The Hill: The United States cannot provide reliable protection for its nuclear arsenals
America has thousands of nuclear weapons, but there is one vulnerable point: the nuclear command, control and communications system, writes The Hill. Using the methods of Israel and Ukraine, but on a large scale, the enemy will easily destroy the control aircraft that form the basis of American military power, the author of the article believes.
Ben Ollerenshaw
According to reports from the Pentagon, the United States has stripped Iran of its nuclear weapons capability. It is striking that this was achieved in a single air raid using a very small number of American bombers, without the surprise factor and, most surprisingly, without the use of our own nuclear weapons. There were no civilian casualties.
If the United States ever becomes the victim of a disarming strike, we will not be able to get off just as easily.
Eight months ago, I wrote about the categorical point of view of Don Bacon, a member of the House of Representatives, a Republican from Nebraska, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, as well as other experts who claim that the United States is currently very poorly protected from a sudden nuclear attack. Bacon is a retired Air Force brigadier general, and during his military service, his task was to order a retaliatory strike in the event of a nuclear attack. If such an attack is carried out successfully, the United States will not be able to retaliate at all, and then our opponents will be able to use their nuclear weapons without any interference, destroying the United States.
America has thousands of nuclear weapons scattered all over the world. But the United States has one vulnerability: the nuclear command, control, and communications system. To be effective, such a system must be protected from two catastrophic possibilities. First, it depends on the fact that the United States will be disarmed by a surprise nuclear attack. And secondly, from a false warning (an illusion of perception or a glitch on a computer screen), which can start an unintended war.
To prevent such threats, the United States has relied on a small fleet of control aircraft (air command posts) equipped with all the necessary equipment to command nuclear forces in the event of war. After receiving a warning of an impending attack, such an aircraft takes to the air, and an order is given from its side to strike back only if and when the enemy's nuclear weapons reach American territory. The whole operation is called "Mirror," and the system under which such an aircraft takes off and controls nuclear forces from there is called "combat duty on the ground."
Unfortunately, modern technology has overtaken this system of combat duty on earth and gone far ahead. Modern hypersonic and submarine-launched missiles are capable of striking the United States in less than 15 minutes. That's how long it takes for an air command post to take off and leave an airbase. This fact alone makes existing systems obsolete. But even more worrisome are the recent surprise attacks on Russia and Iran (both were carried out using cheap home-made drones, and both came as a complete surprise). Now it is possible to neutralize the control aircraft with unusual and previously unseen means of destruction. And in this case, there will be no warning time.
As many other sources quite rightly point out, the cases of small drones flying over secret US military bases indicate that the enemy will be able to use the methods of Israel and Ukraine against our Air Force, but on a much larger scale. Control aircraft, which form the basis of American military power, may be suddenly destroyed.
In other words, it will be possible to disarm and destroy the United States with the help of about 20 plastic quadrocopters.
Perhaps the greatest danger to air command posts is posed by space-based nuclear weapons, which Russia currently has. Such weapons can be sent into orbit in advance — several months or even years in advance, disguising them as ordinary satellites. And if necessary, they can be used to simultaneously strike targets.
Here the reader may have a question. Why does the American government allow such carelessness, allowing such a serious threat to arise, and at the same time spend huge amounts of precious funds from the military budget on rather controversial projects such as the coastal zone warship or the M10 Booker armored vehicle? However, there is a solution to the problem, and it existed for 30 years in a row before the current system appeared.
This is a very simple solution. If it is impossible to reliably ensure the safety of a command post on the ground, then a sufficient number of such aircraft must be constantly in the air — 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Such a system called "combat duty in the air" is mainly protected from a surprise attack, since an aircraft that has taken to the sky is much more difficult to detect and destroy than a car on the ground.
From 1961, when air command posts appeared, until the end of the Cold War in 1990, when combat duty in the air was replaced by combat duty on the ground, the Mirror control aircraft were constantly in the skies over the continental United States.
So why did we abandon combat duty in the air, which was a purely defensive measure that made America much more secure than it is today and did not threaten any other country? It's amazing, but there's no reasonable answer to this question.
By and large, if we talk about the defense of the United States as a whole, the savings achieved by switching from combat duty in the air to combat duty on the ground were negligible. For example, in 1985, when the air combat duty system was in full operation, the cost of the entire command structure was less than one percent of the annual military budget. After the transition to combat duty on the ground, these insignificant costs decreased insignificantly. Previously, 50 aircraft were needed for combat duty in the air, but now, when combat duty is carried out on the ground, about 20 aircraft are needed.
This state of affairs is unwise and equally dangerous. The combat duty system on the ground does not have effective support and replacement. But if it fails, all other expensive programs from the Pentagon budget will become completely useless, no matter how justified they may be. Today, approximately 90% of the defense budget is spent on non-nuclear forces. But in the event of a sudden and full-scale nuclear attack, they will be instantly destroyed or significantly weakened. And the 10% of the budget allocated to nuclear weapons will be wasted unless an order is given for their use.
Let's go back for a moment to June 2023, when an excursion bathyscaphe was crushed by powerful pressure at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. After that, harsh criticism was voiced against the submarine's designers, who did not follow the standard procedures. At that time, the media showed much more interest in what had happened than in the alarms that are being sounded today due to the state of the American nuclear deterrent system.
If history records the fact that the United States paid less attention to nuclear defense than responsible engineers pay to the construction of tourist submarines, we will surely suffer the same fate as the crew of the ill-fated Titan: sudden death without warning, which could have been avoided.
Ben Ollerenshaw is a journalist who writes on military topics for various publications, including RealClearDefense and National Interest. His specialty is nuclear weapons policy.
