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

Quite sensible

[niceone]

It's because British people are inherently sensible and would not start Armageddon without a jolly good reason. Unlike all you mad foreigners.

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.)