There are a couple of alien invasion films coming up for release. So I’m wondering if someone like POTUS, in the face of a large-scale invasion, can issue a weapons-free order on nukes? Essentially putting them under the control of the local military authorities to use as they see fit. Of course he can say such an order, but could it be implemented?
I’m certain that in the event of an actual alien invasion, some idiot will panic and launch the nuke sitting under him without waiting for orders to do so.
We can’t even go weapons free with 80mm mortars. No chance it would ever happen with nukes!!
It is possible for POTUS to issue orders authorizing theater-level or brigade commanders to deploy and utilize tactical nuclear weapons at their discretion. One of the issues with the Pershing missile system (and particularly the Pershing II) was maintaining command security of the missiles while at the same time making them readily available for use in the case of a sneak attack. The mobile nature of the launchers was supposed to help them avoid disabling attack, but also complicated command, control, and communication in the pre-cellular communication era.
There are also provisional plans for the release of strategic nuclear weapons by local complex commanders or launch officers in the case of an evident nuclear exchange where communication channels are lost and it is reasonably believed that the National Command Authority chain has been broken, i.e. the President and all successors are dead or out of contact. This is analogous to “Plan R” from Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and necessary to deter a decapitating attack.
As a practical matter, nuclear weapons would probably be of no consequence against a sentient extraterrestrial race that has the technology and command of energies sufficient to cross interstellar space. Scenarios that assume this are almost by default ludicrous in their premises.
Stranger
Modern warfare has evolved well beyond spears and arrows, but you can still kill people with both.
Sure, people.
You can’t kill people in tanks with spears and arrows. And the difference in technology between natives versus armor is nothing to hairless monkeys with primitive ability to initiate nuclear reactions versus aliens who have some kind of beyond imagination energy source and propulsion technology that allows them to travel across the vast expanse of interstellar space. The “scrappy band of rag-tag humans defeating evil alien overlords who have come for our wealth and women” makes for entertaining heroic fiction but doesn’t make much sense in any practical terms.
Stranger
Someone has never played Civilization.
I don’t remember where I heard this exactly, but I once heard it put like this: if aliens with the technology to cross interstellar space decided that we needed to be destroyed for some reason, the ensuing “battle” wouldn’t be analogous to “bows and arrows versus machine guns.” It would be more like “sponges versus ICBMs.”
That seems like a pretty good analogy.
Oh sure, if they wanted to kill all humans, we wouldn’t have a chance, but if they wanted to enslave us but keep most of us alive in the process, they’d have to put tentacles on the ground and perhaps be somewhat vulnerable.
Maybe. But I have to wonder if we would be of any use to such an advanced species, even as slaves.
I would imagine they have some type of advanced fabrication techniques that would allow them to build their interstellar death ray far faster and more efficiently than a bunch of humans who are pretty weak and fragile, physically.
I imagine that a general launch order would include all the codes necessary to enable all nukes. Unless the codes are time-sensitive (“use it or lose it”), this would free up the nukes for use at discretion.
As far as resisting alien invasion, it isn’t just how powerful (VERY) their weapons would be, but probably how sophisticated they were as well. Just the ability to rapidly and nearly infallibly hit multiple targets would make human infantry look like monkies flinging poo.
Thankfully, when the nukes utterly fail we’ll still be able to rely on the common cold.