Power Failure Shuts Down 50 US Nuclear Missiles 338
Pickens writes "The Atlantic reports that a power failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), one-ninth of the US missile stockpile, temporarily offline on Saturday. The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman IIIs. According to people briefed on what happened, a squadron of ICBMs suddenly dropped down into what's known as 'LF Down' status, meaning that the missileers in their bunkers could no longer communicate with the missiles themselves. LF Down status also means that various security protocols built into the missile delivery system, like intrusion alarms and warhead separation alarms, were offline. The cause of the failure remains unknown, although it is suspected to be a breach of underground cables deep beneath the base, according to a senior military official."
All your base (Score:5, Funny)
Oh god! Not 50 nuclear missiles! (Score:4, Funny)
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50 / (1/9) != 5513.
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Re:Oh god! Not 50 nuclear missiles! (Score:5, Funny)
(Why does Wikipedia have an article on the stupid band, anyway? *grumble grumble deletionist nazi sentiments go here, grumble*)
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True, but (X/9) != 50.
Hell, two Ohio class SSBNs have (the capacity for) almost 50 nuclear (Trident, MIRV) missiles.
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Our 450 land based Minuteman III each have one warhead
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You are assuming (most likely incorrectly) that every warhead we have is sitting at the top of a missile...
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Please lay out a global strategic plan for nuclear deterrant and defense to set an upper bound on the number of ICBM's "anyone" needs. Don't forget that some nukes will probably be duds, and in many threat scenarios some will be taken out in their silos. ...Oh, you're not a military strategist? Then why are we listening to your estimate of how many missiles "anyone" needs?
Before you start, I'm also not a military strategist - hence I'm not citing a number of ICBM's I think we need. However, while the Col
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I don't get it - is this some geek culture reference?
The article says 50 missiles, 1/9th of our arsenal, which implies a total arsenal of 450 missiles.
I realize that each missile can carry more than one warhead, but I don't think they each carry 12.14 warheads. I thought that the maximum was 10 or 12 and I thought that some treaty cut that back to 1 or 2?
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According to Wikipedia, the START II treaty [wikipedia.org] would have banned the use of MIRVs on ICBMs. However, START II was never activated, so I guess there is no legal limit. The Minutemen III ICBM can carry 3 MIRVs.
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Each SLBM (which they must be totally ignoring, since we have 14 SSBNs, each of which can carry 24 Trident D-5 SLBMs) can carry 8 MIRVs.
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It's the supposed number of warheads we have. I don't think he realized that they are not all kept sitting on missiles at the ready...
Re:Oh god! Not 50 nuclear missiles! (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair, the far more frightening thing is that someone can take out a base full of nuclear missiles with a backhoe and a bottle of Jager. My server room at least has a UPS, and the fate of the free world doesn't depend on that.
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First it wasn't a power failure the caused the problem, it was a cable problem. I imagine those cables have intrusion protection, which if it's anything like the old 4-wire secure telephone lines they have a lot more false alarms than they have missed alarms. It would be like your server room's network shuts down any time a ping detects a signal reflection change to foil a man-in-the-middle attack or a snooping device.
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To be fair, the far more frightening thing is that someone can take out a base full of nuclear missiles with a backhoe and a bottle of Jager.
Now we know what those Chilean miners were really up to.
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Let me guess: "free world" equals the United States?
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The US nuclear umbrella covers NATO, Japan and Korea. That is a pretty good portion of the free world.
-molo
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A non-shooty failure mode is, I think, desirable in that situation.
YES! I would hope that these sites are designed in such a way that any disruption of power or control systems is interpreted as a potential loss of control, and makes the missiles not go whoosh.
Wow in the event of an emergency... (Score:4, Insightful)
WOPR tried to hack in and must over loaded somethi (Score:2)
WOPR tried to hack in and must over loaded something likely taking a fuse with it.
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"I ain't gonna let some silicon diode tell me what to do!" -- General Beringer
False alarm, good Amerika peoples. Only Peoples Republic of China installing network taps. Please to go about your daily businesses.
This is just embarrassing. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Deterrent against who? Against the terrarists? No, not really, you cannot really strike back at them with a nuke.
Against Putin? No, because Putin is not really interested in having a shooting war with the West right now, at least until his family lives there.
Against the Chinese? No, because international trade seems to be the better way to have each other by the balls.
Against the Japanese? Nah, not really, US has bases over there, and their prime minister resigns as soon as he hints about something American
Re:This is just embarrassing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Deterrent against who? Against the terrarists? No, not really, you cannot really strike back at them with a nuke.
Against Putin? No, because Putin is not really interested in having a shooting war with the West right now, at least until his family lives there.
Against the Chinese? No, because international trade seems to be the better way to have each other by the balls.
Against the Japanese? Nah, not really, US has bases over there, and their prime minister resigns as soon as he hints about something Americans don't like.
Against Iran or North Korea then? How are they even a threat that would merit deterrent?
So nope, it looks like US nuclear arsenal is definitely not serving as an effective deterrent.
Is it deterring a massive strike from a bitter enemy with thousands of such weapons at his disposal? No, not so much. Is anyone else bothering to build even a fraction of our stock of the things? Nope: because to achieve even a fraction of the threat that the Soviet Union once posed would be far too costly. So I'd say you're wrong: the United States' nuclear arsenal is deterring anyone else from building anything similar: the barrier to entry is too high. I don't see that as a bad thing.
And if I'm wrong, well, then so are you. The global situation is changing and the current status quo will not be maintained forever. We may need them some day.
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Is it deterring a massive strike from a bitter enemy with thousands of such weapons at his disposal? No, not so much.
Yes, my point exactly, and an answer to your original question.
Is anyone else bothering to build even a fraction of our stock of the things? Nope: because [nukes are] far too costly.
Precisely. The nukes have cost many times over their value as a deterrent. So many were made not because they were an effective deterrent, but because some got very, very rich on them.
The global situation is changing and the current status quo will not be maintained forever. We may need them some day.
Or you may end up like Putin, sitting on a large pile of nuclear rust some day.
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Or you may end up like Putin, sitting on a large pile of nuclear rust some day.
Better that than swimming in a lake of molten glass. And, if you Google our force reductions, you'll see that we realized a long time ago that we didn't need the Cold War buildup, after the Soviet Empire collapsed. We've reduced both our nuclear and conventional forces considerably since then. That may ultimately prove to be a mistake, time will tell. But we no longer possess the same nuclear capability we once had.
Re:This is just embarrassing. (Score:5, Informative)
The number of warheads in the US peaked in the 60s, not the 80s, so a big part of what the Soviets were trying to catch up with was our technology, not just our numbers. And yes, they used more warheads as a way to counteract our better technology. This is why they completely freaked on the SDI (star wars) system, as it would make all their warheads obsolete, in theory. Our stealth technology and other weapons likely played a bigger role in pushing the Soviets to spend more during the 70s-80s than the nukes did.
And I agree, had we not had the military buildup we had (all types) then the USSR might still be here today. China, on the other hand, is a very sticky situation. They appear to be at the beginning states of an economic war with us, and we just don't realize it. And they don't need 1000s of warheads as a deterrent, just 50-100 is plenty. Our greatest asset is that we tend to be better at creating the technologies, while China has a history of being good at copying technology. Oh, and now China has decided to quit exporting rare earth minerals used in advanced technologies.
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So I'd say you're wrong: the United States' nuclear arsenal is deterring anyone else from building anything similar: the barrier to entry is too high. I don't see that as a bad thing.
The "barrier to entry", as you put it, to building a US-sized nuclear arsenal would exist even if the US had no missiles. Nukes are expensive - end of story. The real question is, if the US had no missiles would the incentive to try to build a US-sized nuclear arsenal, or even a fractional one, still exist?
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Peace by elimination of the problem.
It will work for the US just as well as it worked for Hitler.
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You seem to assume US was ever under a threat of attack.
Care to furnish proof this is so? When was continental US ever under a real threat, especially post WW2, and by whom, even assuming no nukes? Please, enlighten us.
Specifically, when were the Russians even willing to take on Alaska?
When have the Chinese ever contemplating attack on the US, or turning her into "a satellite"?
Russia developing nukes wasn't so much an aggressive move, as a defensive one. They have seen what US did when she were the only pow
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Because it was not so, it can never be so. A common fallacy that afflicts many in our civilized Western nations.
You and everyone else need to read some Russian language or Chinese language, to see what they're saying when they're not speaking English. Taking back Alaska is a common theme. I see newspapers every day when I walk past the newsstand, the front page photo that recently stands out in my mind was a US carrier with a Chinese missile headed towards it.
And the Russian nukes thing is just silly.
Re:This is just embarrassing. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:This is just embarrassing. (Score:4, Funny)
But-- but-- what about the Mine Shaft Gap?
The mine collapsed a few weeks ago. It was in the news.
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"Gore, I don't care about the penguins. Order the damned launch."
Re:This is just embarrassing. (Score:4, Funny)
Well perhaps you're forgetting the provisions of plan R, sir.
Plan R?
Plan R is an emergency war plan in which a lower echelon commander may order nuclear retaliation after a sneak attack if the normal chain of command is disrupted. You approved it, sir. You must remember. Surely you must recall, sir, when Senator Buford made that big hassle about our deterrent lacking credibility. The idea was for plan R to be a sort of retaliatory safeguard.
A safeguard.
I admit the human element seems to have failed us here. But the idea was to discourage the Russkies from any hope that they could knock out Washington, and yourself, sir, as part of a general sneak attack, and escape retaliation because of lack of proper command and control.
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Embarrassing maybe. It's absolutely still an effective deterrent.
You could have the rest of the military running around like morons with 9000 warheads as if they were in Sgt. Bilko, but all it takes is ONE.
Just ONE missile in the hands of ONE competent military group controlling ONE functional system gives you the same level of threat as the other 9,000. Even if all of land based systems were taken offline, we have still have plenty of nuclear submarines out there sitting quietly.
The thing is, all of the
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Yes, a combination of land-based missile silos and nuclear-armed submarines (which theoretically may or may not be nuclear-powered submarines, and vice versa). Bombers too.
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At this rate, is the nuclear arsenal even serving as an effective deterrent?
I'm starting to think it's like a revolver being waved around by a drunk guy. There's a stark realization that he really could pull the trigger, but the gun might not be loaded. So you think to yourself "Do I feel lucky?"
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At this rate, is the nuclear arsenal even serving as an effective deterrent?
Is Rupert Murdoch our King yet?
No?
Then it's working.
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Its called a biscuit. Bill must have been hungry.
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That biscuit doesn't happen to look like a diaphragm, does it?
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Clearly the search was not thorough enough.
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Re:This is just embarrassing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Come to think of it, has there even been an invasion of the US?
Well, the British burned Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812, although the US initially declared war against Britain. And there's Pearl Harbor, although that wasn't technically an invasion.
And seriously, the US is only country that glorifies war, every other countries, especially the one that have been subject to war or invasion, understand it's something to be avoided at all costs
No, actually, there are lots of countries in recent memory that have directly instigated wars with little or no US involvement. Iraq invaded Kuwait; Egypt and other Arab states attacked Israel; Argentina attacked the UK in the Falklands; Iran and Iraq had a pretty big war; India and Pakistan.... The list goes on and on. And that's to say nothing of the numerous terrorist/guerilla groups thirsty for blood and power in conflicts around the world.
http://nobelprize.org/educational/peace/conflictmap/conflictmap.html [nobelprize.org]
Oh what a shame: (Score:5, Insightful)
what a shame.
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No worries, there are thousands of warheads; ending the world would have been no trouble at all.
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What bombs are those? I'm honestly curious, I've never heard of anything like that before.
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What bombs are those? I'm honestly curious, I've never heard of anything like that before.
Your geek card is in danger. You could think of black hole bombs, for example (The Gap trilogy), or of fun with planet-smashers (Doc Smith's evolved and ethical and genocidal Lensmen), and many more [wikipedia.org].
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When Clinton took office they had 5 bombs that individually each one could destroy the planet. He had 3 of them dismantled and had the other 2 on orders to be dismantled. Bush came into office and stopped that silliness instead ordering 9 more to be built. Thus we can assume right now that the US has at least 11 bombs that if they work according to theory would completely destroy this planet. YAY
This isn't a troll, mods ... ought to get a +5 Funny. You must go through a lot of Reynolds Wrap.
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Remember Kids... (Score:2)
Please, take care of your electrical-systems-powering-ICBM-missiles. Please.
Re:Remember Kids... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have to resort to using ICMB's against terrorists, then the terrorists probably have already won
Quick! (Score:2)
Switch the targeting systems for empty boxes while Colossus can't look!
Obligatory (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, wait...
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How can we protect our precious bodily fluids with 50 missiles not working?
General Jack D. Ripper: Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.
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Now let's get this thing on the hump - we got some flyin' to do.
Oh, wait...
"Yeeeeehaaaaw?"
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Yeah Kong got some flying in that time. Its one of my earliest memories BTW. Maybe taking a three year old to Kubrick movies wasn't such a good idea...
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Maybe taking a three year old to Kubrick movies wasn't such a good idea...
Your earliest memory is from age three, eh? And from seeing a movie?
Well, my earliest memory is nine months before I was born! -- I remember going to a drive-in movie with my dad, and then going home with my mom!
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What's a "drive-in movie"?
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A place where people who were much cooler than you in high school visited in order to fornicate.
Update to the story (Score:5, Informative)
It is now being called an engineering failure not a power failure.
"According to the official, engineers believe that a launch control center computer (LCC), responsible for a package of five missiles, began to "ping" out of sequence, resulting in a surge of "noise" through the system. The LCCs interrogate each missile in sequence, so if they begin to send signals out when they're not supposed to, receivers on the missiles themselves will notice this and send out error codes.
Since LCCs ping out of sequence on occasion, missileers tried quick fixes. But as more and more missiles began to display error settings, they decided to take off-line all five LCCs that the malfunctioning center was connected to. That left 50 missiles in the dark. The missileers then restarted one of the LCCs, which began to normally interrogate the missile transceiver. Three other LCCs were successfully restarted. The suspect LCC remains off-line. "
The missiles were offline for about an hour.
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So somebody set the clock wrong?
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Just a little test run of Israel's NEW version of the Stuxnet.
But I'm (almost) sure that Israel will ALLOW the US to launch a couple missiles when the time comes.
Maybe.
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This sounds an awful lot like a "swamp gas and reflections from Saturn" explanation.
mutually assured destruction (Score:2, Insightful)
50 * 9 = 450 nukes
anyone think it's funny that we don't allow other countries to have nukes?
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"anyone think it's funny that we don't allow other countries to have nukes?"
No. Power and force matter. They trump everything else.
Re:mutually assured destruction (Score:4, Insightful)
"Yet other countries have them."
I didn't say "deterrence" trumps everything else. Sometimes one has to USE force to obtain the desired outcome or something like it.
That all wars since WWII have been rather minor affairs argues that mutual nuclear deterrence between RATIONAL ACTORS works.
An irrational actor may not be deterred, which means the option to defeat or destroy (there is a difference) may be selected.
For example, Israel deters enemies by the "Samson option". If you are going to lose your country irrevocably to an enemy, there is
no logical reason not to destroy as many of them as possible. It becomes perfectly reasonable to empty your arsenal into their military, infrastructure, and since in cultural war every enemy human is an enemy, their population centers. Your willingness to do that must exist to be a deterrent, and if that fails, you serve your co-culturalists elsewhere by your sacrifice.
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We have 450 Minuteman IIIs. We have lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of other delivery mechanisms.
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50 * 9 = 450 nukes
anyone think it's funny that we don't allow other countries to have nukes?
I'm not sure what you mean by "funny".
Should the U.S and its allies encourage proliferation of thermonuclear weapons and delivery systems? I don't think so, personally. We aren't discussing tariffs or trade embargoes here, you know. Understand one thing: fairness doesn't matter. Never having them used in war, that's what matters. Also, lots of other countries have them, you know. We just don't like countries whose leaders are likely to drop them on us, or on our allies, to have them. We also don't like n
Re:mutually assured destruction (Score:5, Informative)
Understand one thing: fairness doesn't matter. Never having them used in war, that's what matters.
Um. But the USA is the only country ever to use them in war. So perhaps you wish to modify your statement to: "Never having them used against us in war, that's what matters."
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No.
Just because I can kill you, doesn't mean I want to allow you to be able to kill me.
what if the missiles are intelligent (to a point) (Score:2)
... and assumed the launch control center has been blown away, then proceed to start the launch sequence on their own?
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This kind of situation is the reason they don't put such 'intelligence' into the missiles.
Stupid hype (Score:4, Insightful)
Move along, nothing to see here -.-
Wow this is overblown (Score:3, Informative)
Look, I RTFAd.
To summarize: one of the ICBM routers went out of control, sending out pings to the missiles before it should. The missiles sent back error codes as they weren't expecting to be pinged yet, and the increase in traffic eventually flooded that segment of the network, and they had to take it down. The local guys lost control of some added security features. They sent in armed soldiers to each silo to make sure they were intact.
The president still had full control of the missiles via NCA and Kneecap. Neither were operational at the time due to our relatively peaceful defcon status, but every single one of the missiles would have still launched during the "power failure".
Really, the only reason this is a big story is what the hardware was controlling. As any slashdot reader can tell you, routers can die all the time without warning. They were back up and running within an hour (bypassing the faulty router).
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They sent in armed soldiers to each silo to make sure they were intact.
Shooting the disobeying missiles was a possibility, so they couldn't send in unarmed soldiers.
Re:Wow this is overblown (Score:4, Informative)
Shooting the interlopers who'd snapped the router cable while drilling into the silo was a possibility.
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Do we really need that many routers?
Can't we route the world over like 9 times by now?
Think of the children.
Dull Sword (Score:2)
So Broken Arrow [imdb.com] means missing nuke.
Apparently Dull Sword [wikimedia.org] is the term for a non-functioning nuclear warhead.
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So Broken Arrow means missing nuke. Apparently Dull Sword is the term for a non-functioning nuclear warhead.
Yeah, but what does Limp Dick mean?
Obligatory Dr. Strangelove Quote (Score:2)
New meaning to scared in the dark (Score:2)
That has to give a whole new meaning to being afraid in the dark. I bet there were a few hundred people messing their pants on Saturday, and a lot of people who haven't stopped working non-stop since the incident.
Looks like the firings didn't work (Score:2)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSWAT00960720080606 [reuters.com]
The Air Force has been long criticized over its handling of the nuclear stock pile. Missleers used to be a sought after job, but over the last few decades, its been a career dead end in the Air Force.
Dick Cheney Located (Score:2)
Dick Cheney came to elected office from Wyoming, and claimed he was from Wyoming to avoid the law that prohibits both president and VP candidate coming from the same state (Texas, with Bush). Cheney is the devil, and dwells in the bowels of the Earth. Cheney loves nothing more than WMD like "loose nukes". He's got plenty of time on his hands, and saw on TV that Republicans are taking over again next week.
I believe we have located the Cheney Bunker. And he's grabbing nukes!
Oh relax.... (Score:2)
It's not like we were using them anyway. Heck, we probably saved on some tritium, assuming it didn't leak out when the power went off.
phones out to cheyene mountain beats that (Score:5, Interesting)
I know a fellow who cut the phone lines to Cheyenne Mountain back in the early '70s. He was running the drilling machine to make pilings for a new highway overpass when two truckloads of angry MPs hunting communist infiltrators came roaring down the road. Turns out the guy who left the little flags showing where there was an underground cable didn't notice a loop that was put in when the cables were installed and the two ends didn't match up. By complete coincidence the bridge piling was going in right over the looped cable. Hah, took my friend and his crew several hours to convince the MPs they weren't a Soviet sleeper cell disrupting communications as prelude to nuclear attack.
Underground cable breach? (Score:3, Funny)
"The cause of the failure remains unknown, although it is suspected to be a breach of underground cables deep beneath the base, according to a senior military official."
Mole People working for Al Qaeda! How else can this act of sabotage be explained?
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The next time Wyoming makes it onto front page news will likely be when the Yellowstone super-volcano caldera explodes. So, yeah, by all means, celebrate while you can.
Ah, another Emmerich fan.
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Why not oming?
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I'd recommend over Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.
Win Win!
PROFIT!
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I don't feel safer knowing that some unforeseen glitch can disable all kinds of security systems. Losing control by the US command chain is one requirement for someone else to get control of them. And overall, defective control systems leave open the possibility of all kinds of other problems.
Nothing but 100% predictable control of nukes is acceptable.
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How long was it up?
How long was it down?
Does the 5-9's apply to each missile, or to the mission of the fleet?
You do the math.
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In 2008, Gates fired the Secretary of the Air Force and its chief of staff after a series of incidents suggested to Gates that the service wasn't taking its nuclear duties seriously enough. At one point, a B-52 bomber flew across the continental U.S. without realizing that its nuclear weapons were "hot."
Ya know, if you boys can't learn to take care of your toys, maybe you should have them taken away!
Who's going to do it?
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Do the nukes each have an ip address? what happens if I do a port scan? (besides having several 3 letter agencies show up and get a room at Gitmo?
A room at Gitmo isn't enough? What, you want to actually launch something? Greedy bastard.