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Protocol for a U.S. Nuclear Strike

56 points by ToFab123 6y ago

purple-again 6y ago
A good read if you are interested in the topic. I do take exception with the constant tonal use of absolutes which seem to be trying to lead the reader to a false conclusion based on that false fear. If the president (Biden or Trump) ordered a first strike nuke against Toronto or London there is a 0% chance it would happen. I personally doubt that an order against Moscow or Pyongyang would be followed either, but I wouldn’t argue with someone who wanted to take a position that those first strike orders would be followed. My point is just that there is obvious a lot more...”human nuance” in the situation that the author is describing.
- Daniel_sk 6y ago
  Yes. This is not an automated process, the president can't just hit a button to launch. While the generals have to obey the rules - they still can just say "no" if there is no logical explanation for the strike. Adding more safeguards could slow down the response in case of an actual attack and could do more harm than good. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42065714 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42065714
  - modzu 6y ago
    and independent, critical thinking is exactly what the military trains for
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      I presume that was sarcasm, but it has some truth to it. Yes, the military trains for obedience. It also trains for independent thought. Your comms can be compromised, meaning you could be receiving information and orders from a hostile party. Or they could be completely cut off, and you could be receiving no orders, meaning you have to figure out what to do on your own. Or you could have a window of opportunity that lies outside the scope of your orders, and it could be gone by the time you get permission or approval. Or... So, yes, the military does train for a degree of independent, critical thinking.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    International law is one consideration but under US law, the generals are not allowed to refuse a launch order. Possibly they would anyway, but it's a poorly designed system that in some circumstances relies on people stepping outside the system in order to prevent WWIII. Retaliation is another matter, but we at least need more safeguards against a president launching first. A good argument can be made that we shouldn't allow first strikes at all.
    - willcipriano 6y ago
      > International law is one consideration but under US law, the generals are not allowed to refuse a launch order. That is not my understanding from talking with people in the army. What I understand is that anyone in the armed forced is not only allowed, but required, to refuse a unlawful order given by anyone, even the president. Executing on a unlawful order is a crime and you can end up court marshalled or even executed if the outcome is bad enough. The Nuremberg defense ("I was just following orders") does not fly in the US military.
      - chihuahua 6y ago
        I wonder how someone who receives an order is expected to determine if it's lawful or not, especially within 60 seconds? Doesn't that require a court of law to decide?
        willcipriano 6y ago
        I asked a similar question, my understanding is it's a matter of degrees. If you follow a unlawful order and say file paperwork the wrong way that probably won't result in a court marshal, if you burn down a village in a friendly country you most certainly would. That said Congress is supposed to declare war so most of the wars we have been fighting for the past two decades are likely unlawful. I doubt you would be successful refusing to execute a drone strike on that basis. However if the president called up drunk one night and ordered your to bomb London, I suspect you'd be safe in that refusal.
    - nabla9 6y ago
  - munificent 6y ago
    > Adding more safeguards could slow down the response in case of an actual attack and could do more harm than good. Retaliating doesn't actually do any good. It increases the body count on the other side, but does nothing to help those in the US about to be atomized. It's not like the missiles will collide in mid-air. What matters is the believed threat of retaliation because that may prevent an attack in the first place. The optimal system in terms of human life and safety is: 1. All foreign governments 100% believe that the US has complete capability to retaliate with devastating force at a moment's notice and will do so with zero hesitation. 2. But the US actually has no such capability so that an accidental first strike on a false alarm is impossible. The tension between those two is the hard part. :)
- drtillberg 6y ago
  I wouldn't count on military commanders employing "human nuance" within 30 seconds of receiving a direct presidential order. On the contrary, it's pretty amazing that with 2, 3, 4 or more nations on a nuclear hair trigger for multiple decades that the systems of deterrence and avoidance have so far been successful.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    The military drills into its officers and enlisted personnel the fact that they not only can disobey an unlawful order, it's their duty. A direct presidential order is not inherently lawful, and I'd expect most commanders (especially, in contrast to lower ranking enlisted or officers) to be able to respond appropriately.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      Even granting your position, but while the set of “orders to use nuclear weapons that the public would, in retrospect, consider catastrophically undesirable” and that of “orders to use nuclear weapons that would be clearly illegal” do overlap, the former is not at all fully contained in the latter.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      Even granting your position for the sake of argument, while the set of “orders to use nuclear weapons that the public would, in retrospect, consider catastrophically undesirable” and that of “orders to use nuclear weapons that would be clearly illegal” might overlap, the former is clearly not fully contained in the latter. But I’m not sure we can take your position as true, anyway: First, the historic lack of accountability for illegal Presidential orders or obedience to them both reduces the clarity (through absence of case examples) of the legality of such orders and reduces, due to incentive structures, the probability of any person choosing to be the one that takes a stand on the perceived illegality of such an order even were the legality relatively clear. Also, given the War Powers Act, its not clear how any order to employ the military by the President (except domestically in a manner violating the Posse Comitatus Act) would be illegal under domestic law initially (which, for a nuclear attack, is all that is going to matter.) It might violate norms of international law like waging a war of aggression, but I think recent history shows that even if maybe you can trust the US military to resist some set of illegal orders, “orders to wage of war of aggression that is, nonetheless, authorized by US domestic law” is pretty clearly not within the scope of “illegal orders” for which that is true.
- roywiggins 6y ago
  The entire system is designed to eliminate human nuance once the order is given. Exactly how successful it is is impossible to say, but it's designed to make carrying out the order both fast and straightforward. The only tricky bit is if the President wanted to execute a nuclear plan that hadn't been devised yet. But if there's an existing one (attacking NK, Russia, Iran) then ordering a first strike is really straightforward with an absolute minimum of people in a position to refuse.
  - hchz 6y ago
    This article doesn't address important differences in the scenario in which a launch order is given out-of-the-blue, and when a launch order is issued following certain events.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I do take exception with the constant tonal use of absolutes which seem to be trying to lead the reader to a false conclusion based on that false fear. I don’t think that’s the purpose. It’s describing features of the protocol, which are the defined rules. Yes, humans deciding not to follow the rules can result in different results, but when we are discussing what the rules for use of nuclear weapons use ought to be, you probably don’t want to avoid considering improvements on the basis that that status quo is acceptable because, in the event that the rules currently in place would result in an outcome viewed as undesirable by certain key actors, there are points in the process where they would be able and likely to execute an unconstitutional coup d’état.
- anewaccount2021 6y ago
  Speaking to people who have worked in Titan II silos (admittedly, long ago in the 70s), the opposite is true. They were conditioned to believe if they received a launch order, the US was already a cinder. The person I spoke to said he would "absolutely" fire if he had received an order.
  - Denvercoder9 6y ago
    The President doesn't directly speak to those in the silos, there's people in between.
    - anewaccount2021 6y ago
      Obviously - the point being, this command chain is optimized and conditioned for compliance.
  - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
    Why fire? If America is already gone, why retaliate? Revenge? What is there to gain? Retaliation would just make things that much more difficult for the rest of humanity, assuming the first strike didn't already make the earth uninhabitable...
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      The purpose of a retaliatory posture is the foundation of MAD. If the posture, instead, is: We'll just rollover and die, then (the theory goes) there's reduced reason for others to avoid a first strike.
      - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
        Yeah, I understand the reasoning of MAD, but on like a thinking individual level... when you get the order and are under the impression that this is a second strike, why hit the button? MAD clearly didn't work at that point, so why fire? On the off chance that it was a small first strike and this is a limited second strike? I, at least, would rather run the risk of upsetting the doctrine than run the risk of destroying all of humanity.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- neatze 6y ago
  simple explanation; orders must be lawful.
- jld 6y ago
  The people receiving the orders are trained to understand that they do not/will not have full situational awareness. The president issues the orders and they carry them out. The presidential football is basically a menu of strike options that are ready to execute. To launch a strike all the president needs to do is call the number in the book, authenticate himself using the a two letter challenge code, and tell them which strike from the menu to order. Targeting is preprogrammed and designed to eliminate any delay or nuance in the process. The US has spent billions (trillions?) of dollars on its nuclear strike capabilities and the systems that order its use. To presume that these systems will fail precisely when they are called upon seems short sighted.
- duxup 6y ago
  Word has it (supposedly sources inside the white house) due to Trump's habit of making impulsive statements / demands that sound like orders, the folks at the Pentagon put in place the expectation that orders went through some white house staff / filters / had to include written orders before they did anything extraordinary.
DennisP 6y ago
I will breathe a lot easier a week from now. This system definitely needs to be reformed. Daniel Ellsberg's recent book The Doomsday Machine supports a lot of this, but adds that historically, theater military commanders have also had independent launch authority, and as far as he can tell, they still do. (Ellsberg is best known for the Pentagon Papers but his job was actually nuclear strategy. He'd intended to publish documentation on that as well, but thought if he did that first, nobody would even care about the Vietnam stuff. The nuclear papers were lost before he published them.)
- splintercell 6y ago
  Since I've read 'Three Body Problem', I'd be breathing a lot less easier a week from now.
iorrus 6y ago
Seems like a rogue presidential order wouldn't get past the "war room at the Pentagon", they need to actually send the message to the silos. I assume they are fully aware of the threat level and aren't going to level London on a Tuesday afternoon for no reason.
- chrismeller 6y ago
  Yeah. You might be court martialed afterwards, but there are plenty of links in the chain, down to the guys in the silos saying “but really?”. I also find it an odd standard to treat nukes differently than any other military action. You think we don’t have enough traditional options to level London on a Tuesday afternoon? It seems like the President is either the CinC or he isn’t...
  - snoshy 6y ago
    > You think we don’t have enough traditional options to level London on a Tuesday afternoon? I actually don't think there are any that are feasible. Leveling a city the size of London is no small feat, and amassing the troops and weaponry required to carry it out seems like a complicated enough exercise that it would take longer than "Tuesday afternoon". Not that I don't think it can be done, but just that moving a large traditional military apparatus, or even mustering enough conventional missiles to flatten an area that large seems like it would take far longer than that. The "shock and awe" campaign waged on Baghdad might be similar in scale within about an order of magnitude, and it certainly took a heck of a lot longer than an afternoon, although the goal was never to level the city in its entirety.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
      Why flatten? Just a few supersonic booms near ground level would shatter much glass. The facades may be rated for storms and thunder, but the pressure gradients of low flying supersonic jets?
  - iso1631 6y ago
    Nukes level London in 5 minutes (and the launch alone initiates MAD from China and Russia before they realise what the target it) That's not enough time for the VP and cabinet to 25th amendment and cancel the orders.
nabla9 6y ago
The U.S nuclear protocols are secret and very little is known about their current situation. Optimal deterrence position is when enemy is uncertain what the protocol is but the US actually has launch after confirmation. Land launched ICBM's are not absolutely necessary for US deterrence anymore, so launching them before they are destroyed is not necessary. While the US certainly maintains the technical ability to have launch on warning, it seems that it might not be the policy. Clinton Issues New Guidelines on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Doctrine https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-11/news/clinton-issues-new-guidelines-us-nuclear-weapons-doctrine https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-11/news/clinton-issues-... > ... while the United States has always had the "technical capability" to implement a policy of launch on warning, it has chosen not to do so. "Our policy is to confirm that we are under nuclear attack with actual detonations before retaliating," he said.
- rhino369 6y ago
  And presumably the choice to fire back before our ICBMs are destroyed by incoming nuclear weapons would take into account the size of the confirmed launches by an enemy. If you get confirmation that Russia launched 1-10 ICBMs, well maybe you are reading it wrong, and the loss of 100-200 missiles silos if you are wrong won't make much difference. But if you get confirmation Russia is launching 100 ICBMs, its bombers are in the air, and its subs are rising to launch depth, well lets just hope that's hard to fuck up that confirmation.
  - nabla9 6y ago
    The US has enough submarine launched ICBM's to retaliate.
    - krono 6y ago
      Well, congratulations. The real winners will be the ones who never saw it coming.
  - iso1631 6y ago
    > But if you get confirmation Russia is launching 100 ICBMs, its bombers are in the air, and its subs are rising to launch depth, well lets just hope that's hard to fuck up that confirmation. Will nuking Russia in that situation prevent the US from being nuked? Will it help any American citizen anywhere in the world?
nickt 6y ago
More about the lack of or simply bad protocols, but if you want a good read and scare yourself “Command and Control” by Eric Schlosser is highly recommended.
- chihuahua 6y ago
  Overall, I enjoyed listening to that as an audiobook. I thought it was a bit odd that the story of the damaged Titan-2 was interleaved with the part about protocols and security, which I considered the more important part of the book. Whenever the story switched back to the Titan-2, I found myself wishing that they would just get it over with so I could get back to the more interesting part. However, the Titan-2 story might make for a good movie by itself.
rhino369 6y ago
Grey on white background is the nuclear strike of web design.
- LordAtlas 6y ago
  Thank goodness for Reader Mode and Outline. I hate such websites with a passion.
mhb 6y ago
William J. Perry Project: Working to End the Nuclear Threat https://www.wjperryproject.org/ https://www.wjperryproject.org/
breck 6y ago
Really good article. I don't know much about nuclear policy myself, but I know this guy @DavidSantoro1 in Oahu who works on that, and recommend following him if you are interested in nuclear issues. This is especially relevant to people in Hawaii, which is the only state, as far as I know, to have sent all its residents an emergency warning that a missile was about to hit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler...). Luckily it was a mistake and the only affect was a million funny stories about how everyone reacted (btw: someone should write a book cataloging the best reactions!).
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  @RadioFreeTom is also a good source for this stuff.
ryandvm 6y ago
Oof. We made it this far, can we not talk about this until next week?
chrismartin 6y ago
If you're ever around Tucson AZ, I recommend a visit to the Titan Missile Museum. (No affiliation, just a fan.) The tour includes a simulated launch order, two volunteers are chosen to turn the keys, and the ancient control panel will blink its lights in sequence. https://titanmissilemuseum.org/ https://titanmissilemuseum.org/

56 points by ToFab123 6y ago

A good read if you are interested in the topic. I do take exception with the constant tonal use of absolutes which seem to be trying to lead the reader to a false conclusion based on that false fear. If the president (Biden or Trump) ordered a first strike nuke against Toronto or London there is a 0% chance it would happen. I personally doubt that an order against Moscow or Pyongyang would be followed either, but I wouldn’t argue with someone who wanted to take a position that those first strike orders would be followed. My point is just that there is obvious a lot more...”human nuance” in the situation that the author is describing.

Daniel_sk 6y ago
Yes. This is not an automated process, the president can't just hit a button to launch. While the generals have to obey the rules - they still can just say "no" if there is no logical explanation for the strike. Adding more safeguards could slow down the response in case of an actual attack and could do more harm than good. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42065714 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42065714
- modzu 6y ago
  and independent, critical thinking is exactly what the military trains for
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    I presume that was sarcasm, but it has some truth to it. Yes, the military trains for obedience. It also trains for independent thought. Your comms can be compromised, meaning you could be receiving information and orders from a hostile party. Or they could be completely cut off, and you could be receiving no orders, meaning you have to figure out what to do on your own. Or you could have a window of opportunity that lies outside the scope of your orders, and it could be gone by the time you get permission or approval. Or... So, yes, the military does train for a degree of independent, critical thinking.
- DennisP 6y ago
  International law is one consideration but under US law, the generals are not allowed to refuse a launch order. Possibly they would anyway, but it's a poorly designed system that in some circumstances relies on people stepping outside the system in order to prevent WWIII. Retaliation is another matter, but we at least need more safeguards against a president launching first. A good argument can be made that we shouldn't allow first strikes at all.
  - willcipriano 6y ago
    > International law is one consideration but under US law, the generals are not allowed to refuse a launch order. That is not my understanding from talking with people in the army. What I understand is that anyone in the armed forced is not only allowed, but required, to refuse a unlawful order given by anyone, even the president. Executing on a unlawful order is a crime and you can end up court marshalled or even executed if the outcome is bad enough. The Nuremberg defense ("I was just following orders") does not fly in the US military.
    - chihuahua 6y ago
      I wonder how someone who receives an order is expected to determine if it's lawful or not, especially within 60 seconds? Doesn't that require a court of law to decide?
      - willcipriano 6y ago
        I asked a similar question, my understanding is it's a matter of degrees. If you follow a unlawful order and say file paperwork the wrong way that probably won't result in a court marshal, if you burn down a village in a friendly country you most certainly would. That said Congress is supposed to declare war so most of the wars we have been fighting for the past two decades are likely unlawful. I doubt you would be successful refusing to execute a drone strike on that basis. However if the president called up drunk one night and ordered your to bomb London, I suspect you'd be safe in that refusal.
  - nabla9 6y ago
- munificent 6y ago
  > Adding more safeguards could slow down the response in case of an actual attack and could do more harm than good. Retaliating doesn't actually do any good. It increases the body count on the other side, but does nothing to help those in the US about to be atomized. It's not like the missiles will collide in mid-air. What matters is the believed threat of retaliation because that may prevent an attack in the first place. The optimal system in terms of human life and safety is: 1. All foreign governments 100% believe that the US has complete capability to retaliate with devastating force at a moment's notice and will do so with zero hesitation. 2. But the US actually has no such capability so that an accidental first strike on a false alarm is impossible. The tension between those two is the hard part. :)
drtillberg 6y ago
I wouldn't count on military commanders employing "human nuance" within 30 seconds of receiving a direct presidential order. On the contrary, it's pretty amazing that with 2, 3, 4 or more nations on a nuclear hair trigger for multiple decades that the systems of deterrence and avoidance have so far been successful.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  The military drills into its officers and enlisted personnel the fact that they not only can disobey an unlawful order, it's their duty. A direct presidential order is not inherently lawful, and I'd expect most commanders (especially, in contrast to lower ranking enlisted or officers) to be able to respond appropriately.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    Even granting your position, but while the set of “orders to use nuclear weapons that the public would, in retrospect, consider catastrophically undesirable” and that of “orders to use nuclear weapons that would be clearly illegal” do overlap, the former is not at all fully contained in the latter.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    Even granting your position for the sake of argument, while the set of “orders to use nuclear weapons that the public would, in retrospect, consider catastrophically undesirable” and that of “orders to use nuclear weapons that would be clearly illegal” might overlap, the former is clearly not fully contained in the latter. But I’m not sure we can take your position as true, anyway: First, the historic lack of accountability for illegal Presidential orders or obedience to them both reduces the clarity (through absence of case examples) of the legality of such orders and reduces, due to incentive structures, the probability of any person choosing to be the one that takes a stand on the perceived illegality of such an order even were the legality relatively clear. Also, given the War Powers Act, its not clear how any order to employ the military by the President (except domestically in a manner violating the Posse Comitatus Act) would be illegal under domestic law initially (which, for a nuclear attack, is all that is going to matter.) It might violate norms of international law like waging a war of aggression, but I think recent history shows that even if maybe you can trust the US military to resist some set of illegal orders, “orders to wage of war of aggression that is, nonetheless, authorized by US domestic law” is pretty clearly not within the scope of “illegal orders” for which that is true.
roywiggins 6y ago
The entire system is designed to eliminate human nuance once the order is given. Exactly how successful it is is impossible to say, but it's designed to make carrying out the order both fast and straightforward. The only tricky bit is if the President wanted to execute a nuclear plan that hadn't been devised yet. But if there's an existing one (attacking NK, Russia, Iran) then ordering a first strike is really straightforward with an absolute minimum of people in a position to refuse.
- hchz 6y ago
  This article doesn't address important differences in the scenario in which a launch order is given out-of-the-blue, and when a launch order is issued following certain events.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> I do take exception with the constant tonal use of absolutes which seem to be trying to lead the reader to a false conclusion based on that false fear. I don’t think that’s the purpose. It’s describing features of the protocol, which are the defined rules. Yes, humans deciding not to follow the rules can result in different results, but when we are discussing what the rules for use of nuclear weapons use ought to be, you probably don’t want to avoid considering improvements on the basis that that status quo is acceptable because, in the event that the rules currently in place would result in an outcome viewed as undesirable by certain key actors, there are points in the process where they would be able and likely to execute an unconstitutional coup d’état.
anewaccount2021 6y ago
Speaking to people who have worked in Titan II silos (admittedly, long ago in the 70s), the opposite is true. They were conditioned to believe if they received a launch order, the US was already a cinder. The person I spoke to said he would "absolutely" fire if he had received an order.
- Denvercoder9 6y ago
  The President doesn't directly speak to those in the silos, there's people in between.
  - anewaccount2021 6y ago
    Obviously - the point being, this command chain is optimized and conditioned for compliance.
- i_haz_rabies 6y ago
  Why fire? If America is already gone, why retaliate? Revenge? What is there to gain? Retaliation would just make things that much more difficult for the rest of humanity, assuming the first strike didn't already make the earth uninhabitable...
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    The purpose of a retaliatory posture is the foundation of MAD. If the posture, instead, is: We'll just rollover and die, then (the theory goes) there's reduced reason for others to avoid a first strike.
    - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
      Yeah, I understand the reasoning of MAD, but on like a thinking individual level... when you get the order and are under the impression that this is a second strike, why hit the button? MAD clearly didn't work at that point, so why fire? On the off chance that it was a small first strike and this is a limited second strike? I, at least, would rather run the risk of upsetting the doctrine than run the risk of destroying all of humanity.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
neatze 6y ago
simple explanation; orders must be lawful.
jld 6y ago
The people receiving the orders are trained to understand that they do not/will not have full situational awareness. The president issues the orders and they carry them out. The presidential football is basically a menu of strike options that are ready to execute. To launch a strike all the president needs to do is call the number in the book, authenticate himself using the a two letter challenge code, and tell them which strike from the menu to order. Targeting is preprogrammed and designed to eliminate any delay or nuance in the process. The US has spent billions (trillions?) of dollars on its nuclear strike capabilities and the systems that order its use. To presume that these systems will fail precisely when they are called upon seems short sighted.
duxup 6y ago
Word has it (supposedly sources inside the white house) due to Trump's habit of making impulsive statements / demands that sound like orders, the folks at the Pentagon put in place the expectation that orders went through some white house staff / filters / had to include written orders before they did anything extraordinary.

DennisP 6y ago

I will breathe a lot easier a week from now. This system definitely needs to be reformed. Daniel Ellsberg's recent book The Doomsday Machine supports a lot of this, but adds that historically, theater military commanders have also had independent launch authority, and as far as he can tell, they still do. (Ellsberg is best known for the Pentagon Papers but his job was actually nuclear strategy. He'd intended to publish documentation on that as well, but thought if he did that first, nobody would even care about the Vietnam stuff. The nuclear papers were lost before he published them.)

splintercell 6y ago
Since I've read 'Three Body Problem', I'd be breathing a lot less easier a week from now.

iorrus 6y ago

Seems like a rogue presidential order wouldn't get past the "war room at the Pentagon", they need to actually send the message to the silos. I assume they are fully aware of the threat level and aren't going to level London on a Tuesday afternoon for no reason.

chrismeller 6y ago
Yeah. You might be court martialed afterwards, but there are plenty of links in the chain, down to the guys in the silos saying “but really?”. I also find it an odd standard to treat nukes differently than any other military action. You think we don’t have enough traditional options to level London on a Tuesday afternoon? It seems like the President is either the CinC or he isn’t...
- snoshy 6y ago
  > You think we don’t have enough traditional options to level London on a Tuesday afternoon? I actually don't think there are any that are feasible. Leveling a city the size of London is no small feat, and amassing the troops and weaponry required to carry it out seems like a complicated enough exercise that it would take longer than "Tuesday afternoon". Not that I don't think it can be done, but just that moving a large traditional military apparatus, or even mustering enough conventional missiles to flatten an area that large seems like it would take far longer than that. The "shock and awe" campaign waged on Baghdad might be similar in scale within about an order of magnitude, and it certainly took a heck of a lot longer than an afternoon, although the goal was never to level the city in its entirety.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    Why flatten? Just a few supersonic booms near ground level would shatter much glass. The facades may be rated for storms and thunder, but the pressure gradients of low flying supersonic jets?
- iso1631 6y ago
  Nukes level London in 5 minutes (and the launch alone initiates MAD from China and Russia before they realise what the target it) That's not enough time for the VP and cabinet to 25th amendment and cancel the orders.

nabla9 6y ago

The U.S nuclear protocols are secret and very little is known about their current situation. Optimal deterrence position is when enemy is uncertain what the protocol is but the US actually has launch after confirmation. Land launched ICBM's are not absolutely necessary for US deterrence anymore, so launching them before they are destroyed is not necessary. While the US certainly maintains the technical ability to have launch on warning, it seems that it might not be the policy. Clinton Issues New Guidelines on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Doctrine https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-11/news/clinton-issues-new-guidelines-us-nuclear-weapons-doctrine https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-11/news/clinton-issues-... > ... while the United States has always had the "technical capability" to implement a policy of launch on warning, it has chosen not to do so. "Our policy is to confirm that we are under nuclear attack with actual detonations before retaliating," he said.

rhino369 6y ago
And presumably the choice to fire back before our ICBMs are destroyed by incoming nuclear weapons would take into account the size of the confirmed launches by an enemy. If you get confirmation that Russia launched 1-10 ICBMs, well maybe you are reading it wrong, and the loss of 100-200 missiles silos if you are wrong won't make much difference. But if you get confirmation Russia is launching 100 ICBMs, its bombers are in the air, and its subs are rising to launch depth, well lets just hope that's hard to fuck up that confirmation.
- nabla9 6y ago
  The US has enough submarine launched ICBM's to retaliate.
  - krono 6y ago
    Well, congratulations. The real winners will be the ones who never saw it coming.
- iso1631 6y ago
  > But if you get confirmation Russia is launching 100 ICBMs, its bombers are in the air, and its subs are rising to launch depth, well lets just hope that's hard to fuck up that confirmation. Will nuking Russia in that situation prevent the US from being nuked? Will it help any American citizen anywhere in the world?

nickt 6y ago

More about the lack of or simply bad protocols, but if you want a good read and scare yourself “Command and Control” by Eric Schlosser is highly recommended.

chihuahua 6y ago
Overall, I enjoyed listening to that as an audiobook. I thought it was a bit odd that the story of the damaged Titan-2 was interleaved with the part about protocols and security, which I considered the more important part of the book. Whenever the story switched back to the Titan-2, I found myself wishing that they would just get it over with so I could get back to the more interesting part. However, the Titan-2 story might make for a good movie by itself.

rhino369 6y ago

Grey on white background is the nuclear strike of web design.

LordAtlas 6y ago
Thank goodness for Reader Mode and Outline. I hate such websites with a passion.

mhb 6y ago

William J. Perry Project: Working to End the Nuclear Threat https://www.wjperryproject.org/ https://www.wjperryproject.org/

breck 6y ago

Really good article. I don't know much about nuclear policy myself, but I know this guy @DavidSantoro1 in Oahu who works on that, and recommend following him if you are interested in nuclear issues. This is especially relevant to people in Hawaii, which is the only state, as far as I know, to have sent all its residents an emergency warning that a missile was about to hit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler...). Luckily it was a mistake and the only affect was a million funny stories about how everyone reacted (btw: someone should write a book cataloging the best reactions!).

ashtonkem 6y ago
@RadioFreeTom is also a good source for this stuff.

ryandvm 6y ago

Oof. We made it this far, can we not talk about this until next week?

chrismartin 6y ago

If you're ever around Tucson AZ, I recommend a visit to the Titan Missile Museum. (No affiliation, just a fan.) The tour includes a simulated launch order, two volunteers are chosen to turn the keys, and the ancient control panel will blink its lights in sequence. https://titanmissilemuseum.org/ https://titanmissilemuseum.org/