I was talking to a friend about US Nuclear weapons and he asked me “What stands in the way of some American Submarine captain deciding that enough is enough and that he’s going to nuke Mecca?”
I assum that you’d have to have all of the officers agreeing on board with said plan to launch missles independent of order to make it actually work. Are there any other safeguards, other then screening to make sure sub captains are stable?
Aw, crap. That should be SLBM.
Um, on question number one , the captains personal ethics and his sense of duty.
On the second point
A submarine will get an Elam, or an extremely low frequency message , telling it to come to surface , be it broaching or periscope depth and pop its antenna.
A coded burst will come down , and have a set of codes that will authenticate it as valid by the captain and the XO. All that does is tell them, shit is coming down, use this SIOP. In the captains safe, there will be a folder for different firing plans. Crack open the SIOP in the message , and it will have the PAL codes which will arm the devices , and warm up the bullpen.
The sub either goes to missile stations , or waits until a time on target is required and the Capt and XO will turn keys and generate a missile launch.
Declan
Given the high security classification involved, you’re not going to find authoritative step-by-step instructions on how to launch an SLBM. However, on this thread on the JoBlo forums a person claiming to be a former submariner explains a bit more about the process, which matches with what I’ve heard/read over the years. So, to answer the OP, no, not just the captain, but five officers would have to conspire to execute an illegal launch.
There was a novel (late 70s/early 80s, IIRC) which posited just this situation. A group of naval officers were convinced that the world was headed for nuclear destruction, and conspired to gain control of a Trident sub. They then presented an ultimatum to the U.S. and U.S.S.R. that cities would be destroyed on both sides until complete nuclear disarmament was implemented. Anyone else remember this book?
Found it; the book is called Pre-Empt, and was published in 1969. I can’t believe I remembered that much about a book I read once so long ago.
Actually, that movie referred to above should have been entitled Complete Load of Crap.
There were so many things wrong with this movie that I don’t know where to even begin.
Not the least of these was that the whole premise of the movie was flawed. No one person on a submarine can initiate a launch. This includes the commanding officer (CO).
Secondly, IIRC, the movie involved the receipt of partial launch orders with incomplete authorization codes. Incomplete launch orders = no launch orders.
There were a host of other howlers as well, including the underwater radar/sonar scopes, the dog on board, etc., etc. Forgive me if I don’t get all the details correct; I could barely sit through this movie once.
–robby (ex-submarine officer)
Sooooooo…
Is everything needed for a launch always contained totally within the sub? Or must some of the PAL (permissive action link) codes be received via radio? Its my understanding that the land missile bases must receive their codes from HQ but I could see a strong argument for (and against) allowing the subs true independence…
Gotta wait for one of the real bubbleheads to reply to this , but I am going to go out on a limb here , and say no , the pal codes are contained in the Submarine itself , under the SIOP orders.
Recieving the launch order , would be a small message , with the current code , and counter code , to keep the signint signature small enough that it would only take seconds to recieve,and then back down to cruising depth , while the message was deciphered and authenticated.
Declan
No disagreement from me. IIRC, the US Navy refused any technical support in making the film because the plot line was offensive to the Navy.
I don’t remember too much of the film.
Wasn’t the entire premise that some nationlist radicals had siezed a Russian Missle base and Naval base, and the US threatened to nuke the bases to prevent nukes from being launched at the US?
If so, why even bother with the Subs? Surely covnetional forces could retake the bases withen the appropriate time, and if not, why not just send a bomber to nuke the bases? Then it can be easily recalled if the base is recaptured. Or just launch a land based ICBM?
I remember the captain made a big deal of having to launch because the other SSBN’s out there might have been taken out by rebel subs, but it only takes a single sub to take out the needed targets, and to think a few rebel subs could wipe out the entire US Pacific Ballsitic missle fleet is a bit outlandish.
IANAMissileer, but knowing bunches of 'em, and knowing a bunch of B-52 aircrew (my former roommate is a navigator), I think there is a sequenced code that gets transmitted along with the launch orders. From what I understand, each level of the command strata has their own portion of the code (for sake of argument, like a four-digit block of the sixteen on your credit card), and for a fully authenticated message, certain parts of that code have to be input into either the Minuteman system or the gravity bomb/cruise missile being readied. It could be just a code to “warm up” and arm the weapon.
I do know missileers have the ability to target each missile, so I would assume that if they can retarget them by inputting information into a system, they would have to input information into them to launch.
Tripler
My job description unfortunately includes, “In the unlikely case of a nuclear war, grab some butter and jelly–because you will be toast.”
Oh, BTW, robby Sir, what did you think of The Hunt for Red October?
Tripler
Just out of curiosity.
Well, since Tony Soprano was on the USS Alabama I don’t know why he just didn’t get Paulie or Sil to whack Denzel.
I’ve read in a number of places that after a long debate, the Navy took away the capability for independent launches of nuclear weapons from their submarines. The problem is whether or not the submarine fleet can be a credible deterrent if an attacker believes he can neutralize it by destroying the fleet’s command, control and communications systems. Having the PAL codes on board ensures that the submarine can launch its missiles, even if everything back home has been nuked. Even with the PAL codes, it takes the cooperation of a large number of people on board the submarine to execute a missile launch.
I saw it in the theater when it was first released and I was blown away. (At the time, I was an NROTC midshipman who had just spent the previous summer on a boomer.) Heck, just seeing exterior shots of the subs was a rush in and of itself. Not to mention that I loved the book.
There were a lot of defects in the movie. One of the dumbest was having the Red October making a turn to supposedly evade a homing torpedo, with the torpedo being unable to make the same turn. (Hmm…let’s see: 30,000-ton sub can make the turn, but a 1-ton torpedo cannot?) In the book, IIRC, the Red October outran the torpedo (i.e. the torpedo ran out of fuel before striking the sub). This would have been much more realistic.
Also, the subs in combat were much too close to each other for realism.
Finally, there was far too much use of colored lights, neon, and chrome, but much of that can be excused. It’s a movie, after all.
All in all, though, it appeared that the producers of The Hunt for Red October made some attempt at verisimilitude, while those who produced Crimson Tide made no such effort whatsoever.
Robby, while I’ll defer to your knowledge of actual sub operations, I don’t remember the scenes in Crimson Tide the way you do. As I remember it, the sub received a complete launch order, followed by an incomplete order to abort. The captain (correctly?) ignored the incomplete order, and prepared for launch. The XO insisted that the risk of launching an unauthorized nuclear strike was too great, and insisted on taking extraordinary (and dangerous) measures to recover contact and clarify their orders. He was sent to the brig (or confined to quarters, or something) for insubordination, and the captain passed his role in the launch to another officer. I don’t remember any implication that the captain could launch by himself.
The upshot is that the XO was wrong at every stage of the game, according to the rules, and was only justified by the fact that he was right about the code, and that it would have been better not to launch – facts that he really didn’t have. His mutiny was thus completely beyond the pale, and would have resulted in prison time and a dishonorable discharge is the captain hadn’t torpedoed his own career in his testimony. I think it’s the implication that this was the better result that insulted the Navy.
I could be wrong, of course – I didn’t watch this turkey twice, either. But this scenario seems more reasonable than what you describe. Is it?
If the situation was as you describe, the sub would launch. In fact, now that you mention it, I also now seem to recall that this was the situation in the movie. (I guess I didn’t recall correctly, previously. ;))
The reason why the sub would launch is that an adversary could potentially negate much of our nuclear deterrent force by simply issuing incomplete abort orders to all units. (This assumes the adversary picks up on the flash traffic issuing orders in the first place. They also would have to have our communication crypto codes, unless the adversary simply issues the partial abort orders in the clear.) The false abort orders would have to be incomplete of necessity, as they presumably would not have the proper authentication codes.
So the upshot is that the XO was completely in the wrong. More to the point, any competent SSBN XO would know that he was in the wrong.
But to be honest, I’ve never heard of procedures to abort a launch. Unlike bombers, SLBMs cannot be recalled, and cannot be aborted. Once valid launch orders have been issued, it should be assumed that they will be followed. Once the missiles are away, that’s all she wrote.
BTW, while I served on one missile patrol on a U.S. SSBN as a midshipman in 1989, and was in a position to observe all non-TS aspects of missile drills, I never received any formal missile boat training. My knowledge of SSBN procedures is thus light on some of the details. (When I was commissioned, I served on a fast-attack submarine. Our mission was to take out the other side’s missile boats.)
I would hope to God that they exercise with slightly different codes and messages than the real thing in order to prevent just this very thing.
I’m sure they preclude anything with “EXERCISE EXERCISE EXERCISE” first or something, no?
Tripler
They don’t let me play around the nukes anymore. 