Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Eric Schlosser - Command and Control» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Город: New York, Год выпуска: 2013, ISBN: 2013, Издательство: Penguin Press, Жанр: История, military_history, military_weapon, Политика, Публицистика, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Command and Control: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Command and Control»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

The New Yorker “Excellent… hair-raising
is how nonfiction should be written.” (Louis Menand)
Time
“A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S…. fascinating.” (Lev Grossman)
Financial Times
“So incontrovertibly right and so damnably readable… a work with the multilayered density of an ambitiously conceived novel… Schlosser has done what journalism does at its best."
Los Angeles Times
“Deeply reported, deeply frightening… a techno-thriller of the first order.” Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A ground-breaking account of accidents, near-misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs,
explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: how do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved — and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind.
Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller,
interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policymakers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can’t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States.
Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with men who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons,
takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable,
is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America’s nuclear age.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=h_ZvrSePzZY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2wR11pGsYk

Command and Control — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Command and Control», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

By launching a surprise attack on five targets — the White House, the Pentagon, Camp David, Site R, and High Point — the Soviet Union had a good chance of wiping out the civilian leadership of the United States. None of the bunkers at those locations would survive the blast from a multimegaton weapon. And two of the emergency command posts, Site R and High Point, weren’t regularly staffed with high-ranking officers. By hitting nine additional targets, the Soviet Union could eliminate America’s military leadership. The destruction of America’s command-and-control system could be achieved, with a 90 percent chance of success, through the use of only thirty-five Soviet missiles. Four would be aimed at the White House and five at Camp David, to ensure that the president was killed. “Under surprise attack conditions, there can be little confidence,” the report concluded, “that the Presidential decision would be made and military execution orders be received by the combat elements of the strategic nuclear forces before the high command is disrupted.”

Moreover, the command bunkers built during the Eisenhower years lacked the communications equipment that would allow the controlled escalation of a nuclear war or pauses for negotiation with the Soviets — even if the president survived the initial attack. The high-frequency radio system used to communicate with SAC’s bombers and the very-low-frequency system used to contact the Navy’s Polaris submarines relied on a handful of terminals that could easily be destroyed. According to one classified account, the Eisenhower administration had installed “a one-shot command, control, and communication system.” It hadn’t been designed to fight a limited or prolonged nuclear war. The SIOP required only that a Go code be transmitted, and after that, nothing needed to be said — because nothing could be done to change or halt the execution of the war plan. The underground command posts were little more than hideouts, where military and civilian leaders could ride out a nuclear attack and then emerge, perhaps, to rebuild the United States.

America’s early-warning systems were also woefully inadequate. The DEW Line of radar stations stretching across the Arctic, the SAGE direction centers, the mighty IBM computers — built with great urgency, at enormous expense — had been designed to track Soviet bombers. They could not detect Soviet missiles. The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, created for that task, was just becoming operational. At best, the BMEWS could spot missiles launched from the Soviet Union roughly fifteen minutes before they hit the United States. But if the missiles were launched from Soviet submarines off the coast, the warning time would be zero. The BMEWS couldn’t detect missiles approaching at such a low altitude. And the reliability of the system, McNamara learned, still left much to be desired.

• • •

DURING A TOUR OF NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a few months earlier, Peter G. Peterson, the executive vice president of the Bell & Howell Company, had been allowed to sit in the commander’s chair. Peterson was visiting the facility with Bell & Howell’s president, Charles H. Percy, and Thomas J. Watson, Jr., the president of IBM. The first BMEWS radar complex, located at Thule Air Base, Greenland, had come online that week, and the numerical threat levels of the new warning system were being explained to the businessmen.

If the number 1 flashed in red above the world map, unidentified objects were traveling toward the United States. If the number 3 flashed, the threat level was high; SAC headquarters and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to be notified immediately. The maximum threat level was 5 — a computer-generated warning, with a 99.9 percent certainty, that the United States was under attack. As Peterson sat in the commander’s chair, the number above the map began to climb. When it reached 4, NORAD officers ran into the room. When it reached 5, Peterson and the other executives were quickly escorted out and put in a small office. The door was closed, and they were left there believing that a nuclear war had just begun.

The vice commander of NORAD, Air Marshal C. Roy Slemon, a dapper Canadian with a small mustache, managed to track down the head of NORAD, General Laurence S. Kuter, who was in an Air Force plane above South Dakota.

“Chief, this is a hot one,” Slemon said.

The BMEWS indicated that the Soviets had launched an all-out missile attack against North America. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were on the phone, awaiting confirmation. The United States had only minutes to respond.

“Where is Khrushchev?” Slemon asked his officers.

Khrushchev’s in New York today, at the United Nations, NORAD’s chief of intelligence said.

Slemon immediately felt relieved. The Soviet Union was unlikely to launch an attack that would kill the first secretary of its Communist Party. Twenty minutes passed, and no Soviet missiles landed. The three businessmen were let out of the small office, glad to be alive. When news of the false alarm leaked to the press, the Air Force denied that the missile warning had ever been taken seriously. Percy, who later became a Republican senator from Illinois, disputed that account. He recalled a sense of panic at NORAD. A subsequent investigation found the cause of the computer glitch. The BMEWS site at Thule had mistakenly identified the moon, slowly rising over Norway, as dozens of long-range missiles launched from Siberia.

Both of America’s early-warning systems were deeply flawed — and, as a result, the most reliable indicator of a Soviet attack might be the destruction of those systems by nuclear blasts. Bomb Alarm System sensors would be placed at the SAGE direction centers and at Thule. By the time those bomb sensors went off, however, the president might already be dead. Of the fourteen potential successors, as specified by Congress, only the vice president and the secretary of defense would have any familiarity with the SIOP. If all fourteen were in Washington, D.C., during a surprise attack, they would probably be killed or incapacitated.

Amid the confusion, it might be impossible to determine who was America’s commander in chief. Everyone on the presidential succession list had been given a phone number to call, in case of a national emergency. The call would put them in touch with the Joint War Room at the Pentagon. But telephone service was bound to be disrupted by a nuclear attack, the Pentagon might no longer exist — and even if it did, the first person to call the war room might be named president of the United States, regardless of whether he or she was next on the list. WSEG Report No. 50 outlined the problem:

There is no mechanism for nor organization charged with locating, identifying, and providing essential defense communications to the senior, non-incapacitated member of that list in the event of a nuclear attack presumed to have removed the President from control…. The possibility exists that the man to wield Presidential authority in dire emergency might in fact be selected by a single field grade military officer.

The idea of a “decapitation” attack, aimed at America’s military and civilian leadership, didn’t seem entirely far-fetched. Indeed, it was the most plausible scenario for a Soviet attack on the United States. And it had the best chance of success. “No other target system can at present offer equal potential returns from so few weapons,” the report said.

McNamara subsequently discovered that the command-and-control problems were hardly limited to the United States. “We have been concerned with the vulnerability of our defense machine in the U.S.,” a Pentagon task force informed him, “but it is nothing compared with the situation in Europe.” All of NATO’s command bunkers, including the operations center inside the Kindsbach Cave, could easily be destroyed, even by an attack with conventional weapons. Although NATO maintained fighter planes on a ground alert, ready to take off within fifteen minutes, it lacked an early-warning system that could detect Soviet missiles. It also lacked a bomb alarm system. At best, NATO commanders might receive five or ten minutes of warning that a Soviet attack had begun — not enough time to get those planes off the ground. And that warning would most likely never be received, because the NATO communications system was completely unprotected. Its destruction would prevent NATO from transmitting messages not only within Europe but also between Europe and the United States. Once the fighting began, the president could not expect to reach any of NATO’s high-ranking officers or to give them any orders. And they wouldn’t be able to communicate with one another.

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Command and Control»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Command and Control» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «Command and Control»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Command and Control» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x