Surprise, Response

The previous post reminded me of one I’ve needed to do for a while. Some of the posts I do are to share knowledge and experience, some to share humor or joy, and some to provoke some thought. Especially if I’m not sure that things are being done and I want to push things while I am here to push them. On the latter, my concerns about the ability of humans to reproduce in space and microgravity are a good example, as I want to be sure it is something being looked at as we urgently need permanent settlements off this glorious mudball ASAP.

Right now, I want to talk a bit about command and control in the face of surprise. It is something I really hope is being looked at by Pete and company as they are taking care of a lot of things; and by the administration from a higher level. In particular, I want to look at nuclear command and control in the current environment.

A lot of our current system traces back to the pre-SAC days when Nightwatch was in Maryland and it was estimated we could have hours of notice. Even as that shrunk down, we’ve kept a lot of the basic premises past what I consider the best-buy date. As a result, I think we really, really, need to look at things and try to come up with something new.

Without going into too much detail (much less things that should not be talked about openly) our current system presumes something on the order of 30-minutes to an hour of warning of a surprise attack on the U.S. SecWar is the second man to the President for all intents and purposes, and is either with POTUS or in touch with him. POTUS is briefed on what is going on, confidence in the intel, etc. and uses the current iteration of the Single (Strategic) Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP) to order a response to the situation.