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."

Comments

Re:Why have them

[hedwards]

That doesn't apply here. The difference is that there's no plausible reason why a rock would repel tigers. Especially since I'm assuming you aren't in a place where tigers are likely to come.

The point of nuclear weapons is to deter conflicts on the scale of the world wars from ever happening again, and so far they've done that admirably. They were never intended for the purpose of dealing with smaller scale outbreaks of violence even ones as large as the Iraq war.

Re:Why have them

[Pharmboy]

Expect some bad mods for being right. Everyone likes to pretend that the Cold War didn't happen, and most of the people with the strongest opinions didn't live during it, have never served in the military or had relatives that did during the Cold War. Plenty of mistakes have been made along the way (Vietnam for starters), but having a strong military and nuclear deterrent since WWII wasn't one of them.

While I understand why, most people under 30 don't fully appreciate the threat of the USSR after WWII as they are fortunate enough to not have lived under it. Ironically, the reason they haven't lived under that threat is due to what some are complaining about to begin with.