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From: dand@tekigm.UUCP (Dan C. Duval)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Accidental Launches
Message-ID: <33@tekigm.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Dec-83 17:45:53 EST
Article-I.D.: tekigm.33
Posted: Thu Dec  8 17:45:53 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Dec-83 01:00:10 EST
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 64

Greg Stephens makes a case for how difficult it would be for the Air Force
to accidently launch its missiles in the US. By the same token, it would
be difficult to launch Europe-based missiles and the Strategic Air Command
bombers, but all of this is dependent on one thing:

               The FAILSAFE system.

According to the Failsafe scheme, the President has the only key that allows
the US missile forces for launch or the airborne bomber weapons to arm.
However, if the radio link between his control case (that Air Force officer
that is always following him around with a small suitcase-- that suitcase is
the Failsafe control) and Omaha/Cheyenne Mountain is broken, then the SAC
commanding officer has temporary control until the Vice President (or whoever
else is supposed to be the new President) has the Failsafe control, or that
communication is reestablished with the President's control. So some schmuck
puts a bullet into the case instead of the President and for several minutes at
least some essentially unknown general has the power to launch.

Now for the bad news.

The US Navy ballistic missile submarines are not on the Failsafe system. Boring
holes in the ocean is not conducive to decent radio reception, so the Failsafe
system does not extend to the subs. On any US submarine at sea, the decision
to use nuclear weapons falls on the Captain, the Executive Officer (second-in-
command), and the Engineering Officer (third-in-command). These three men have
the keys and the codes to launch, so only the three of them have to agree that
launch is necessary/desirable. Paranoid conspiracies aside, just how difficult
would it be to convince the officers of a ballistic submarine that a launch was
already in progress? The easiest way, of course, is to detonate a nuclear
weapon in the vicinity of the sub -- any of you like to poke your boat up into
the air to signal Washington, assuming the explosion did not screw up the
atmospherics too much to make contact? Granted, finding the sub may not be
very easy, but if a fanatic can get hold of a bomb, lobbing it into the water
near a missile sub can't be that much more difficult.

So for the sake of argument, let's say we've convinced the sub's crew to
launch their missiles(let's also assume that world tensions are high, and
that the US defensive status is DEFCON 2 or DEFCON 1, so that the missiles
have been targeted inside the Soviet Union and their inertial guidance
systems are being updated as fast as the data can be pushed into them).
I do not believe the Soviet Union would launch their missiles if one or two
launches were detected, but now they suddenly start tracking twenty-four
missiles, launched from about 1000 miles south-east of Japan, flight time
is 12-15 minutes depending upon how far into Siberia the missiles are
programmed to penetrate. Figure from 1-3 warheads per Trident missile,
putting up to 72 Soviet targets under the gun. 

(Please pause here to shudder.)

Now, my plug. The Navy has been trying for the last 15 years to get a low-
frequency radio system into operation in the United States. These radio
waves will reach submarines at sea, fairly reliably. So far, no states
are willing to have a 100-mile square grid of cables buried in their state 
as the transmitting antenna. Once in operation, the subs become part of the
Failsafe system, thus reducing the chances of accidental nuclear war by 
removing a number of the possible scenarios. 

I do not believe that this is an outrageous request, and it does reduce the
possibility of a nuclear exchange. Michigan refused to allow the system in
the Upper Peninsula in the mid-70s. I don't know about other states, and
I haven't heard whether the Navy is still pushing this program or not,
but it sounds like a damn cheap assist to keep my precious ass from being
blown off. Yours?