In this Great Debates post, Bryan Ekers mentions that the premise of the movie Crimson Tide was that the captain of a nuclear submarine can casually launch nuclear weapons. Not wanting to hijack that thread I brought the question here.
This is not how I remember that film at all. It’s clearly stated that the captain can not simply launch; he needs the cooperation of the crew. If nothing else, he definitely needed Viggo Mortensen’s character. Am I dead wrong here?
I agree with you. I have no idea how realistic it is, but the film shows the requirement that 3 separate officers agree on the launch (CO, XO, Weps). In addition, one would think that any number of other officers would be aware of the launch and the reasons for it and could potentially stop the launch if they felt like proper procedure was not followed.
I believe it’s a two-key system. One person can’t do it by themself.
However, in the classic submarine movie, The Fifth Missile, I believe David Souls is all set to launch the missiles all by himself.
Well, what I said was:
I didn’t get more explicit in that thread because I didn’t want to get accused of dropping spoilers, but assuming anyone who opens this thread is familiar with the film, the main conflict (what I meant by “premise”) is between Gene Hackman (the Captain, who wants to launch) and Denzel Washington (the Executive Officer, who wants to wait) with Weapons Officer Mortenson, Chief of the Boat George Dzundza and other crew members torn by conflicting loyalties and duties. Thus, the captain is not this third most powerful man on Earth (as the film states in a page of text at the beginning) because he needs to cooperation of at least one other person. Even if the sub was damaged and some combination of the Captain/Exec/Weapons Officer etc. were killed, it would still take at least two people turning keys to launch.
Sorry if I was unclear.
Well if the cooperation of others is your criteria, the President of the United States can’t be most powerful since he can’t really do anything with the cooperation of more than one person to launch a nuclear attack.
I served on a ballistic missile submarine. No one person, including the CO, can initiate a launch. It’s an intentionally redundant, complicated procedure that requires the cooperation of the whole crew.
That being said, there is little discretion given to the CO, the officers, or the crew. If a launch order validated to be authentic is received, the launch proceeds. Period. It’s very simple and binary. Go or no go. There is no provision for retraction of a launch order. Also, a partial launch order is not a valid launch order.
IIRC, the premise of the movie was that a valid launch order was received, and then a partial launch order retraction was received. This makes no sense at all. If such a system were in place, potential enemies could nullify our strategic deterrent system by following up any encrypted valid launch orders with fake invalid launch order retractions, hoping to confuse our forces.
In short, the whole premise of the movie was a load of crap.
One other thing. A ballistic missile submarine crew practices launch procedures almost constantly.
Encrypted orders directing such practice launch runs were sent quite often. When decoded, general quarters would be sounded and the whole crew would respond. The sub would proceed to launch depth, practice keys would be distributed, the actual missile guidance systems would be initialized, etc. The launch runs were very elaborate.
We ran through one of these practice runs about 2-3 times a week. They often came on Sundays and holidays.
That’s what was so unrealistic about Crimson Tide, (besides the stupid dog, the underwater radar scopes, and the mutiny). The whole premise that the crew would waste time discussing whether to launch is laughable. After practicing it hundreds of times, an actual launch would proceed like clockwork.
This, of course, is the whole point of strategic deterrence. If our enemies don’t think our deterrence is credible, it’s not much of a deterrence.
I’ve never had to practice killing a zillion people, but are you sure of this? It seems to me that doing it in actuality is completely different from practicing it. It’s easy to pretend you’re launching, quite another to know you’re killing vast amounts of people.
Especially true when you think you have reason to belive there may have been a mistake, as in the film.
The crew only knows this in an abstract sense. Actually, most of the crew doesn’t even know where the missiles are going. For all they know, the missiles could be targeted at an enemy’s nuclear missile launch sites.
The whole point of the practice procedures is to make the process rote. I have no doubt that submarine crews would carry out their orders. As I said before, it has to be that way, or the whole idea of strategic deterrence loses its credibility.
That’s the point that I was trying to make. The submarine crew is not given the discretion to consider whether or not a mistake was made.
You have to realize that the submarine is at the end of a long line of decisions, actions, and encrypted communications (with codes to be authenticated) that have to take place to effect a nuclear launch. The place to consider whether or not a mistake has been made is much higher in this chain of command. If a valid launch order makes it though all of these safeguards to the submarine, that’s it. The launch is going to happen.
That being said, launch orders are not given lightly. In fact, it has never happened. Hopefully, they never will.
From Wiki:
So in the film the launch order was not given, only an order to arm missiles, which then left the decision to fire in the hands of the Captain.
The article doesn’t have a cite, so may be incorrect. Anyone know?
FADE IN – INT. SUBMARINE
CAPT. RAMSEY is seated in his quarters. LT. COMMANDER HUNTER enters with two cups of tea.
HUNTER
We just received orders to not fire nuclear missles
CAPT. RAMSEY
Oh, good. Did you bring sugar?
FADE OUT
THE END