“Dammit Boomer! Why can’t I know?” the senator demanded.

“Senator, like I’ve told you before – you don’t have the security classification for a need to know.”

Boomer hated to stand by this hard line because he and the senator had been friends for almost twenty years, had worked on many projects together, but now that the senator wanted to know the secret information about the country’s nuclear war plans, he had no choice.

“You know who knows. And you know they will tell you what you need to know when you need to know it,” Boomer replied, trying to take the edge off his tone.

“But Boomer, Congress has the responsibility for oversight, and how can we have oversight if we don’t know what the plan is?” the senator asked again.

It was going nowhere. Boomer had the plan, alright, but so did lots of other people. Besides, it had been the topic of much debate for years. The details weren’t all that important, anyway, because it changed all the time. That was the beauty of it.

No matter what, there was the plan.

“Senator, I can’t give you any of the particulars, but you know how it works.*  All the possibilities fall into one of two categories. They launch first, or we do. If they do, our plan is defensive. For instance, we know where their missile silos are, and we can tell instantly when they have launched a missile. That silo is removed from our plan, because it’s empty, no longer a value as a target.”

“We have two types of war plans. One is ‘counterforce’, and that’s the one where, once they launch, we launch against all their military structure – command and control, air and navy bases, military installations, radar, sonar and satellite facilities. In other words, we will take out everything of military value.”

“Now, after they launch, and we have launched our retaliation against their military targets, our missile shield will be activated and target each incoming missile and warhead. After that, our ‘countervalue’ plan will go into effect, and we will use everything else in a massive and total attack on all their cities and population centers – in other words, after we kill their weapons, we want to kill as many people as we can.”

“Now, if for any reason we are forced into a first strike, we will target all their missile silos and fixed base weapons systems. Even if they detect our first launch headed their way and launch all their missiles, we can change our missiles’ targets in flight. Don’t you see, there really is no fixed plan. It is a dynamic plan and it changes second by second as missile trajectories are discovered and plotted, and their missiles ‘deactivated’ by our defense missiles.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” the senator wanted to know.

“Senator, it’s going to work.” assured Boomer.

“Boomer, let’s say it does work – our missile defense shield works and takes out all their warheads. Where does that actually take place? Way out in space, in near-earth orbit, in our atmosphere?”

“Well, Senator, intercepts take place all over – some here, some there, some in space, some in near-earth and some in the atmosphere.”

“Boomer, won’t that wreck the atmosphere? Wreck the earth?”

“Now Senator, you know I can’t tell you that, it’s classified.” Boomer eased back in his chair.

NEXT