In the recent thread concerning our likely response to a nuclear blackmail threat, there were the usual assortment of “nuke them back to the stone age” responses. Trying to avoid the philosophical question of whether or not we should nuke somebody, or whether or not we will, I’m just wondering, under what circumstances exactly is the President authorized to go nuclear?
The obvious first answer is any time the U.S. has inbound nuclear missiles from any other country. The Cold War is over but the same infrastructure and procedures for that threat are still in place to this day.
Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, CO monitors for inbound nuclear threats 24/7/365. If one or more inbound missiles are detected, there is a really fast procedure for noticing the Joints Chiefs of Staff of the armed forced and the President. The President always has a military officer close at hand that follows him around all the time with the ‘nuclear football’ that contains the current launch plans. The President is expected to order a nuclear launch as soon as the threat is confirmed beyond reasonable doubt.
If the threat is real, it would be countered most likely by submarines that are hidden underwater all of the time with nuclear missiles. If the situation escalated to a full-scale nuclear war, it would also fall to launches from the U.S.mainland. Time from first notification to detonation anywhere in the world as a response is only 30 minutes - 2 hours so there is no time to get Congress involved or solicit alternate opinions.
If you are asking about an offensive strike from the U.S., I don’t think that can happen based on the political climate and treaties in place. Nuclear war is basically all or nothing even today. The biggest remaining question is what would happen if someone launched against a U.S. ally like Great Britain that didn’t serve as an eminent threat against the U.S. mainland.
Well, in theory, now that the last few wars that we fought were not declared, going against Article 1 Section 8 of the constitution, congress is really a non-factor, and the President could just take the step on his own.
Though, I think it would be unlikely… We would fund another nation to go to war for us… Like when we funded the Iraqi’s to fight Iran… Or when we funded Osama to fight the Russians.
These methods are tried and true. :rolleyes:
So, launch under fire is still a valid option? I thought they ruled that out a while back.
Technically speaking, the National Command Authority (NCA), which is the Department of Defense term for the commander-in-chief and subsequent chain of command, has plenary authority to authorize the release and direct the use of nuclear weapons. The President of the United States (POTUS) is, of course, the primary executive in the NCA, with the Secretary of Defense (SecDef) just subordinate to him.
The President could direct the Air Force or Navy to launch an attack using any weapon in the Active Stockpile at any time without further justification or obligation to inform Congress. However, such an order does have to be confirmed by a Cabinet member as being a lawful order and that the President is in sound mind and judgment. It is generally assumed that this would be SecDef, but this isn’t actually required to confirm the order; it could be any one of the other secretaries, or in locum their undersecretaries. However, if SecDef, as chief executive of the Department of Defense, countermanded the order it would be nullified until SecDef was removed from office (by executive order or otherwise) and the order was reconfirmed by another Cabinet secretary or appointee to SecDef (probably one of the Undersecretaries of Defense).
Realistically, if the go-code was given without provocation, the Secretary of the pertinent branch of the military would likely request confirmation and explanation. It seems unlikely that an unjustified order from a vengeful or unhinged executive would be executed today. A more plausible scenario for a pre-emptive attack would involve briefing the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding a threat and the need for nuclear response. This would obviously be a very extreme situation; most likely a nuclear or biological threat that could not be countered by conventional means.
There were (allegedly) provisions in the Cold War-era SIOPs for autonomous response in the case that the NCA chain was disrupted–similar to “Plan R” of Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb–and presumably such provisions exist in the current OPLAN, but these would very likely require strong confirmation of a threat, such as an ongoing attack. The United States has theoretically come within minutes of launching a presumed counterattack on at least three different situations, but the reality is that safeguards in the command and control system and assurances of counterstrike capability by the submarine leg of the triad have so far prevented the United States from actually issuing launch orders. However, the deterrence policy of Launch On Warning (LOW), in which nuclear forces can be placed on alert with release to launch without additional if a certain set of conditions are observed, offers the opportunity of accidental first launch, albeit unlikely in the post-Cold War environment, or at least until another nuclear power is seen as capable of launching a disarming first strike.
The same provisions and political safeguards cannot be said for other nuclear armed powers, however. The provisions for Britain and France are fairly transparent and require confirmation, and despite fears during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and transition to separate states, actual security of strategic nuclear weapons was maintained by the respective militaries. (There is some question about control of tactical nuclear weapons, and some downright frightening information that came out later regarding storage of weapons grade nuclear material.) We know little about PRC command authority for nuclear weapons; the same is true for Israel and Pakistan, and what we do know of India’s control provisions is disturbingly inadequate compared to modern standards. Indian nuclear weapons do not, as far as we know, have any of the modern safety features of US, UK, and Russian weapons (encrypted and embedded electromechanical permissive action links, one point safe design, insensitive high explosive lenses, fire resistent pits).
Stranger
So any time the President feels it is necessary and can convince one of the Secretaries of the need, he can launch?
And here I thought TV and movies were cutting some corners…
Yeah, but if the command was given to a nuclear armed sub, that sub would refuse and take refuge in some tropical island where there was a hot French chick manning a NATO station… Oh wait, that’s Last Resort. 
It’s a nitpick, but the Cheyenne Mountain Complex is now in standby status, as the NORAD US operations center has been moved to an ordinary looking office building on nearby Petersen AFB. It is true that the communication infrastructure is still in place to support a nuclear response in the span of a few minutes, and Minuteman III ICBM complexes are staffed 24 hours a day, but the system has not been placed on high alert for over twenty years, and the current OPLAN, while largely classified, is less focused on strategic deterrence than SIOPs of the Cold War era, and both weapons and delivery systems have been reduced dramatically.
In the early 1980s, the United States fielded around twenty-five thousand nuclear weapons, including a fleet of ~450 LGM-30F ‘Minuteman II’ (one MK-12A RV), 550 LGM-30G ‘Minuteman III’ missiles (three MK-12A RVs each), and around 50 LGM-25C ‘Titan II’ (one MK-6) missiles. As the Titan II was being decommissioned, the LGM-118A ‘Peacekeeper’ was being deployed in equal quantity in refitted Minuteman siolos (with a series of poorly considered schemes to deploy an equal amount on railcars, in “buoyant silos” in the Great Lakes, buried several thousand meters in the Rockies, deployed on littoral submarines, et cetera), and the road-mobile LGM-134 ‘Midgetman’ planned for deployment in the early 1990s. However, in the post-Cold War environment, the US cancelled the Midgetman (which had a number of technical issues anyway), has complete retired the Minuteman II and Peacekeeper wings, and has reduced the Minuteman III by about 150 of that force. The remaining MMIII are refitted to carry single MK-21 RVs instead of the 3 MK-12As (with a few exceptions). Similar reductions were made to the Fleet Ballistic Missile forces (retirement of the C-4 ‘Trident’ SLBM, and the D-5 ‘Trident II’ was refit to carry a reduced number of RVs). The systems are also “detargetted”; that is, targets are not kept in the navigation system of the missile. However, with the guidance system modernization upgrade on the MMIII it takes only a few seconds to load in any desired target and trajectory.
So, while the response time is, at least in theory, about the same as during the Cold War, the level of alertness and total capability is substantially reduced from the height in the 1980s.
Launch On Warning is still a part of official deterrence doctrine, and in fact there is a continuing effort to enhance early warning systems to provide quicker and more accurate verification of a potential threat.
Stranger
In theory, yes. In reality, I suspect someone would take his elbow and say, “Look, Mr. President, I know it has been a trying day, but we really can’t drop The Bomb on Venezuela even if Chavez is a complete nutter. It would look really bad in the polls, and after that debate you need to work on gaining public sympathy…”
Kissinger once claimed that Nixon was tearing around on a drunken rampage and he had to instruct the Joint Chiefs not to accept any orders from him. Of course, Kissinger also likes to spin outrageous stories for his own entertainment. But it wouldn’t have been totally out of character for Dick to have a profane discussion about nuking China, “but of course we wouldn’t do that.”
Stranger
Excellent answers Stranger on a Train! I know a little about this stuff but your answers always go way above and beyond to make the understatement of the year.
[tangential hijack]Pardon me if I inject a few kilobytes of levity into this serious discussion, but this thread would be incomplete without a link to the short cartoon Pigeon: Impossible.[/tangential hijack]
What happens if the POTUS tells me to launch but no cabinet secretary agrees? Since he is the commander in chief am I not disobeying a direct order?
As an officer your job is to obey lawful orders, and Congress has made the law in matters of nuclear warfare pretty clear: you need confirmation from two people all the way up the chain of command.
friedo is essentially correct; an unconfirmed launch order would not be acted upon. However, it should be understood that agreement with the order is not what the SecDef or other Cabinet secretary is doing; they are merely confirming that the order does come from POTUS and that he or she is of sound mind and judgment. It is a fine point, but technically a lawful launch order is strictly within the purview of the President.
As a practical matter, no sane person is going to confirm an order for unilateral strike without some very strong justification. When Kennedy and his cabinet were discussing a pre-emptive strike on the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis, his entire Cabinet, the JCS, and personal advisors were all assembled, and it was in fact a minor Cabinet member who recommended to Kennedy to respond to a first, less bombastic cable from Khruschev and ignore the second provocational one, which was clearly drafted under pressure of Soviet hawks.
Stranger
As a practical matter, consider that drawing the United States into an unprovoked war is, quite literally, an act of treason. Unless the president has the authorization of Congress to drop a nuke, he’s running the very real risk that he could be impeached, removed from office, and then put on trial for his life as a traitor.
Diceman, as I said, I’m just looking for the minimum steps necessary between warning lights and loud noises. What happens after the loud noises is another issue entirely.
Stranger,
Thanks for all the info. But is there some document that I could read that spells out the SECDEF agreement rule?
Thank you.
Sigh.
Let’s hope we don’t get nuked during a leap year.
Thanks for the link. I am not familiar with SASSI, but their wiki entry makes it look like they’re fairly closely aligned with Pakistan, given they were founded on a grant from Pakistan’s National University of Science and Technology and their other office (besides their London one) is in Islamabad. Still, I found your link interesting and the cites within it look promising if one wants to delve deeper into the subject.
A simple google search for Pakistan nuclear C&C yields a bunch of different papers looking at the matter. Here’s a 30,000 foot view on the subject from the Asia Times in late 2011.