Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

On August 29, 2007, six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads were mistakenly loaded: The warheads were loaded on August 29 and discovered the following day. For the official account of what happened, see “Report on the Unauthorized Movement of Nuclear Weapons,” the Defense Science Board Permanent Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Surety, Department of Defense, Washington, D.C., February 2008. For a broad look at the management failures that led to the warheads’ being left unattended, see “The Unauthorized Shipment of Nuclear Weapons and Mistaken Shipment of Classified Missile Components: An Assessment,” Michelle Spencer, A. Ludin, and H. Nelson, The Counterproliferation Papers, Future Warfare Series No. 56, USAF Counterproliferation Center, January 2012. Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus wrote a fine piece about the incident: “Missteps in the Bunker,” Washington Post , September 23, 2007. And Rachel Maddow includes some disturbing details about it in her book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012), pp. 231–38.

“significant confusion about delegation of responsibility”: “Report on the Unauthorized Movement,” p. 5. The confusion was widespread. Neither the aircraft crew chief nor the pilot of the B-52 had been trained to handle nuclear weapons. And investigators found that the six nuclear weapons were “driven past a security checkpoint… but no one checked them as they passed.” The quote comes from Spencer et al., “Unauthorized Movement and Mistaken Shipment,” p. 12.

nobody was ever asked to sign a piece of paper: “In the past, there was a requirement for a formal change of custody, physically verified by serial numbers, recorded, and signed on a formal document when weapons moved from breakout crew to convoy crew to crew chief to air crew,” the Defense Science Board noted. But at some point those procedures were discontinued — and the movement of nuclear weapons out of the igloo no longer had to be recorded. “Report on the Unauthorized Movement,” p. 5.

A maintenance team arrived at a Minuteman III silo: For the details of this incident, see “United States Air Force Missile Accident Investigation Board Report,” Minuteman III Launch Facility A06, 319th Missile Squadron, 90th Operations Group, 90th Missile Wing, F. E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, May 23, 2008, Robert M. Walker, President, Accident Investigation Board, September 18, 2008.

The fire was most likely caused: Ibid., p. 4.

it may have occurred five days before the maintenance team noticed: Ibid.

“unique identifiers” for its nuclear weapons: The Department of Defense is attempting, with varying degrees of success, to keep track of its vast inventory of weapons, parts, and equipment with “Item Unique Identification” (IUID) technology — the sort of bar codes that supermarkets and electronics stores have used for years. “In the area of Nuclear Weapon Related Material (NWRM),” the head of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center testified in 2010, “we continue to gain and refine Positive Inventory Control.” The general promised to “lock down all NWRM through unique identifiers and supply chain discipline” but warned “there will be occasional discoveries of newly uncovered assets for years to come.” Presumably the weapons themselves are now being scanned, tracked, and stored in the right place. See “Defense Logistics: Improvements Needed to Enhance DOD’s Management Approach and Implementation of Item Unique Identification Technology,” United States General Accountability Office, Report to the Subcommittee on Readiness, Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, May 2012; and “Status of the Air Force Nuclear Security Roadmap,” Brigadier General Everett H. Thomas, Commander, Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, Presentation to the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Armed Services Committee, House of Representatives, 111th Congress, January 21, 2010, pp. 5, 6.

Each of its twenty B-2 bombers costs $2 billion: Cited in Tim Weiner, “The $2 Billion Bomber Can’t Go Out in the Rain,” New York Times , August 23, 1997.

And its B-52 bombers haven’t been manufactured since: The last B-52 was made in 1962, and it’s still flying. See John Andrew Prime, “B-52 Bomber Marks Major Milestones in 2012,” Air Force Times , April 9, 2012.

The B-52s are scheduled to remain in service: See David Majumdar, “Upgrades to Keep B-52s Flying Through 2040,” Air Force Times , October 4, 2011.

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.