Posted on 08/13/2017 12:49:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In just five minutes an American president could put all of humanity in jeopardy. Most nuclear security experts believe that's how long it would take for as many as 400 land-based nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal to be loosed on enemy targets after an initial “go” order. Ten minutes later a battalion of underwater nukes could join them.
That unbridled power is a frightening prospect no matter who is president. Donald Trump, the current occupant of the Oval Office, highlights this point. He said he aspires to be “unpredictable” in how he might use nuclear weapons. There is no way to recall these missiles when they have launched, and there is no self-destruct switch. The act would likely set off a lethal cascade of retaliatory attacks, which is why strategists call this scenario mutually assured destruction.
With the exception of the president, every link in the U.S. nuclear decision chain has protections against poor judgments, deliberate misuse or accidental deployment. The “two-person rule,” in place since World War II, requires that the actual order to launch be sent to two separate people. Each one has to decode and authenticate the message before taking action. In addition, anyone with nuclear weapons duties, in any branch of service, must routinely pass a Pentagon-mandated evaluation called the Personnel Reliability Program—a battery of tests that assess several areas, including mental fitness, financial history, and physical and emotional well-being.
There is no comparable restraint on the president. He or she can decide to trigger a thermonuclear Armageddon without consulting anyone at all and never has to demonstrate mental fitness. This must change. We need to ensure at least some deliberation before the chief executive can act. And there are ways to do this without weakening our military responses or national security.
This is not just a reaction to current politics. Calls for a bulwark against unilateral action go back more than 30 years. During the Reagan administration, the late Jeremy Stone, then president of the Federation of American Scientists, proposed that the president should not be able to order a first nuclear strike without consulting with high-ranking members of Congress. Such a buffer would ensure that actions that could escalate into world-destroying counterattacks would not be taken lightly. Democratic legislators recently introduced a law that would require not just consultation but congressional support for a preemptive nuclear attack. Whether or not that seems like the best check on presidential nuclear power is a matter for Congress.
We already know that second-check plans would not compromise American safety. Security experts used to worry that a hair-trigger launch was needed to deter a first strike by an enemy: our instant reactions would ensure that our opponent would feel catastrophic consequences of aggression. In the modern world, that is no longer the case. The U.S. has enough nukes in enough locations—including, crucially, our roving, nuclear-armed submarines—that nuclear strategists now agree it would not be possible to take out all of the nation's weapons with a first strike. The Pentagon, in a 2012 security assessment, said the same thing. It noted that even in the unlikely event that Russia launched a preemptive attack on the U.S.—and had more nuclear capability than current international agreements allow for—it “would have little to no effect on the U.S. assured second-strike capabilities.” That conclusion suggests that we will have ample firepower even if two or more people discuss how to use it.
We have come close to nuclear war in the past because of misidentified threats, including an incident in 1979 in which computers at a military command center in Colorado Springs wrongly reported the start of a major Soviet nuclear offensive. Ballistic and nuclear bomber crews immediately sprang into action. Crisis was averted only after satellite data could not corroborate the warning, and American forces finally stood down. In our March issue, Scientific American called for taking the U.S. nuclear arsenal off high alert because of this and other such near misses.
Taking the arsenal off high alert is an important step. But putting another check into the system—removing one person's unfettered ability to destroy the world—will create another essential, lasting safeguard for the U.S. and the planet.
Scientific American starting heading toward irrelevancy soon after the NSF recognized Political Science as a “science”. And if you don’t believe that the National Science Foundation was that stupid, here is the evidence!
http://www.apsanet.org/advocacy/nsf
Yeah, when you have less than 10 minutes to respond to a nuclear attack Scientific American writers think that the quickest way to respond is via a committee. Damn but so many people are stupid.
SA lies.
Who are you to exclude Senator McCain from the chain of command and what did you do with his strawberries?
They mean that TRUMP should not have the power. If ever this country has a democrat president, they will not be thinking these thoughts.
Any one MIRV’d ICBM can take out more than 500km by 100km stretch of earth. 1.2Mt or even 170Kt warheads * 10 or 12 equals a massive, massive, massive amount of total destruction. It’s quite impressive and immune to any possible defense strategy. 18 minutes from launch, and...mega-boom!! And the 6,800 and 4,200 (thereabouts) stockpiles of the USA and Russia are really quite capable of blowing things to hell all over the planet. I love the physics of nukes. Claus Fuchs was such an asshole in the same league as Bill Clinton.
Right. No nuke launches without Congressional hearings, a joint session, and a formal declaration of war.
“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
George Orwell
Dear Editors of ‘Scientific America’, please appoint a committee to parse that statement, submit their work for peer review and finally call 911 when a dozen MS-13, armed with machetes, are kicking down your door.
You obviously need a bit of empirical data in order to understand the world!
lol Mitch and Ryan can’t do anything in 7 YEARS..... 7 minutes would be asking far too much of them!
“...because we need a committee to approve a counter-strike when inbounds are on the way.”
And, of course, don’t forget, any decisions the committee makes has to be approved by committee lawyers.
I read years ago about a guy who inquired at Scientific American why they never had had an article on the Shroud of Turin. The editors wrote to him that, “It is our policy that the Shroud of Turin does not exist.”
Obama launched several. Seth wars to overthrow “quiet” regimes to put his viciously anti-American Islamic terrorist gang bff’s into power. Did this supposedly scientific magazine editorialize against that aggressive immoral behaviour by the Islamizazi in chief?
You have to wonder what this guy thinks would happen when we came under a nuclear attack. Would he want a 57 man committee to figure out what to do.
Why heck, three days later we’d have made up our mind.
2 days, 22 hours, and 30 minutes too late...
Hey FatBoy...here’s your target:
Scientific American Magazine
75 Varick St
New York, New York 10013
This is all so fun. In 1981, as an 11 year old science-bent kid, I studied and feared nuclear destruction. Now the leftist media is just going silly-crazy on this. It most likely won’t happen, but if it does, it will be Pakistan, Iran, or, on a smaller scale, North Korea that starts the bombing. Mutually Assured Destrucyon is real and acknowledged among the established nuclear ICBM holders. The rogue nations have no idea what they are playing with.
Maybe the guy is correct. Perhaps the President should ask the Congress for approval to launch. Congress can form a committee to discuss the launch and make it’s recommendations (and other options) to Congress. After debate, the two houses can then vote. If they speed up the process, the President should have approval within months! </sarc>
The left always claim how ‘scary’ and ‘dangerous’ Republican Presidents are. The interesting thing is, the one President to actually spark off a nuke, twice, was a Dhimmicrat and the President who brought North America within a hair’s breath of a nuclear war with the USSR, was a Dhimmicrat. Who was President when the US bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade?
And the Dhimmi’s hearts are filled with terror than a Pubbie President is going to bring the US into a nuclear war? Yes, liberalism IS a mental disease!
Funny that the other example they give besides Trump is Ronald Reagan...
...didn’t we have a few other presidents along the way?
Crazy B.S.
There have been at least three nuclear war near misses that were rightly defused by sound minds in charge. Here is one - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Incident.
There were also others brought on by Norway, the USA, and USSR through lack of communication and military technology misinterpretations of data.
Did they write thinking Kim would read it?
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