarchive.gwu.edu
nsarchive.gwu.edu
The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States [0] Nuclear War: A Scenario [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2020_Commission_Report_on_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario
I read the wikipedia article, but I don't see how this scenario seems probable, it notes the nukes have to pass by russia to strike North Korea, thus creating the world war.
But the US has nuclear subs with nuclear wardheads! Most likely there is one close to NK and then no need to pass over russia...
The author's technical expertise is very limited. She thinks that satellites fall out of the sky if their electronics are destroyed by an EMP attack. There are many other mistakes, you are better off skipping this book.
They launch 50 land-based ICBMs because:
1. They expect the attack to continue.
2. The ICBM silos are in static locations.
3. Not using the ICBMs in time removes the possibility to use them at all, because the enemy, knowing where they are, will obviously destroy them. Therefore: "use it or lose it".
4. Because of #1, #2 and #3 there is a a limited time to launch a counter-attack at all using the land-based ICBMs.
5. Because the chairman of the JSC is pushing hard for strike option Charlie, which the president ultimately caves in to.
As for the EMP and satellites, that part comes from an interviews with Yago and Pry as well as Pry's book. Satellites certainly won't drop from the skies like burning seagulls, but if they cannot course correct because their electronics are fried, they will fall back into the atmosphere and burn much sooner than otherwise.
Edit: I can't count to 5.
Not really. It's more like "don't use it so you can lose it". The US has enough SLBMs that the ICBMs can all be lost without significant loss of deterrence capability. However their existence complicates tremendously the calculus of an adversary. If the US does not use its ICBMs in the early moves of a full-scale nuclear war, its adversaries need to allocate missiles to disable them. From wikipedia [1]:
> The solid fueled LGM-30 series Minuteman I, II, III, and Peacekeeper ICBM configurations consist of one LCC (launch control center) that controls ten LFs (launch facilities) (1 × 10). Five LCCs and their fifty associated LFs make up a squadron. Three squadrons make up a wing. Measures were taken such that if any one LCC was disabled, a separate LCC within the squadron would take control of its ten ICBMs.
> The LGM-30 LFs and LCCs are separated by several miles, connected only electronically. This distance ensures that a nuclear attack could only disable a very small number of ICBMs, leaving the rest capable of being launched immediately.
The US nuclear strategists have given a name to this: the "nuclear sponge". Most certainly the options given to the President account for this. Nobody without top secret security clearance can know, including the book's author, but it's highly unlikely that a pre-scripted nuclear counterattack of the US against a single NK ICBM would remove 50 missiles from this "sponge", when a much better alternative is to use SLBMs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_launch_facility#Minute...
See my other comment, but to summarize - because they worry that an incoming attack would destroy the land-based ICBMs before they have a chance to launch them, taking out one third of the Nuclear Triad.
I don't think this was the book making up stories - the book is half fiction, half interviews with actual people who worked on these plans and gave inside info on them. This unfortunately appears to be a realistic scenario.
We are used to mentally think of the Earth as seen in a sideways 2D projection. But if you look down from above the North Pole, you can appreciate how different an ICBM trajectory that goes from North Korea to Washington is from one that goes to Wyoming, Montana or North Dakota. There is no way to mistake one for the other, and the author does not even claim that this happened in her scenario; the incoming ICBM was fairly quickly identified as targeting something on the East Coast.
Which brings us to another thing. Geography is very funny, but it happens that an ICBM from NK to Washington overflies thousands of miles of Russian territory. An ICBM from Wyoming to NK overflies mabye a fifth as much, because it flies over a lot over the Bering Sea and the Sea of Ohotsk. Why are the Russians not worried when the NK ICBM overflies their country, but they are willing to commit suicide when the US counter overflies does the same, but over a much shorter distance? Well, they should not be worried in either case, because a missile can't just drop down in midflight, but an author that thinks satellites can fall from the sky can also think that a missile in suborbital flight can take 90 degree turns.
It is unknown how the US would react to a missile launched from NK, but for various reasons, it is likely to respond with a massive counter-attack. This is partially for deterrence (the whole idea behind the MAD doctrine), and partially for fear that if ICBMs are not launched right away, they could be deactivated by an incoming first strike.
Indeed, in the scenario laid out in the book (Spoiler Warning), after launching an ICBM, NK also launches missiles from a submarine that take out various parts of the US in minutes, far faster than the ~25 minutes for the ICBMs to get to the US from NK. Had the ICBMs not been launched before, it is probable they would be destroyed, taking out one leg of the "triad".
I assume it's all down to first amendment protections. Absent that protection I find it unlikely that any government would let you publish this.
You can't be serious, surely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarfolk for one example of many.
Addendum: Reply to deleted comment:
Ok, you're talking about the libel law part, writing a book that mischaracterises an actual person and inserts them within a fiction?
Well, Brass Eye went further .. it fabricated fictional stories and fooled real people into taking part.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_Eye
Paedogeddon! takes the cake there. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5bg85g
They are the hammer and lots of them. If they fly, you can be sure it’s the big game. You are right, in about 30 minutes (probably less, when you take into account that the USA would only react with icbms) or closer to 10-15 minutes it’s Armageddon.
The first bombs would explode in the higher atmosphere and blind the electromagnetic spectrum aka radar detection fails and your only option is to fight back and hit hard in retaliation.
I don’t know if it’s (still) in service, but the USA had a rocket that would fly over the rocket fields and send the launch codes and fire the icbms. The fear was, that the soldiers were incapacitated and could not fire them itself. The backup.
Absolutely insane how in minutes everything would go to hell.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/DRC-8_Emergency_Rocket_Co...
Truly terrifying as a citizen of a non-nuclear country that this is (or was) in place, and that a handful of countries (presuming they all have this capability) is willing to obliterate everyone else because they took it too far.
I flicked back a page of your comments and saw " .. here in Sydney."
I'm in Australia like, I presume, yourself.
The same country that has (along with multiple other installations) the Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Communication_Station_Ha...
which has always been a prime target in any first strike scenario .. given its primary function is communications with roving nuclear ballistic missile launch submarines.
Like it or not Australia's been part of the game since an Australian scientist first explained to the Americans how to build an atomic weapon and further convinced them that it was both feasible and essential.
A series of airplanes, called Looking Glass, was the first backup.
They can't actually be sat there just waiting for a radio signal, can they? Just waiting for some kid with a Flipper Zero to end the world?
Unforgiveable snark aside I suspect they would have used some level of authorisation ... although there was that strong rumour to the effect that the default silo launch codes were 000 for many many years.
Which was, of course, just silly .. military intelligence would demand at least eight zero's.
So not a dead man's switch, just backup one way comms system.
I'm just going to assume a hostile first strike makes satellite comms difficult.
[1] http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/SWE/Papers/att_collaps...
It is only recently (late last year an this year) that there is sometimes a strange feeling that one guy (Putin) could blow all this stability up by raising tension in our region to the point where European governments are talking about war right here.
This is truly scary because so far war has been a remote thing - we knew that people were fighting somewhere in the world and we had armchair compassion at lunch.
I noticed a palpable hatred toward Putin rising in my circles because of this tension raising. People are less interested in politics but rather in the fact that, to our horror, the idea of a war is being invoked.
It is really sad that such thoughts are for real and not just in a movie.
I assume such an armageddon would disrupt supply chains and cause social strife in other parts of the world, but are there parts where it would be business as usual? Africa? Maybe warlords would run out of ammunition, but they would still have machetes.
There is also a Lex Friedman who does another podcast but they are two distinct people.
But "emergency tyrant outfit" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?
https://thebulletin.org/2020/10/trumps-covid-infection-shows...
It could be prudent to change these protocols before the next election, to avoid another situation like this:
’President Trump took the nuclear football with him to Walter Reed Medical Center, where he received treatment for COVID-19. According to Trump’s doctor, the president’s blood oxygen levels had dipped. And this, according to independent health experts, can impair decision-making ability. He is taking dexamethasone, which can cause mood swings and “frank psychotic manifestations.” Yet as far as we know, at no point did the president transfer his powers to the vice president, as allowed under the 25th Amendment.’
’To state the obvious, we should not entrust nuclear launch authority to someone who is not fully lucid. (Reagan transferred authority temporarily before planned surgery, as did President George W. Bush before a medical procedure that required his sedation.) A nuclear crisis can happen at any time, including at the worst possible time. If such a crisis takes place when a president’s thinking is compromised for any reason, the results could be catastrophic.’
The history of this actually gets better. Nixon was sloshed half the time and then rolled that fact into the furtherance of his nuclear brinksmanship[2] pioneering:
"If the president had his way," Kissinger growled to aides more than once, "there would be a nuclear war each week!" This may not have been an idle jest. The CIA's top Vietnam specialist, George Carver, reportedly said that in 1969, when the North Koreans shot down a US spy plane, "Nixon became incensed and ordered a tactical nuclear strike... The Joint Chiefs were alerted and asked to recommend targets, but Kissinger got on the phone to them. They agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning." [1]
No big deal.
"The allegation of flirting with nuclear weaponry is not an isolated one. Nixon had been open to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam as early as 1954 and as president-elect in 1968 had talked of striking "a blow that would both end the war and win it". A Kissinger aide who moved over to the White House, David Young, told a colleague "of the time he was on the phone [listening] when Nixon and Kissinger were talking. Nixon was drunk, and he said, 'Henry, we've got to nuke them.'"[1]
Now we know where a certain warmonger gets their habit of threatening the use of tactical nukes.
I think the best system is probably some type of consensus system between military command elements. We have a fleet of EC-4 "Nightwatch" aircraft for this purpose, as a backup. It makes more sense to have your nuclear war decision makers comfortably aloft with the job being their primary vocation, as opposed to some dude waking up groggy at 3am being told they have 15 minutes to live while probably also being evacuated at the same time.
Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenzo once said about war?
Mandrake: No. I don't think I do sir, no.
Ripper: He said war was to important to be left to the Generals. When he said that, fifty years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/weekend/story/0,3605,362947,00.h...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/weekend/story/0,3605,362958,00.h...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory
[3] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/09/23/the-real-gen-mi...
Well of course he wouldn't transfer power to his VP; in about 4 months after this event he would unleash a mob aimed at murdering his VP. I take the above quote as "don't give lunatics the Presidency". As you mentioned, other past Presidents have taken the duties of the office seriously. Trump has not nor will not.
Biden's cognitive ability gets wildly exaggerated, but I think its totally reasonable to assume he isn't always 100% prepared for such a decision and 4 more years would just make that harder.
I honestly don't know how anyone makes such a decision with limited knowledge in the moment and 6 minutes to act, so it's not like the problem is only related to age or medical concerns.
Granted its still a really unlikely scenario, but we only need to detect what appears to be a nuke with a trajectory that could be pointed at a US target.
Regardless, while Trump may seem a bit crazy and I'd personally write in a vote for Empty Chair before picking him, I don't really feel comfortable with anyone having exclusive power to launch nukes.
Coming to consensus in 6 minutes with a committee sounds pretty hard. It kind of does need to be one person, or you need more time.
OTOH, even though it's one person with authority, you've still got to convince a lot of people to act. You've got to get the person with the football to bring it over and open it up. And it's not a button to push to launch the missiles, it's a radio to reach the Strategic Air Command, to give a command to launch the missiles, that will need to be disseminated.
When the Commander in Chief gives a command, you're expected to carry it out, but there's an opportunity to object or disobey. And then there's the people who actually push the buttons.
The US detects a launch that appears to be aimed at their soil, the president picks from a menu of response options and launches. Do they launch to warn the enemy and create an opening for escalation? Do they launch for complete annihilation? And remember, that can all be triggered by a false positive that was never a launch targeting the US.
Mutually assured destruction kind of made sense with two nuclear powers, maybe can hold with a few more, but it simply doesn't scale. Even with a short list, eventually someone will launch. We won't see those weapons and anything worse to come go completely unused forever.
> When the Commander in Chief gives a command, you're expected to carry it out, but there's an opportunity to object or disobey. And then there's the people who actually push the buttons.
Anyone can have a stroke, a medication reaction, or experience a mental health crisis for any other reason.
Flag on the play. Pass interference in the endzone. Defense, number 74. Ball will be placed at the 1 yard line. 1st and goal.
Now we are getting somewhere.