# Do any military vehicle/station currently in existence have a self-destruct?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 23, 2015, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432 "2015-02-23T18:30:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/1 "2015-02-23T18:30:29Z")
You see it all the time in sci-fi shows. Some starship or station, overrun with enemies, and the captain valiantly destroys the whole thing with a code and a button (sometimes with a 2nd in command verifying it). Its usually not so much as a bomb on the ship, but the self-destruct overrides safeties and overheats the engines or runs a warp core breach or drops the crystals into the anti-matter chamber or something.
Does this exist in real life? Do our military tanks or ships or planes have some procedure that involves it self-destructing itself to prevent it from falling into the hands of the enemy? I’m not talking about if a crew decides to, for example, set fire to the ammo room and blow themselves up that way. I’m talking about an actual, programmed computer chain reaction done on purpose with the intent to destroy the vessel. I’ve read about crews that were forced to land in hostile territory that spent time ripping out computers and stuff like that, but that’s not what I’m talking about
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### Author:  [@flyboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flyboy)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/2 "2015-02-23T18:38:09Z")
No such thing.
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### Author:  [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/3 "2015-02-23T18:43:26Z")
While they may well not destroy the hardware - I think that anything falling into enemy hands would be devoid of any useful software.
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### Author:  [@buddy431](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddy431)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/4 "2015-02-23T18:44:00Z")
The U2 did. They’re still used some, not exactly secret anymore, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if they still did (wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t either).
It was on a 60 second timer, had to be started by the pilot. Pilots could choose a mechanic they trusted to arm it. Anecdotaly, some pilots still thought it would really be set to explode as soon as they triggered it.
When Francis Gary Powers was shot down, he did not manage to activate it. He got some criticism for it, though he claimed plausibly that he wasn’t able to.
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### Author:  [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/5 "2015-02-23T18:45:39Z")
Does scuttling a ship count?
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### Author:  [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/6 "2015-02-23T18:47:17Z")
[How to sink your Aircraft Carrier.](http://www.cv6.org/ship/logs/scuttle.htm)
Not exactly ‘_self_’-destruct, mind you.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/7 "2015-02-23T20:33:32Z")
Do airports count as ‘stations’? Military airports sometimes have bombs buried under the runways to be used in the event that the airport is overtaken by hostile forces.
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### Author:  [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/8 "2015-02-23T20:40:29Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> Do airports count as ‘stations’? Military airports sometimes have bombs buried under the runways to be used in the event that the airport is overtaken by hostile forces.
Got a cite for that? A bomb buried under the runway would present some interesting maintenance challenges. I expect it would be easier to just drop an [anti-runway bomb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-runway_penetration_bomb) when departing the area.
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### Author:  [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/9 "2015-02-23T20:56:36Z")
It’s widely thought that US surveillance drones are equipped with self-destruct mechanisms. This was discussed when a drone went down in Iran in 2011:
> [@Slate](#):
>
> Following the crash of a CIA-operated drone in Iran last week, experts have debated whether Iranian engineers could steal technology from the downed plane. Why doesn’t the Pentagon build self-destruct mechanisms into its sensitive technology?
>
> It does. As reporter David Axe discussed in his book _War Bots: How U.S. Military Robots Are Transforming War in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Future_, the Pentagon was able to destroy its first generation of unmanned spy planes by remote control, in case they fell into enemy hands. And the feature really worked: Axe reports that pilots accidentally blew up a Northrop Grumman Global Hawk prototype during a 1999 test. The RQ-170 that went down in Iran last week probably had a self-destruct mechanism as well. The technology isn’t foolproof, though. If the plane lost contact with the ground, the self-destruct button wouldn’t work. Even when onboard explosives detonate, they don’t always completely destroy the vehicle. When drones have gone down in the past, the military has sent in manned attack jets to finish the job.
> **[Do Drones Have Self-Destruct Buttons?](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/12/downed-cia-drone-was-it-rigged-to-self-destruct.html)**
>
> Following the crash of a CIA-operated drone in Iran last week, experts have debated whether Iranian engineers could steal technology from the downed...
> [@The Atlantic](#):
>
> The drones are thought to be equipped with self-destruct capabilities in the event that they lose contact with their controllers, which is why the U.S. was initially skeptical of Iran’s claim to have the drone in custody. The officials didn’t say if they knew for certain that the fallen drone had managed to self-destruct.
> **[U.S. Drone That Went Down in Iran Was High-Tech Intel Tool, Officials Say](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/us-drone-that-went-down-in-iran-was-high-tech-intel-tool-officials-say/249562/)**
>
> The drone that Iran claims to have shot down was a stealth RQ-170 "Sentinel"
_Wired_, citing a _Washington Post_ article, claims that self-destruct mechanisms exist but are not always put in place on drones:
> [@Wired](#):
>
> In the aftermath of the December crash, reporters and analysts debated how the Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin, could have appeared apparently intact in photos released by the Iranian government when almost all U.S. surveillance drones come equipped with self-destruct mechanisms meant to prevent just such a propaganda coup.
>
> The Post‘s story provides an answer.
>
> Reportedly John Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence from 2007 to 2009, and other senior officials wanted self-destruct gear installed on the Sentinels flying over Iran. “But the CIA’s engineering team balked, saying it would add too much weight to the delicately balanced frame,” the Post reports.
> **[Stealth Drone Capture Didn't Hurt U.S. Nuke Spying, Paper Says](https://www.wired.com/2012/04/stealth-drone-capture/)**
>
> When one of the U.S. Air Force's secretive RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drones crashed along the Afghanistan-Iran border in December and wound up in the hands of the Iranians, it did only "limited damage" to a U.S.-led effort to spy on Iran's suspected...
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### Author:  [@JerrySTL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JerrySTL)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/10 "2015-02-23T21:16:40Z")
Back in the 1960 and 1970s the F-111 aircraft did for a while. On that aircraft the entire cockpit capsule could be ejected in an emergency. Therefore some classified stuff could fall intact into enemy hands if the aircrew ejected. They were disabling that system when I was working on them. Evidently it was a maintenance nightmare and not worth all the effort.
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### Author:  [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/11 "2015-02-23T21:28:27Z")
The FBCB2 computers used on military vehicles have a DESTROY button that wipes the hard drive and (I believe) permanently damages it beyond use. It is my understanding that if the hard drive is destroyed in this manner, it cannot even be reimaged or reused at all afterwards. It is possible that the button just performs a bunch of rewrites over the disk to prevent recovery of the data, but I think that it also melts the disk or otherwise physically destroys it as well. I don’t know. I’m not allowed to press that button.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/12 "2015-02-23T21:36:57Z")
Aren’t missiles routinely equipped with a self-destruct mechanism? That way if their guidance system fails and they’re heading off course, they can be destroyed in the air rather then allowed to come down on some random location.
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### Author:  [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/13 "2015-02-23T21:37:24Z")
I just checked the manual. Nothing cool happens, unfortunately. Pressing the DESTROY button sends a distress signal to headquarters and then overwrites all data and .exe files on the disk. So the operating system has to be reloaded, but the hard drive is reusable.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/14 "2015-02-23T21:37:31Z")
I think that a self-destruct mechanism was meant to be the SF equivalent of scuttling a ship. Scuttling has been used on many ships, but doesn’t require a bomb or explosive device (as noted above)
The first appearance of a self-destruct in an SF movie (or, to my knowledge, any SF) was the 1964 film **Robinson Crusoe on Mars** , where the hero uses the self-destruct as the Swiss Family Robinson did, to get rid of his ship and avoid attracting the unwanted attention of hostile forces (aliens, in this case, not pirates). It was a prettynonspectacular effect, unlike virtually every depiction in SF cinema since, and made a sort of sense. It’d be interesting if our idea of a “self destruct” device derives from scuttling via Johann Wyss’ book.
Self-destruct showed up after that in Star Trek (as a bluff in “The Corbomite Maneuver”, but later as a real option), then in the movie **Alien** , then all over the place. The unibquity of it was parodied and commented on in the SF TV-movie _Something is Out There_, when the earth guy asks the alien woman if she had a self-destruct device on board. “Why would I have something like THAT?” she reasonably asks. (Well, to get rid of the big Nasty alien, of course, but it’s not an option).
I don’t know when the idea of incorporating any real self-destruct mechanisms in flying items got started, and don’t know of any for a fact myself. Craig Thomas, in the novel _Firefox Down!_ talks about one being incorporated into the titular Firefox. IIRC, that device wasn’t meant to destroy the entire plane, but only to keep certain secret devices out of enemy hands. That seems a bit more reasonable, and wouldn’t require as much explosive. Just as self-destruct looks like a counterpart to scuttling a ship, such limited self-destruct is analogous to putting secret orders in a weighted bag or folder that could be dropped over the side of the ship.
Filmmakers LOVE self-destruct devices, of course, because it gives you a literally explosive finish, which looks good on film. But these are the same guys who like to have perfect silencers on guns, let people fire guns in enclosed spaces without any effect on their hearing, and routinely screw up things about computers. So why trust them on self-destruct?
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### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/15 "2015-02-23T21:38:44Z")
My brother told me that at his university there was some old computer hardware from the 60s or maybe 50s sitting around in the basement hallways that had a “grenade” button. Hey, the Soviets are invading our top secret computer installation, hit grenade to blow that shit up and we’re evacuating! Makes you wonder how many technicians accidentally hit that grenade button, and when they removed the grenades from the consoles.
Note that even in Star Trek the self destruct mechanism isn’t including extra bombs or photon torpedoes–it’s just removing the antimatter containment which allows the antimatter fuel to mix with the regular matter of the ship in an uncontrolled way, leading to the release of a heck of a lot of energy E=mc^2 style. For wet navy ships it’s usually enough to open or blow a hole in the hull and let the ship sink.
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### Author:  [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/16 "2015-02-23T21:54:50Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> Aren’t missiles routinely equipped with a self-destruct mechanism? That way if their guidance system fails and they’re heading off course, they can be destroyed in the air rather then allowed to come down on some random location.
NASA’s launch vehicles typically are. Don’t know about military missiles.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/17 "2015-02-23T22:39:44Z")
> [@buddy431](#):
>
> The U2 did.
> […]
> It was on a 60 second timer, had to be started by the pilot. Pilots could choose a mechanic they trusted to arm it. Anecdotaly, some pilots still thought it would really be set to explode as soon as they triggered it.
> […]
> When Francis Gary Powers was shot down, he did not manage to activate it. He got some criticism for it, though he claimed plausibly that he wasn’t able to.
Not to hijack, but it’s by no means established that Powers was shot down or that he even attempted to use any of the self-destruct/suicide materials. That the largely intact aircraft and largely uninjured pilot ended up in Soviet hands is an unsolved mystery pointing to another sequence of events.
But in the context of this thread, yes, the U2 was never meant to land anywhere but safe territory in less than many small pieces of plane and pilot.
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### Author:  [@buddy431](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddy431)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/18 "2015-02-23T23:28:52Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#):
>
> Not to hijack, but it’s by no means established that Powers was shot down or that he even attempted to use any of the self-destruct/suicide materials. That the largely intact aircraft and largely uninjured pilot ended up in Soviet hands is an unsolved mystery pointing to another sequence of events.
>
> But in the context of this thread, yes, the U2 was never meant to land anywhere but safe territory in less than many small pieces of plane and pilot.
What exactly are you referring to? Are you referring to Mentyukov’s claims that he intercepted the U2 with his aircraft instead of it being shot down? I find that less plausible. It’s pretty clear that missiles were launched, and they were capable of hitting a U2, as shown by the one [later shot down in Cuba](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Anderson). In any case, I don’t think it matters that much.
It is true that many Americans assumed that the pilot would not survive being shot down at altitude, but that’s not really the same as deliberately trying to make sure that the pilot would die. He was given poison with which to commit suicide if he wished, but by all accounts it was optional, not required.
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### Author:  [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/19 "2015-02-23T23:38:50Z")
Regarding spacecraft : any really high end spacecraft is going to have something at _least_ as energetic as nuclear fusion bombs onboard for propulsion. Setting off the propulsion magazine seems like a reasonable thing to do if you want to keep the ship out of enemy hands.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2015, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-any-military-vehicle-station-currently-in-existence-have-a-self-destruct/713432/20 "2015-02-23T23:41:37Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#):
>
> Got a cite for that? A bomb buried under the runway would present some interesting maintenance challenges. I expect it would be easier to just drop an [anti-runway bomb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-runway_penetration_bomb) when departing the area.
> **[Canadian pipe mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_pipe_mine)**
>
> The Canadian pipe mine, also known as the McNaughton tube, was a type of landmine deployed in Britain during the invasion crisis of 1940–1941. It comprised a horizontally bored pipe packed with explosives, and once in place this could be used to instantly create an anti-tank obstacle or to ruin a road or runway thereby denying its use by an enemy.
> In November 1939 Lieutenant-General Andrew McNaughton travelled to Toronto for a meeting with Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Hertzberg (Commanding Roya...
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