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I think that's true for all countries that have submarine-launched nuclear weapons. One of the purposes of having nuclear missiles on submarines is for them to
by _delirium 9y ago
I think that's true for all countries that have submarine-launched nuclear weapons. One of the purposes of having nuclear missiles on submarines is for them to pose a credible threat of retaliation against a first strike, even if the first strike is successful enough to destroy land-based installations and the command chain. So the theory is that they need to be able to retaliate without a functioning chain of command.
- arethuza 9y agoOf course getting detailed information on these things is difficult but I've seen more than one reference claiming that UK Tridents subs are unusual in this respect - Wikipedia claims that launch keys on US Tridents subs are kept in safes to which the crew do not have the combinations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Two-man_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Two-man... Apparently the reasoning is that the UK is so close to potential enemies that there would be no time for the PM or equivalent to give authorization - the so called "4 minute warning" being very optimistic. The US is much further away from the Soviets/Russia so there would be far more time to broadcast a launch order. Also the UK is notoriously cheap about these kinds of things!
- willvarfar 9y agoThe US had a secret launch code - Permissive Action Link (PAL) - but that code was allegedly set to 00000000 and launch operators were told this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link The combination was changed in 1977.