US Preparing to Put Nuclear Bombers Back on 24-Hour Alert

http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2017/10/exclusive-us-preparing-put-nuclear-bombers-back-24-hour-alert/141957/

by smacktoward • 9 years ago

52 60 9 years ago

General "Buck" Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.

Of course, what a waste of money (eg ICBMs and SLBMs are superior in every respect) and unnecessary escalation of risk.

microcolonel4• 9 years ago

It's a waste of money if you and your allies aren't under constant, repeated threat.

mikeash10• 9 years ago

Even if you are under threat, what purpose is served in the modern age by putting bombers on alert? The war would be over before they reached an interesting target.

carlisle_• 9 years ago

Some would argue a threat worsened by provocative and unilateral actions, but we'll see who writes the history books.

Overtonwindow• 9 years ago

"General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!"

Astonishingly good movie.

Animats• 9 years ago

Well, when the enemy posts a target chart with your air base on it, you do that.[1]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/north-kor...

thethirdone• 9 years ago

The 3d-ish animation in that article is atrocious. I fails to provide any meaningful insight other than the raw heights, the trajectories are not actual trajectories (they aren't elliptical and that includes the ISS), and the scale is way off.

cyberferret• 9 years ago

“I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.”

The global situation that 'we find ourselves in', or the global situation that we have actually created?

ghettoCoder• 9 years ago

Not sure what you're alluding to since they're one and the same. This situation's been building for well over a decade. Bush talked tough but did nothing when he was in Office, Obama chose to pull a Chamberlain (same with Iran) and now Trump is swinging the pendulum the other way. Hopefully he doesn't swing too far too fast.

It's like watching a slow motion train wreck, kind of satisfying but damn is it terrifying.

Gustomaximus• 9 years ago

"Air Force’s top officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is asking his force to think about new ways that nuclear weapons could be used for deterrence, or even combat"

That last line about using nukes for combat is scary. Every country should take a stance they wont be first to fire. It reduces the likelyhood of actually having to use them. Once US is talking pre-emptive tactical strikes now Russia and China are much more likely to gear up for the same and sit there guessing if they should launch first next time tensions increase.

We really need to cage these war hawks that get into power. My jaw hit the ground at the stupidity of that statement. They just made the world and their country a significantly more dangerous place. Thats far from defending their nation.

pmoriarty2• 9 years ago

"Every country should take a stance they wont be first to fire. It reduces the likelyhood of actually having to use them."

What makes you think they want to reduce the likelihood of actually having to use them?

It's like another part of the article:

"One painting -- a symbol of the Cold War -- depicts a silhouette of a B-52 with the words 'Peace The Old Fashioned Way,' written underneath."

There's a gigantic military-industrial complex that is built around the virtually unquestioned assumption that military force is an excellent solution to many of the world's problems -- and that often such force is best used "preemptively". Many if not most politicians in power around the world share these assumption, as does much of the general population.

There have been multiple very serious pushes towards preemptively initiating nuclear war throughout history, and certainly no shortage of preemptive conventional conflict.

I am continually astonished that the world hasn't already ended in a nuclear conflagration by now.

dsfyu404ed• 9 years ago

Meh. This is is just extra training for the ground crews with a layer of political posturing on top.

DrScump• 9 years ago

A lot of commenters seem to interpret this status as keeping bombers armed and airborne 24/7 (DEFCON 3 or higher) as opposed to heightened readiness on the ground.

Analemma_• 9 years ago

Sure is a good thing we didn’t elect that warmonger Hillary Clinton.

holydude• 9 years ago

Those who never lived under the boots of the Soviet Union are forever doomed to scream about "peace" and "USA warmongering"

cameldrv4• 9 years ago

This isn't posturing, this isn't Trump bullshit, and it isn't about NK. It's about Russia.

This situation has been poorly reported, and I don't think many people without a security clearance understand what's been happening in the past few years. The threat is a Russian decapitation strike. Non-alert bombers are trivially easy to destroy. The ICBM fleet now depends on 40 launch control centers, or one of a few special aircraft in order to be able to launch. These aircraft, prior to 1991, were on continuous airborne alert. There are now three of them on ground alert, with (my guess) 15-30 minute response time.

These aircraft are also the primary communications mechanism with the missile subs. The subs are also capable of raising a communications buoy and communicating via satellite, but this is not normal operating procedure, and there are only about five satellites that they can use.

The Russians have a number of new weapons systems, some public, some not. They appear to have a maneuvering reentry vehicle that could allow depressed trajectories, which means sub-10 minute warning times. This is not enough time for the President to be located, make a decision, transmit it to the silos, and have the missiles away. There are also several new Russian anti-satellite weapons, including one that appears to be in geosynchronous orbit, which could knock out the communications satellites to talk to the subs. With a communications blackout, there would potentially be time to destroy the subs before they could launch.

Having bombers on alert is not a real solution to this problem, but it's better than nothing. Potentially, the bombers could be ordered to launch at the first warning, and might make it away from the airfield in time. They could start flying to targets immediately, but wouldn't have to strike if it were a false warning. The better solution would be to put the special planes (the E-6Bs) back on continuous airborne alert, but according to what the generals said at some congressional hearings back in March, the problem is that the E-6Bs are too old, and there aren't enough of them to be able to maintain airborne alert. Unfortunately we don't even have a budgeted program to design a replacement, and the airframe they're based on is obsolete.

matt4077• 9 years ago

I notice you're getting a bit handwavy when it gets to Russia destroying all US (British/French/...) submarines before they notice that their headquarters no longer exist.

Also, you may have missed the cold war ending. Despite all that's going on, there really is no argument why Russia would prefer post-armageddon hellscape to the SQ.

bactrian5• 9 years ago

How about a super EMP that wipes out millions of Americans and brings it down to Russia's level?

Russia started helping North Korea with ICBM and super EMP technology after Bush pulled out of the anti ballistic missile treaty unilaterally.

Putin realized there was no way to catch up to US technology. The only solution is to damage the US enough that Russia can catch up.

Trump is the fool and Kim Jung Un is the patsy. Putin is the puppet master.

cameldrv4• 9 years ago

Yeah, I am, there's a lot to this. As for destroying the subs, Russia is doing a lot of new attack sub development, and we only have 6 Ohios on patrol at any one time. There's been a lot of development since the end of the cold war on alternate submarine detection methods, and Russia has been quite active in the field. Two interesting ones are blue-green laser detection (certain wavelengths of light can penetrate the water), and antineutrino detection (nuclear reactors emit antineutrinos as part of their operation, and these can now be detected and localized from long range) Russia also continues to carry nuclear armed torpedoes on their subs. Even with an approximate sub contact, a nuclear torpedo can destroy it. There are a number of other techniques from the past such as bioluminescence and wake detection that hadn't been feasible in the past, but may be with the extreme increase in signal processing power now available.

Even if some SSBNs did survive undetected, since the end of the cold war, the PAL codes for the warheads on the U.S. subs are not stored on the sub, they have to be received in the EAM. This means that the captain is no longer capable of acting independently. In the UK case, the captain does have the codes, and he is supposed to read a "letter of last resort" to tell him what to do. Given the circumstances that this letter is written under, it's unlikely that it says "nuke the bastards." Furthermore, if, perhaps hours or days after an attack, communication was restored, if the Russian attack were purely counterforce, it's likely that there would be single digit millions of casualties in the U.S. With a nearly defanged U.S., the Russians would presumably issue an ultimatum to surrender any remaining nuclear weapons or they would launch a follow-on countervalue attack. It's hard to imagine a U.S. president proceeding with a strike against Russia under these circumstances, given that effective counterforce would be impossible, and the Russian leadership would have in any case not be in a vulnerable spot anymore.

This all sounds very hypothetical, except that there is a worrying pattern of actions and development programs that suggest that Russia is pursuing this capability. They've recently (failed to) launch what appears to be a submarine detecting satellite, their subs are patrolling much closer to the U.S. than they ever have since the cold war, they have this new anti-satellite capability, they've been running sonar ships past Kings Bay, they appear to have a new DT capability, they're upgrading the Moscow ABM system, they're improving their civil defense capabilities, and supposedly digging new bunkers for the leadership, and they appear to have been behind a propaganda campaign to discredit the UK Trident system so that the UK would decommission its deterrent.

BTW I have never head a clearance and all of my info comes from open sources. You can piece a lot together if you go looking deeply though.

sgtnasty• 9 years ago

Wow that is a lot of OPSEC you just revealed.

US Preparing to Put Nuclear Bombers Back on 24-Hour Alert

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