Slashdot Mirror
Launch Command Preserved In Power Failure, But Nuclear Designs Still Risky
With a follow-up to Tuesday's story, Martin Hellman writes "Slashdot reported that a system failure at Warren AFB in Wyoming affected 50 ICBMs and that 'various security protocols built into the missile delivery system, like intrusion alarms and warhead separation alarms, were offline.' Assuaging fears that America's nuclear deterrent might have been compromised during this failure, the source article notes that the missiles still could be launched from airborne command centers. Other reports cite an administration official offering assurances that 'at no time did the president's ability [to launch] decrease.' Given the difficulty of debugging software and hardware that is probably not a good thing. The history of nuclear command and control systems has too many examples of risky designs that favor the ability to launch over the danger of an accidental one."
Exaggerated threats from relatively weak entities. Questionable need in 1950 never mind 2010.
RGdot.com
So a previous president lost the biscuit for months at a time. That is the president would have been unable to authenticate to military command that he was giving a launch order. Why was that not considered a problem? When 50 missiles going into a still usable but wacky state is?
It's "Risky." You need to know it's STILL RISKY. Risk we say!
Be worried. Because their is risk. Don't think about the security those nooks have provided since WW2; there was and is absolutely no "risk" that another world wide conflagration might have or will happen without those risky missiles. But those nooks! The nooks are RiSkY you fool. RISKY. Don't worry about the risk to medical capabilities in the US as we legislate someones' idea of justice into medicine, either. No risk there at all. Running up 10% of our GDP as debt every year is also clearly risk free. So you just keep worrying about the nooks! They are Risky!
Or at least, I hope they run good protection software.
Like ... Search and Destroy. Or Avast! Nothing like pirates for protecting nuclear warheads.
[note: this was an attempt at comedy.]
So why aren't we sitting in a post-apocalyptic wasteland right now?
Have you been to Detroit recently?
"risky designs that favor the ability to launch"
There are multiple safeguards built into the system that have to be released in order to launch even one missile. None of the safeguards are coupled, meaning that there is no cascading effect. Each one has different inputs and a different means to activate it.
One of the simplest is that it takes the near-simultaneous activation of two mechanical, key-locked switches to send the fire command to the missile, and these are separated by enough distance that one person can't do it alone. And it only gets to that point after a number of other manual steps have been taken to prep the launch.
Even the President's order is not sufficient to start everything rolling. The people in charge of monitoring the threat systems go to him to ask for authorization. He doesn't go to them - they'd never believe him if he did, since there's no way he'd know there was a threat. And they don't make their decision lightly.
At the point where it's necessary to launch a nuke, it will be blindingly clear to everyone that we should have made the process simpler, not that it is too simple.
Ah, the evolution of language. In 1,278,698 I.D. use of the shift key diminished, but the point made was not lost on even the lowly four and five diggers.
It's true: the M.A.D. doctrine (by which I mean M.A.D in newspeak) inverts the risk profile of the launch-fail condition. Deterrence is like that. In oldspeak, as we used to say, "when the cat's away the mice will play". No, those strange symbols are not mouse-whisker emoticons. We used to call them delimiters, back when both ends of a sentence had one, even though not of the same kind. Yeah, it was kinda weird, now that I think about it. But it grows on you after 40,000 hours of reading 600 wpm. You get used to it, ya know?
Too bad we only have negative evidence that M.A.D. actually worked in the first place.
Clinton never lost the biscuit. Did you see his waistline? ;-)
Seriously though, Clinton didn't lose anything, his aide lost the codes but not the football itself (guess I'm assuming there's more to the football than just a folder of codes). The aide then covered that fact up for months before anyone checking on him bothered to do more than take his word for it.
But Clinton was in no way involved in the loss or cover up of the situation.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
From the summary: The history of nuclear command and control systems has too many examples of risky designs that favor the ability to launch over the danger of an accidental one.
[[Citation Needed]]
Seriously - because the claim quoted above is not supported in either of the linked articles. In fact, the citations show precisely the *opposite* - as the PALs were specifically intended to reduce the ability to launch in favor of reducing the risk of accidental launch. That they were improperly used is an operational flaw, not a design flaw. (A difference roughly as subtle as a baseball bat upside the head - and that the writers are unaware of this is a sure and certain sign they aren't qualified to write on the topic.)
The writer of the article cited above further compounds his error by using a situation from over three decades ago as 'proof' that a problem exists today - a situation which his own quote shows to no longer exist.
The president losing the launch codes is a little harder for the reds to exploit then possibly a systematic failure
Unless it was the reds that "founf" the biscuit. They don't actually have to use it, all they have to do is put it into play. The time necessary to disregard, authenticate a new code is longer than a missle launch. Which is why the US nuclear threat is three pronged, land, sea, and air. The only missles that do not need a Permissive Action Link are sea launched, surface or sub-surface.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.