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Power Failure Shuts Down 50 US Nuclear Missiles
Pickens writes "The Atlantic reports that a power failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), one-ninth of the US missile stockpile, temporarily offline on Saturday. The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman IIIs. According to people briefed on what happened, a squadron of ICBMs suddenly dropped down into what's known as 'LF Down' status, meaning that the missileers in their bunkers could no longer communicate with the missiles themselves. LF Down status also means that various security protocols built into the missile delivery system, like intrusion alarms and warhead separation alarms, were offline. The cause of the failure remains unknown, although it is suspected to be a breach of underground cables deep beneath the base, according to a senior military official."
It is now being called an engineering failure not a power failure.
"According to the official, engineers believe that a launch control center computer (LCC), responsible for a package of five missiles, began to "ping" out of sequence, resulting in a surge of "noise" through the system. The LCCs interrogate each missile in sequence, so if they begin to send signals out when they're not supposed to, receivers on the missiles themselves will notice this and send out error codes.
Since LCCs ping out of sequence on occasion, missileers tried quick fixes. But as more and more missiles began to display error settings, they decided to take off-line all five LCCs that the malfunctioning center was connected to. That left 50 missiles in the dark. The missileers then restarted one of the LCCs, which began to normally interrogate the missile transceiver. Three other LCCs were successfully restarted. The suspect LCC remains off-line. "
The missiles were offline for about an hour.
We never lost the launch codes. President Clinton's authorization card was lost (I'm not following it close enough to know by whom), but all that meant is that he couldn't authorize launch. There are many other people able to authorize a launch, beginning with VP Gore. There's a whole designated chain, and there's quite a few people at the top of the list with authorization cards. It's all designed to maintain a National Command authority in the event of a decapitation attack. In addition, it would only matter in the event of a massive suprise attack with no buildup. In the normal course of events, tensions would rachet up for weeks or months, and its likely the President would be in a command center when the order needed to be given. At the very least, he's be able to give a verbal order to someone with a card who was in the room, and launch would be approved.
Look, I RTFAd.
To summarize: one of the ICBM routers went out of control, sending out pings to the missiles before it should. The missiles sent back error codes as they weren't expecting to be pinged yet, and the increase in traffic eventually flooded that segment of the network, and they had to take it down. The local guys lost control of some added security features. They sent in armed soldiers to each silo to make sure they were intact.
The president still had full control of the missiles via NCA and Kneecap. Neither were operational at the time due to our relatively peaceful defcon status, but every single one of the missiles would have still launched during the "power failure".
Really, the only reason this is a big story is what the hardware was controlling. As any slashdot reader can tell you, routers can die all the time without warning. They were back up and running within an hour (bypassing the faulty router).
Understand one thing: fairness doesn't matter. Never having them used in war, that's what matters.
Um. But the USA is the only country ever to use them in war. So perhaps you wish to modify your statement to: "Never having them used against us in war, that's what matters."
The number of warheads in the US peaked in the 60s, not the 80s, so a big part of what the Soviets were trying to catch up with was our technology, not just our numbers. And yes, they used more warheads as a way to counteract our better technology. This is why they completely freaked on the SDI (star wars) system, as it would make all their warheads obsolete, in theory. Our stealth technology and other weapons likely played a bigger role in pushing the Soviets to spend more during the 70s-80s than the nukes did.
And I agree, had we not had the military buildup we had (all types) then the USSR might still be here today. China, on the other hand, is a very sticky situation. They appear to be at the beginning states of an economic war with us, and we just don't realize it. And they don't need 1000s of warheads as a deterrent, just 50-100 is plenty. Our greatest asset is that we tend to be better at creating the technologies, while China has a history of being good at copying technology. Oh, and now China has decided to quit exporting rare earth minerals used in advanced technologies.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!