Vince Houghton - Nuking the Moon - And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board

In 1953, the Joint Chiefs of Staff established the Alternate Joint Communications Center (AJCC) on the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania (popularly called either the “Little Pentagon” or “Raven Rock,” after a nearby mountain, or sometimes “Site R”). This was considered an ideal location to stash American leadership in the event of war. Close enough to DC for the most important people to get there quickly and, well, before DC ceased to exist. And yet far enough away from DC that you wouldn’t be caught up in residual damage from what would certainly be a massive strike on the nation’s capital.

And you’d be under a mountain. So you’ve got that going for you. Which is nice.

Here’s how it would (theoretically) work in the event of an attack: If the president declared a strategic alert (let’s say the DEW Line picked up a fleet of bombers heading right for us), and the Joint Chiefs kicked the AJCC into operation, the top honchos of each of the services (all the highest-ranking generals/admirals in Washington), the Joint Chiefs themselves, the secretary of defense, and probably the president would head north to the Maryland-Pennsylvania line and direct World War III from Raven Rock.

Seems simple enough. But when the AJCC was first developed, a number of critical questions still remained unanswered. Like:

1. What was the precise set of circumstances that would trigger the activation of the AJCC? Would it be “there are bombers on the way”? Would it be “the Soviets have launched a conventional attack on Western Europe”? Would it be “we are about to bomb the hell out of them, maybe we should not be here when they decide to punch back”? No one knew.

2. How much warning can we expect before an attack? A couple of hours? Less?

3. Who would be relocated to the AJCC, and how would they get there? Do we bring everyone, or just the principals? What about the vice president, the secretary of state, the Speaker of the House? Clearly the secretary of the interior and the secretary of agriculture are screwed, but who else should we save? And do we fly everyone there, drive them there, take a train? It would suck to be stuck in DC traffic while trying to escape a nuclear holocaust.

4. Could the AJCC even survive a direct nuclear attack? Unfortunately, there would only be one way to find out for sure.

5. Would the AJCC’s communications survive a direct nuclear attack? This is perhaps the most significant of these questions. It’s great if the facility keeps people alive, but if they cannot communicate with the outside world, then they can’t control combat forces in a post-attack environment, and there’s no point in doing any of this in the first place. Keeping the president alive is important not just because he’s the president. Keeping the president alive is important so that he can direct, command, and ultimately end the war. U.S. Air Force general Thomas Power, who became commander of the Strategic Air Command in 1957, encapsulated this concept perfectly: “Without communications all I command is my desk, and that is not a very lethal weapon.”

These were important questions. And all of them remained contentious throughout the 1950s. Until they didn’t matter any longer. The missile era changed everything.

The launch of Sputnikin 1957 brought with it mixed reviews. For the space geeks, it was a “Woohoo!” moment. Humans had finally gone into the great void outside the Earth’s atmosphere. For the national security experts, it was an “Oh crap” moment. If they can put a satellite in space, ICBM technology is not far behind. Now we can never sleep soundly, knowing annihilation is only minutes away.

For the AJCC concept to work, you needed warning. Time to get from DC to Raven Rock. The advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles meant that warning went bye-bye. And, of course, as I mentioned before, there was no guarantee that the AJCC itself would survive a nuclear attack. As missiles became more and more accurate—which was almost certain to happen—even the fortified-by-a-mountain AJCC would become vulnerable to a dedicated Soviet attack.

To take a step back, it’s important to understand that this wasn’t just an academic debate about whether or not we could keep the president alive (and communicating). I’m sure the generals and admirals in the Pentagon liked and respected the president, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to maintain strategic deterrence—what would later be called “mutually assured destruction” (MAD). The president needed to stay alive so that the United States could guarantee a strong retaliation against a Soviet attack. Or the Soviets needed to legitimately believe the president would survive. So that he, and not the secretary of health and human services, could order the retaliatory deaths of millions of Soviet citizens.

This was the Cold War calculus of how to prevent a war in the first place. We had to ensure that the Soviets knew/believed that we would survive a surprise attack and then make them pay for it (by killing all of them). Thus they wouldn’t attack us, because they understood it would be suicidal. The mental gymnastics are exhausting, but it made sense to strategic planners at the time. And if you simplify it to the basics, it’s easier to understand. If you have the power to knock someone out in a single blow, you might consider throwing a punch at someone who insults your mother. But if you hit them, and then they get back up, knock the stuffing out of you, and then punch your mom, dad, siblings, neighbors, third-grade teacher, and anyone else you’ve ever known (and then kick your dog just because they can), you might think twice before you pick a fight. Your mom is kinda fat, if you’re perfectly honest about it.

For U.S. military planners in the early 1960s, the best way to ensure the continued existence of the strategic deterrent was to build redundancy into the system. Stay and go. Continue to work on making better fixed facilities like the AJCC, but also begin to develop mobile options in case the use of those facilities became untenable. Each of the services proposed their own means of maintaining continuity of government. Not surprisingly, the Air Force proposed an airborne platform, and the Navy a seaborne platform. The Army’s suggestion of a mobile railroad command post was quickly dismissed.

The Navy’s proposal came first, in November 1960, when Arleigh Burke, the Chief of Naval Operations, advocated for the use of the cruiser USS Northampton as what he called the National Emergency Command Post Afloat (NECPA). The ship would float around the Chesapeake Bay and on random routes in coastal waters (to make its location less detectable and its route less predictable), staying close enough to DC to allow the top people to get there quickly—via car, helicopter, speedboat, or even submarine.

The Air Force thought this was a ridiculous plan. Yes, there were parochial interests at play here, but in the end they did have a valid point (other than, “That’s stupid”). The destruction from a nuclear attack on Washington (or the AJCC) could also encompass the NECPA’s cruising area as well. It would be too slow to get far enough out of the way to guarantee the safety of the evacuees. In addition, despite attempts to keep the ship bobbing and weaving to avoid detection, it would still be highly vulnerable to satellite and reconnaissance aircraft surveillance, or clandestine tracking from enemy submarines or even disguised spy trawlers. You’re not keeping the president safe—and, more important, maintaining command and control—if the boat you put him on sinks from an enemy torpedo.

The Air Force responded with its own proposal: the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP—if you want to be cool and pretend you are in the know, you pronounce this as “kneecap”). Either before or after tactical warning (“tactical” meaning the nukes are on the way), the president and other important government and military types would jump on a helicopter and fly to an airfield, where they would meet the NEACP plane (a specially modified KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft) and be up and out of the DC area within fifteen minutes. And this is all they would have, if they were lucky. The newly deployed BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) could—perhaps—provide fifteen to twenty-five minutes of warning for an incoming ICBM attack. Once the VIPs were safely aboard, the aircraft would circle to the west of the city until all incoming missiles had done their thing, and then figure out where it could eventually land (at a predetermined site, with comms, that wasn’t a smoldering pile of radioactive waste).