Command and Control

Its mainframe computers had become hopelessly out of date: The WWMCCS had never worked well. A 1979 study found that its automated data processing program was “not responsive” to local or national needs, “not reliable,” and “cannot transfer data… efficiently.” Other than that, it was a terrific system. The advent of digital communications spelled the end of the WWMCCS. See “The World Wide Military Command and Control System — Major Changes Needed in Its Automated Data Processing Management and Direction,” Comptroller General of the United States, Report to the Congress, December 14, 1979, p. ii.

the Global Command and Control System: See “Global Command and Control System Adopted,” news release, United States Department of Defense, No. 552-96, September 26, 1996.

Known by the acronym DIRECT: See “General Dynamics Awarded $1M DIRECT Emergency Action Message System Support Contract,” PR Newswire, May 23, 2001; and “DIRECT Messaging System Overview,” General Dynamics C4 Systems (n.d.).

a computer failure at F. E. Warren Air Force Base: For details of the incident, see David S. Cloud, “Pentagon Cites Hardware Glitch in ICBM Outage,” Los Angeles Times, October 27, 2010, and Michelle Tan, “Equipment Failure Cited in Warren Incident,” Air Force Times, May 5, 2011.

a report by the Defense Science Board warned: See “Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat,” Task Force Report, Defense Science Board, Department of Defense, January 2013, pp. 7, 42, 85.

no “significant vulnerability”: See “Hearing to Receive Testimony on U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Cyber Command in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2014 and the Future Years Defense Program,” Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, 113th Congress, March 12, 2013, p. 10.

an “end-to-end comprehensive review”: See ibid.

“Senator, I don’t know”: See ibid., p. 22.

Operation Neptune Spear: See Mark Bowden, The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012), pp. 216–64.

The 9/11 Commission Report offers a sobering account: See National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), pp. 1–46.

an attack… that lasted about seventy-eight minutes: The World Trade Center was hit by the first plane at 8:46:40 in the morning; the second plane struck the building at 9:03:11; the Pentagon was hit at 9:37:46; and United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvannia, at 10:03:11. Those seventy-seven minutes and thirty-one seconds were an eternity — compared to the amount of time in which America’s command-and-control system was supposed to respond decisively during a Soviet missile attack. For the chronology of that September morning, see 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 32–33.

His calls to the Pentagon and the White House underground bunker were constantly dropped: Ibid., p. 40.

they were ordered into the air by a Secret Service agent: “The President and the Vice President indicated to us,” the report notes, “they had not been aware that fighters had been scrambled out of Andrews, at the request of the Secret Service and outside the military chain of command.” Ibid., p. 44.

the United States has approximately 4,650 nuclear weapons: These numbers come from Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. Kristensen has for many years been a reliable source and an indefatigable researcher on nuclear matters. See Hans M. Kristensen, “Trimming Nuclear Excess: Options for Further Reductions of U.S. and Russian Nuclear Forces,” Federation of American Scientists, Special Report No. 5, December 2012, p. 15.

About 300 are assigned to long-range bombers: Cited in Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2013,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (March/April 2013), p. 77.

500 are deployed atop Minuteman III missiles: Cited in ibid.

1,150 are carried by Trident submarines: Cited in ibid.

An additional 200 or so hydrogen bombs: Cited in ibid.

About 2,500 nuclear weapons are held in reserve: Cited in ibid.

now known as the Operations Plan (OPLAN) 8010: For the most detailed investigation of the current OPLAN, see Hans M. Kristensen, “Obama and the Nuclear War Plan,” Federation of the American Scientists Issue Brief, February 2010.

“Strategic Deterrence and Global Strike”: Quoted in ibid, p. 7.

Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, and Iran: Ibid., p. 3.

“Adaptive planning”: Ibid., p. 5.

The United States now plans to spend as much as $180 billion: See Walter Pincus, “Nuclear Complex Upgrades Related to START Treaty to Cost $180 Billion,” Washington Post, May 14, 2010.

Russia has about 1,740 deployed strategic weapons and perhaps 2,000 tactical weapons: Cited in Kristensen, “Trimming Nuclear Excess,” p. 10.