Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

WSEG Report No. 50: “Evaluation of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems,” Weapon Systems Evaluation Group Report No. 50, Washington, D.C., December 27, 1960 (TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), NSA.

the annual operating costs of keeping a B-52 bomber on ground alert: See ibid., Enclosure “F,” p. 19.

America’s command-and-control system was so complex: Long excerpts from Enclosure “C,” the section of WSEG R-50 on command and control, can be found in Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control,” pp. 239–47.

By launching a surprise attack on five targets: Ibid., p. 243.

By hitting nine additional targets: Ibid., p. 242.

a 90 percent chance of success: Cited in ibid.

only thirty-five Soviet missiles: Cited in Ibid.

Four would be aimed at the White House: Ibid., p. 243.

“Under surprise attack conditions”: Quoted in ibid., p. 239.

“a one-shot command, control, and communication system”: Ibid., p. 284.

the warning time would be zero: Cited in Ibid., p. 241.

During a tour of NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs: My account of this false alarm is based on “‘Missile Attack’ Terror Described,” Oakland Tribune, December 11, 1960; “When the Moon Dialed No. 5, They Saw World War III Begin,” Express and News (San Antonio), December 11, 1960; John G. Hubbell, “You Are Under Attack! The Strange Incident of October 5,” Reader’s Digest, April 1961, pp. 37–39; and Donald MacKenzie, Mechanizing Proof: Computing, Risk, and Trust (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 23–4. MacKenzie obtained an oral history interview with General Kuter that largely confirmed the contemporary accounts of the incident.

a 99.9 percent certainty: Cited in “‘You Are Under Attack!’”

“Chief, this is a hot one”: Quoted in MacKenzie, Mechanizing Proof, p. 23.

“Where is Khrushchev?”: Quoted in “‘You Are Under Attack!’”

He recalled a sense of panic at NORAD: Percy later wondered what sort of decision might have been made if the radar signals hadn’t been recognized to be a false alarm. See Einar Kringlen, “The Myth of Rationality in Situations of Crisis,” Medicine and War, Volume I, (1985), p. 191.

“There is no mechanism for nor organization charged with”: Quoted in Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control,” p. 243.

“No other target system can at present offer”: Quoted in ibid., p. 246.

“We have been concerned with the vulnerability”: McNamara learned within weeks of taking office that the command-and-control problems in Europe were severe. These quotes are taken from a report submitted to him in the fall of 1961 by General Earle E. Partridge, a retired Air Force officer who’d been asked to head an investigation of command-and-control issues. “Interim Report on Command and Control in Europe,” National Command and Control Task Force, October 1961 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 2.

All of NATO’s command bunkers … could easily be destroyed: See ibid.

At best, NATO commanders might receive five or ten minutes of warning: See ibid., p. 4.

the NATO communications system was completely unprotected: See ibid., pp. 3–4.

the president could not expect to reach any of NATO’s high-ranking officers: See ibid., p. 5.

“It is imperative that each commander knows”: Ibid.

“Not only could we initiate a war, through mistakes”: Ibid., p. 6.

“A subordinate commander faced with a substantial Russian military action”: “Memorandum from the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Kennedy,” January 30, 1961 (TOP SCERET/declassified), in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VIII, National Security Policy, p. 18.

a top secret report, based on a recent tour of NATO bases: See “Report of Ad Hoc Subcommittee on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO; Includes Letter to President Kennedy and Appendices,” Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Congress of the United States,” February 11, 1961 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), NSA.

“he almost fell out of his chair”: The adviser, Thomas Schelling, is quoted in Webster Stone, “Moscow’s Still Holding,” New York Times, September 18, 1988.