A nuclear briefcase is a specially outfitted briefcase used to authorize the use of nuclear weapons and is usually kept near the leader of a nuclear weapons state at all times.
A nuclear briefcase is a specially outfitted briefcase used to authorize the use of nuclear weapons and is usually kept near the leader of a nuclear weapons state at all times.
In France, the nuclear briefcase does not officially exist. [1] A black briefcase called the "mobile base" [2] follows the president in all his trips, but it is not specifically devoted to nuclear force. [3]
India does not have a nuclear briefcase. In India, the Political Council of the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) must collectively authorize the use of nuclear weapons. [4] [5] The NCA Executive Council gives its opinion to the Political Council, which authorises a nuclear attack when deemed necessary. While the Executive Council is chaired by the National Security Advisor (NSA), the Political Council is chaired by the Prime Minister. This mechanism was implemented to ensure that Indian nuclear weapons remain firmly in civilian control and that there exists a sophisticated command-and-control mechanism to prevent their accidental or unauthorised use. [6]
The Prime Minister is often accompanied by Special Protection Group personnel carrying a black briefcase. It contains foldable Kevlar protection armor, essential documents and has a pocket that can hold a pistol. [5] [7]
Russia's "nuclear briefcase" is code-named Cheget . It "supports communication between senior government officials while they are making the decision whether to use nuclear weapons, and in its own turn is plugged into the special Kazbek communication system, which includes all the individuals and agencies involved in command and control of the Strategic Nuclear Forces." It is usually assumed, although not known with certainty, that the nuclear briefcases are also issued to the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the General Staff. [8] [9]
In his 1980 book Breaking Cover, [10] Bill Gulley, former director of the White House Military Office, wrote: [11]
There are four things in the Football. The Black Book containing the retaliatory options, a book listing classified site locations, a manila folder with eight or ten pages stapled together giving a description of procedures for the Emergency Alert System, and a three-by-five-inch [7.5 × 13 cm] card with authentication codes. The Black Book was about 9 by 12 inches [23 × 30 cm] and had 75 loose-leaf pages printed in black and red. The book with classified site locations was about the same size as the Black Book, and was black. It contained information on sites around the country where the president could be taken in an emergency.
The president is always accompanied by a military aide carrying the nuclear football with launch codes for nuclear weapons. [12] It has been described both as a metal Zero Halliburton briefcase [13] and as a leather briefcase weighing about 45 pounds (20 kg), with photographic evidence existing of the latter. [11] A small antenna protrudes from the bag near the handle, suggesting that it also contains communications equipment of some kind. [11]
It is popularly believed that the football contains a large red button, which when pressed, launches a nuclear attack. [14] [15] [16]
If the U.S. president, who is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, decides to order the use of nuclear weapons, the briefcase would be opened. A command signal, or "watch" alert, would be issued to the United States Strategic Command and perhaps the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president would review the attack options with others such as the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and decide on a plan, which could range from the launch of a single ICBM or nuclear-armed bomber to options for multiple, even hundreds of ICBMs or bombers. These are among the preset war plans developed under OPLAN 8010 (formerly the Single Integrated Operational Plan). [17] A two-person verification procedure would precede the entering of the codes into a Permissive Action Link.[ citation needed ]
Before the order can be followed by the military, the president must be positively identified using a special code issued on a plastic card, nicknamed the "biscuit". [18] The authentication is conducted between the president and the National Military Command Center deputy director of operations, using a challenge code of two phonetic letters. The president will read, from the biscuit, the daily phonetic letters, and the deputy director will confirm or deny that it is correct, confirmation indicating the person is the president and the attack orders can be given. [19] Down the chain of command, the United States has a two-man rule in place at nuclear launch facilities. This verification process ensures the order came from the actual president.
Many sources show that the president has sole launch authority, and the defense secretary has no veto power. [20] [21] [22] However, it has been argued that the president may not have sole authority to initiate a nuclear attack because the defense secretary is required to verify the order but cannot veto it. [23] [24] [25] U.S. law dictates that the attack must be lawful; military officers are required to refuse to execute unlawful orders, such as those that violate international humanitarian law. [26] Military officials, including General John Hyten, have testified to the U.S. Congress that they would refuse to carry out an unlawful order for a nuclear strike. [27] In addition, off-the-shelf strike packages are pre-vetted by lawyers to confirm that they are legal and, thus, such a strike would be presumed to be a lawful order. [28]
Military service members have been reprimanded for questioning U.S. protocols for nuclear strike authority. In 1975, Major Harold Hering was discharged from the Air Force for asking, "How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?" [29] Nevertheless, the president, once in office, as noted by former Defense Secretary William Perry and Tom Z. Collina, retains the sole authority to launch a nuclear strike or attack. [30]
The football is carried by one of the rotating presidential military aides (one from each of the six armed forces service branches), whose work schedule is described by a top-secret rota. This person is a commissioned officer in the U.S. military, pay-grade O-4 or above, who has undergone the nation's most rigorous background check (Yankee White). [31] These officers are required to keep the football readily accessible to the president at all times. Consequently, this officer carries the football either standing or walking near the president at all times, including riding on Air Force One, on Marine One, or in the presidential motorcade with the president. [31]
There are three nuclear footballs in total; two are allocated to the president and vice president, with the last being stored in the White House. [32] The practice of also providing an aide with a football to the vice president, to whom command authority would devolve if the president is disabled or deceased, began during the Carter administration. [33] In presidential transitions, the president-elect does not receive the actual nuclear code card until after the nuclear briefing, which usually occurs when "he meets with the outgoing president at the White House just before the actual inauguration ceremony. The code card is activated electronically right after the president-elect takes the oath at noon". [34]
If the outgoing president is not present at the inauguration — as happened in 2021 when Donald Trump did not attend the inauguration of Joe Biden but stayed in Florida [35] — one football is kept with him and remains active until 11:59:59 a.m. on inauguration day. After that point, the now-former president is denied access to the football, its codes are automatically deactivated, and the aide carrying the football returns to Washington, D.C. In the meantime, the incoming president receives one of the spare footballs at the pre-inauguration nuclear briefing, as well as a "biscuit" with codes that become active at 12:00:00 p.m. [36]
According to military analyst and whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, presidents beginning with Eisenhower have in fact delegated nuclear launch authority to military commanders who may then sub-delegate authority further. In Ellsberg's view, the nuclear football is primarily a piece of political theater, a hoax that obscures the real chain of nuclear command and control. [37]
Cinema and literature have dealt with this subject various times.
Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can produce destruction in a much shorter time and can have a long-lasting radiological result. A major nuclear exchange would likely have long-term effects, primarily from the fallout released, and could also lead to secondary effects, such as "nuclear winter", nuclear famine, and societal collapse. A global thermonuclear war with Cold War-era stockpiles, or even with the current smaller stockpiles, may lead to various scenarios including the human extinction.
The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law signed on June 18, 1878, by President Rutherford B. Hayes that limits the powers of the federal government in the use of federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States. Congress passed the Act as an amendment to an army appropriation bill following the end of Reconstruction and updated it in 1956, 1981 and 2021.
Daniel Ellsberg was an American political activist, economist, and United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, he precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.
Fail-deadly is a concept in nuclear military strategy that encourages deterrence by guaranteeing an immediate, automatic, and overwhelming response to an attack, even if there is no one to trigger such retaliation. The term fail-deadly was coined as a contrast to fail-safe.
The National Command Authority (NCA) is a term that was formerly used by the Department of Defense of the United States to refer to the ultimate source of lawful military orders.
The Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) was the United States' general plan for nuclear war from 1961 to 2003. The SIOP gave the President of the United States a range of targeting options, and described launch procedures and target sets against which nuclear weapons would be launched. The plan integrated the capabilities of the nuclear triad of strategic bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), and sea-based submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). The SIOP was a highly classified document, and was one of the most secret and sensitive issues in U.S. national security policy.
The nuclear football is a briefcase, the contents of which are to be used by the president of the United States to communicate and authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room or the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Functioning as a mobile hub in the strategic defense system of the United States, the football is carried by a military aide when the president is traveling.
The United States was the first country to manufacture nuclear weapons and is the only country to have used them in combat, with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Before and during the Cold War, it conducted 1,054 nuclear tests, and tested many long-range nuclear weapons delivery systems.
The Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) of India is the authority responsible for command, control and operational decisions regarding India's nuclear weapons programme. It comprises a Political Council headed by the Prime Minister of India and an Executive Council headed by the National Security Advisor.
The Gold Code is the launch code for nuclear weapons provided to the President of the United States in their role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In conjunction with the nuclear football, the Gold Codes allow the president to authorize a nuclear attack. Gold Codes, as well as a separate nuclear football, are also assigned to the vice president in case the president is incapacitated or otherwise unable to discharge the duties of office pursuant to the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Gold Codes are arranged in a column and printed on a plastic card nicknamed "the biscuit".
Dead Hand, also known as Perimeter, is a Cold War–era automatic nuclear weapons control system that was constructed by the Soviet Union. The system remains in use in the post-Soviet Russian Federation. An example of fail-deadly and mutual assured destruction deterrence, it can automatically initiate the launch of the Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) by sending a pre-entered highest-authority order from the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Strategic Missile Force Management to command posts and individual silos if a nuclear strike is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity, and pressure sensors even with the commanding elements fully destroyed. By most accounts, it is normally switched off and is supposed to be activated during times of crisis; however, as of 2009, it was said to remain fully functional and able to serve its purpose when needed.
Cheget is a "nuclear briefcase" and a part of the automatic system for the command and control of Russia's Strategic Nuclear Forces (SNF) named Kazbek. From when it was first developed, a "nuclear suitcase" has been available to the Russian head of state, Minister of Defense and the head of the General Staff.
The Norwegian rocket incident, also known as the Black Brant scare, occurred on January 25, 1995 when a team of Norwegian and American scientists launched a Black Brant XII four-stage sounding rocket from the Andøya Rocket Range off the northwestern coast of Norway. The rocket carried scientific equipment to study the aurora borealis over Svalbard, and flew on a high northbound trajectory, which included an air corridor that stretches from Minuteman III nuclear missile silos in North Dakota all the way to Moscow, the capital city of Russia. The rocket eventually reached an altitude of 1,453 kilometers (903 mi), resembling a US Navy submarine-launched Trident missile. Fearing a high-altitude nuclear attack that could blind Russian radar, Russian nuclear forces went on high alert, and the "nuclear briefcase" was taken to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who then had to decide whether to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States. Russian observers determined that there was no nuclear attack and no retaliation was ordered.
The "nuclear button" is a figurative term referring to the power to use nuclear weapons. "Pushing the nuclear button" refers to actually using them. The actual procedure for using such weapons is more complex than simply pushing a button. The "nuclear button" may be transferred to another official due to political changes or the incapacitation of a person currently in control of it.
John Noonan is an American conservative national security commentator and analyst. He was the national security policy advisor to Jeb Bush during his presidential campaign, and foreign policy advisor and speechwriter for Mitt Romney in 2012. He was a principal defense writer for The Weekly Standard and a policy director of the Foreign Policy Initiative.
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In the United States, the president has the sole authority to order the use of nuclear weapons, for any reason and at any time.
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