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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."
are offline!
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.