Air Force Nuke Missiles Still Operational

There's a bit of a tizzy going around as to a story that an Air Force squadron of ballistic nuclear-tipped missiles were "incommunicado" for a short period of time. Actually, it was less than an hour on the past Saturday when our national military command could not communicate with silos controlling 50 Minuteman III missiles. While this was discomforting to a few to say the least, this wasn't a "Minot moment" where nukes were out of the bunkers and clearly not accounted for. Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic has more:

According to the official, engineers believe that a launch control center computer (LCC), responsible for a package of at least five missiles, usually ten of them, 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.
--------
An Air Force spokesperson, Christy Nolta, said the power failure lasted less than an hour. "There was a temporary interruption and the missiles themselves were always protected by multiple, redundant, safety, security and command and control features. At no time was there any danger to the public," she said.

So it's a little bit of excitement for the new Air Force Global Strike Command. Nothing to be worried about, all is well. Not like the Tea Partiers were trying to confiscate a few nukes to make Texas an independent nation. Let's not make mushroom clouds out of minor computer glitches. That's what redundant command and control features are all about.

Comments

[tammy swofford]

Thank God for this news. Not found sleeping cuddled up to a nuclear warhead.... smile. God bless our troops!

http://www.stratcom.mil/news/article/71/Out_of_the_cold

Tammy

[Cheryl Rofer]

Nice to know that the fail-safe (in this case at least) was inoperability rather than launch.