How PALS Help Secure Nuclear Weapons

Hugh Pickens writes "The BBC reported last week that until 1998 no code or dual key system was required to arm British nuclear weapons. Bombs were armed by inserting a bicycle lock key (video) into the arming switch and turning it 90 degrees. Permissive Action Links (PALs) were introduced in the 1960s in America to prevent a mad General or pilot launching a nuclear war on their own and to control nuclear weapons that were at least partially controlled by other nations but as late as 1974, when an armed quarrel broke out between two members of NATO, Greece and Turkey, the Secretary of Defense learned that many tactical nukes were still not equipped with PALS. It has been reported that PALs have been installed on Pakistan's nuclear weapons to disarm or disable their triggering mechanism if the wrong code is entered or if the bomb is tampered with in any manner."

Comments

Rumor had it...

[b0s0z0ku]

that the PALs on quite a few US tactical nukes at the height of the Cold War were set to 0000 or something similar.

-b.

Re:Rumor had it...

[ais523]

According to Wikipedia, this is actually true, so I don't know why it was modded 'Funny', maybe because it's true and funny; Wikipedia gives http://www.cdi.org/blair/permissive-action-links.cfm as the source. The combination was actually 00000000, but that isn't really much safer. (They apparently changed this rule about 30 years ago, so you can't take advantage of it nowadays.)

Re:the PAL system was neutered by US generals

[SnowZero]

Wow, that glosses over reality very nicely. The codes were all zeros until the 80's, because said generals refused to implement a system that would prevent them from "hitting back". The keys were all set by 1977, and the "all 0's" codes were only used on ICBMs stationed in the US by that time. It's worth noting that US ICBMs required dual-activated keys, so it was still secure against a single compromised person (but not two due to the bad codes). Bombs overseas had proper codes once they got PALs (which did take too long to deploy). So, while it took far too long to deploy proper security, lets at least get our facts right.

There isn't a really good reason the British should take 21 years longer than the (already late) US to deploy PALs with proper codes, and over 40 years later to use a dual-key initiation. "Someone else was late doing it" is not an excuse, especially when you are twice as late.