Hair-Trigger Missiles Risk
Catastrophic Terrorism
Our two governments have not yet overcome the mutual suspicion that is severely impeding their cooperation in preventing nuclear materials theft. They had better leap this hurdle soon, because even greater cooperation is necessary to protect their populations against the multitude of potential terrorist threats to launch-ready nuclear forces.Bruce Blair, Harold Feiveson, Fran von Hippel Scientific American Nov 97The distrust stems partially from disputes such as the Iraq war, but it persists in large part because the United States and Russia remain in each other's nuclear cross-hairs. War planners in both countries remain, believe it or not, preoccupied with preparing to fight a large-scale nuclear war with each other on short notice. Both sides keep thousands of weapons aimed at each other and poised for immediate launch. U.S. spy planes still routinely lurk off the Russian border looking for holes in the air defense network through which U.S. heavy bombers and cruise missiles could fly to drop nuclear bombs on Russia in wartime. Russian missile submarines still find themselves trailed by U.S. submarines as soon as they leave port on patrol. Two massive leadership posts inside mountains in the Urals built to withstand a U.S. nuclear strike are just coming online. Russia is equipping the one at Kozvinsky Mountain with an underground antenna for radioing a launch order to a "dead hand" communications rocket designed to ensure quasi-automatic Russian missile retaliation in the event of a U.S. strike that decapitates the nuclear chain of command....
Another specter concerns terrorists spoofing radar or satellite sensors, or cyber-terrorists hacking into early warning networks. Could sophisticated terrorists generate false indications of an enemy attack that results in a mistaken launch of nuclear rockets in 'retaliation?' False alarms have been frequent enough on both sides under the best of conditions. False warning poses an acute danger as long as Russian and U.S. nuclear commanders are allowed, as they still are today, only several pressure-packed minutes to determine whether an enemy attack is underway and decide whether to retaliate. Russia's deteriorating early warning network coupled to terrorist plotting against it only heightens the risks.
Taking Nuclear Weapons off Hair-Trigger Alert
Less than 15 minutes after receiving the order to attack, six U.S. Trident submarines at sea could loft roughly 1,000 warheads, and several Russian ballisticmissile submarines could dispatch between 300 and 400. In sum, the two nuclear superpowers remain ready to fire a total of inore than 5,000 nuclear weapons at each other within half an hour. Why do two countries at peace retain such aggressive postures, ones that perpetuate the danger of a mistaken or unauthorized launch? Because military planners on both sides remain fixated on the remote specter of a deliberate nuclear surprise attack from their former adversary. They assume that such a "first strike" would be alined against their own strategic nuclear weapons and the command centers that direct them. To deter such an assault, each country strives to ensure that it could respond with a forceful counterattack against the full spectrum 'of military targets on its opponent's territory, including all nuclear weapons installations. This requirement saddles military planners with a task virtually identical in scope to mounting a first strike: they must be able to guarantee the rapid destruction of thousands of targets spread across a distant continent. In order to meet this demand, both the U.S. and Russia rely on a launch-on-warning strategy-that is, each side is poised to release a massive retaliatory missile salvo after detecting an enemy niissile attack but before the incoming warheads arrive (which alight take just 15 minutes if they were fired from submarines nearby). Although it has thousands of warheads securely deployed at sea, the U.S. adheres to this quick-draw stance because of the vulnerability of its missile silos and command apparatus, including its political and military leadership in Washington, D.C. Russian officials perceive an even greater need to launch their missiles on warning. The General Staff evidently fears that if its nuclear missiles are not launched immediately, tticii only tens of them would be able to respond after absorbing a systematic U.S. attack. Russian command posts and missile silos are as vulnerable as those of the U.S. to a massive assault. Russia's current inability to deploy many of its most survivable forces submarines at sea and mobile land-based rockets-amplifies this worry...The time available for deciding to launch these weapons is shortened by the presence of American, British and French submarines cruising in the North Atlantic, only about 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from Moscow. This proximity means that the nuclear-release procedures in Russia require a response time of less than 15 minutes: a few minutes for detecting an attack, another few minutes for top-level decision making and a few minutes for disseminating the launch order. Russian leaders and missile controllers are geared to work with in this brief time frame and to practice regularly with drills. U.S. nuclear forces operate with a similarly short fuse. It is obvious that the rushed nature of his process, from warning to decision on action, risks causing a catastrophic mistake. 'The danger is complicated by the erosion of Russia's ability to distinguish reliably between natural phenomena or peaceful ventures into space and a true missile attack.
Only one third of its modern early-warning radars are working at all, and at least two of the nine slots in its constellation of missile warning satellites are empty. The dangers stemming from this decline in Russia's technical capabilities are offset, to some extent, by the relaxation of tensions that has come with the end of the cold war. Given the milder political climate, decision makers on both sides should be more inclined to question the validity of any reports they receive of an impending missile attack. Nevertheless, the coupling of two arsenals geared for rapid response carries the inherent danger of producing a mistaken launch and an escalating volley of missiles in return. The possibility an apocalyptic accident cannot be ruled out even under normal conditions. And if the control of Russian nuclear weapons were to be stressed by an internal or international political crisis, the danger could suddenly become much more acute. During the cold war, such risks were subordinafed to the overriding requirement to deter an enemy believed to be willing to launch a nuclear attack. This rationalization is no longer defensible, if ever it was.