#straightdope

The following is reprinted from Cecil Adams’ “The Straight Dope” column. Please note the part at the very end.

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How does the president of the United States "push the button"? What exactly happens? Can anybody do it? -- Zvi F., Chicago

The popular expression notwithstanding, Zvi, when the prez wishes to obliterate mankind, he doesn't actually press any but­tons. He uses the telephone. A bit banal, I suppose, but that is the nature of the 20th century. The president is accompanied at all times by an Air Force warrant officer carrying a thin black satchel containing the Emergency War Order (EWO) authentica­tion codes. To launch a nuclear attack, the president calls up CINCSAC (commander in chief, Strategic Air Command, Omaha, Nebraska), uses the codes to establish that he is indeed the pres­ident, and gives his orders. The president's codes, it should be noted, are not "enabling" codes -- that is, you don't actually have to punch them into the computers to initiate the firing sequence.

This is an important distinction, as we shall see.

CINCSAC, an Air Force general, sits on a Captain Kirk-like command chair on a balcony overlooking SAC's Underground Command Post. If the post were to be destroyed, command would automatically shift to a specially equipped E-4B jet, one of which is kept in the air at all times, or to one of several dozen other auxiliary command posts.

Having verified the president's orders -- presumably several officers are involved in this for safety's sake, but the details are not clear -- CINCSAC activates the Single Integrated Operational Plan, a command sequencing computer that electronically issues EWOs to the pertinent parties. Again, details are a little vague, but apparently two sorts of command are sent. The first is a message to bomber and missile crews containing instructions and a verification code, which the recipients are required to check against their own code books. The second command is purely electronic in nature, and arms each launch device via something called a Permissive Action Link, which is sort of a safety catch. After each land-based missile command center confirms its orders, two crew members must simultaneously turn brass keys at control consoles some distance apart, casting one "launch vote." The crew in another command center some miles away does the same thing, and the two votes together launch 10-50 ICBMs. On submarines, two officers dial combinations into a special safe, do the same thing on another safe inside the first, get the brass key, and give it to the captain, who arms the missiles. Then four officers located in various parts of the vessel press buttons or turn still more keys to initiate launch. On bombers, two or three officers have to cooperate to arm the bombs.

How much of all this equipment will actually work is open to debate. Questions have been raised as to the reliability of the Worldwide Military Command and Control System, by which all orders are transmitted, and most of the land-based missile sites have never test-fired a missile. However, one assumes that a fair amount of destruction will occur.

Nobody outside the government really knows if anybody but the president can launch a nuclear strike. Pentagon officials have told congressional committees that the president is the only person so authorized, and that the legal line of succession would have to be followed were the president incapacitated. But the code system makes it physically possible for the military to fire missiles on its own, and nobody really believes that SAC would spend a lot of time hunting around for the vice-president if disaster were immi­nent. 

By the same token, it's not certain if anybody can overrule the president either. You may recall that in the final days of the Nixon administration then-Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger instructed commanders to report any "unusual" presidential orders to him before taking action, evidently out of a suspicion that Dick might decide to torch the planet out of pique. I cannot say that the situation fills me with confidence.

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Me either.

We have an asshole in the White House who incited a mob to storm the Capitol in Washington to disrupt the confirmation of his successor. And this same asshole has the codes - and the authority - to launch a nuclear strike.