Does the president still carry the nulear button briefcase wherever he goes ?
Has the nuclear button briefcase been upgraded over the decades?
Is the decision to go with a nuclear strike the president’s alone ?
Globalsecurity.org has a reasonably good entry on the “nuclear football”. It is carried by a military aide (rotating between the services) who is referred to as “Yankee White” when carrying the satchel. It’s just a normal high security case with a book of Single (or Strategic) Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP, although now called OPPLAN or CONPLAN) targeting plans and attack options within these groups, the identifying launch codes, and a military satellite telephone (SATCOM). Although the decision to strike is the President’s responsibility (with a few exceptions) the order has to be verified as coming from the President by an elected or Congressionally-confirmed person. Typically this would be the Vice President or the Secretary of Defense, but it could be any Cabinet secretary, Congressperson, or even the head of any Federal Department or Agency that has to be approved by Congress. A launch order can be countermanded by STRATCOM if they cannot verify the President’s identity or if there is cause to believe that the President is not in sound mind (meeting the same criteria as temporary removal from office). This has not happened (as far as we are aware) although Henry Kissinger once wrote that he instructed the Joint Chiefs of Staff not to accept any orders from the President during a particular episode of drunken paranoia on the part of Nixon. (Once must take this story, along with many tales advanced by Kiss, with a grain of salt, but it is in line with Nixon’s post-Watergate behavior.)
In the case that the President is dead, incapacitated, or believed to be out of contact for an indefinite period of time, launch authority follows the Presidential line of succession. STRATCOM is not authorized to launch without executive authority; however, the details of SIOPs were held at a high classification level, and it is almost certain that there were contingency plans for retaliatory launch if executive authority was eliminated without a clear line of succession, analogous to the “Plan R” in Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.
Stranger
The Flying Dutchman asked “Has the nuclear button briefcase been upgraded over the decades?” and that made me realize we are still using the metaphor ‘button’ to describe a set of launch codes. The fact that a well-established check and balance system of command and control was envisioned and implemented during the Kennedy administration is one of the things I forgot about (if I ever knew) and that the idea that there was a single Red Button is probably an artifact of popular media combined with my ignorance.
I had in mind the POTUS sitting in the Oval Office and watching a series of video monitors and then all of a sudden the red alarm lights go off and a hidden panel would open up from the desk and it would reveal a Giant Red Button.
What about ‘football’?
When Kennedy’s post-Cuban Missile Crisis strategy came into play, it appears there was a significant perceived threat of a Soviet sleeper in the minds of both the planners and the POTUS.
Those launch codes couldn’t be referred to as ‘launch codes’ because (hard as it to believe now) that phrase was unique and meaningful enough at that time to be a clear indication of a strategy that the US did not want the Soviets to know.
Perhaps, the use of the word ‘football’, since it describes the need to keep the ‘football’ in play and protect it from being taken by the opposition, played well into the worries of the day and was therefore an inevitable metaphor. We know Kennedy played touch football and I can’t imagine that didn’t have some influence.
So I guess my idea is that use of the word ‘football’ was inevitable because honestly what else would y’all call it?