PENTAGON PLANNING TO WIN NUCLEAR WAR
A New Nuclear Age; Planners design technology to withstand
the apocalypse
by William M. Arkin, Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-op-arkin6jul06,1,4094312.story
SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. - The Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review,
approved by President Bush in January 2002, outlined steps the U.S.
should take to ensure its future ability to "defeat any aggressor."
Included was a mandate for an "assured, survivable and enduring" communications
network, one that would remain functional even after a full-scale nuclear
attack.
Defense Department documents recently made available to the Los Angeles
Times describe how the government is now moving ahead with a number
of new programs toward that end, including a $200-million, eight-year
effort to expand and streamline nuclear war planning. Concurrently,
the same commercial technologies used in wireless communications and
personal computing are being enlisted to achieve a long-standing nuclear
war fighter's dream: systems able to operate even during a protracted
nuclear war.
According to classified and unclassified briefing and contracting documents,
the modernization efforts seek to make existing nuclear war planning
systems "more flexible and adaptable on all fronts." The new focus increases
the "number of threat countries" included in nuclear war planning and
expands the types of targets to be considered. The plans also envision
an expanded role for both special operations and cyber- warfare in the
event of a full-scale nuclear war. New software tools are being developed
to speed up the time it takes U.S. Strategic Command to prepare nuclear
options for the president, the secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs
of Staff.
In May, Northrop Grumman Mission Systems and Lockheed Martin Mission
Systems were awarded contracts to begin designing the new planning tools
envisioned in the Nuclear Posture Review. According to military documents,
they are needed because "the current process has no growth capability
to handle the increasing target requests, which are projected to grow
tenfold by 2007."
When the eight-year program is complete, key nuclear commanders and
civilian decision-makers will not only have a "point-and-click" interface
for planning nuclear war; they will also have a new array of specially
configured laptops, cell phones and other electronic gear to streamline
a variety of tasks.
New communications systems aimed at maintaining presidential control
over nuclear forces are also being developed and deployed. The most
important, known by the acronym GEMS, will modernize the current systems
that handle transmission of nuclear "go codes," or orders from the president
to launch a nuclear attack. The update will allow for greater capacity
and quicker transmission of information and intelligence.
Utilizing highly automated systems and new, higher-bandwidth satellites,
military planners expect to be able to still function even after a nuclear
attack. The systems will incorporate such things as secure video teleconferencing
and voice recognition software to ensure security. A constellation of
up to five advanced satellites costing more than $400 million apiece
will be launched into orbit beginning in 2006 to enable secure communications
between the president and the country's nuclear forces.
The expanded communications systems will have both fixed and mobile
communications terminals in at least 31 states and seven foreign countries,
as well as at numerous classified sites, according to military documents.
Terminals will be placed in military headquarters, at missile launch
sites, on bombers and other aircraft supporting nuclear warfare and
on submarines and support ships. When fully operational in 2010, the
system will provide "survivable" terminals to connect underground nuclear
command centers and nuclear forces. Even the paging devices of bomber
crews on nuclear alert will be connected to the system.
But the real innovation is the 69 "transportable terminals" small enough
to be set up, operated and maintained by one person. These communications
terminals will be designed to "reliably operate in pre- through post-nuclear
environments," according to an official "statement of objectives" for
the project. A December 2002 "operational requirements document" outlines
how, as tension levels increase, mobile support teams would be sent
with these terminals to secret locations. In the event of nuclear war,
the mobile teams would restaff command posts, bombers and tankers. They
would rendezvous with submarines and transport new nuclear weapons to
surviving units capable of delivering them.
The new systems are just one part of the military's implementation of
the more aggressive nuclear war strategies laid out in the Nuclear Posture
Review. In June 2002, the Navy and the Air Force rolled out a new system
that would allow for the reception of emergency messages during or after
a nuclear attack even if other communications systems had failed. Because
the system operates on a low frequency, it is slow, but that also means
it isn't subject to the same disruptions from electromagnetic pulses
that could interrupt most other systems after a nuclear explosion.
Some of the technology that will soon be employed in implementing the
Nuclear Posture Review's mandates is not new. One system, designed to
allow the transmission of encoded "emergency actions messages," employs
new Windows-like software and "open architecture networking." It initially
came into use in August 2001, and proved so valuable on and after Sept.
11 that the Air Force notified the defense industry last month that
it is looking at procuring an additional 200 or more of the systems
in the future.
Sept. 11 also served as the spark for communications network improvements
at the presidential level. The White House has initiated a highly classified
"Pioneer" project to resolve deficiencies in presidential communications
revealed after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. "The events
of Sept. 11, 2001, illustrate the need to improve our national command
and control architecture," Adm. James O. Ellis Jr., commander of Strategic
Command, told Congress in April. Military planners and government agencies,
he added, were working to craft a new national system to rectify the
problems.
The military is clearly moving quickly to implement the Nuclear Posture
Review's recommendations. Some of the upgrades are no-brainers: If we
are going to possess nuclear weapons, the need to maintain civilian
communications with nuclear forces even in the most catastrophic circumstances
is indisputable. The new technologies will enable greater mobility and
faster decision making. Let's hope that in doing so, they don't also
increase the likelihood that the U.S. will initiate a nuclear war.
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