There isn’t really a button.

The “trigger” is the control mechanism that decides whether or not to launch.

The trigger isn’t a person, or group. The trigger is a computer program. The trigger constantly monitors sensing data from all around the world, data that comes in over the Internet, phone lines, data links, satellites, and radar stations, and assesses the threat. If the program determines there has been an attack, it automatically issues the launch command and other instructions to all the weapons control operators in their inner-mountain control rooms, pilots in bombers, warships at sea and submarine commanders. Mobile launchers and surface and air launched cruise missiles were armed, target profiles selected, and made ready for firing.

Depending on the assessment of threat, a solution evolves through a ‘decision tree’ logic that sets our response level by determining the number and types of incoming missiles and predicted target impacts, and our available missiles and their preprogrammed targets. During the launch and flight, as new data arrived the plan would be modified continuously as necessary.

The major profiles included “Launch on Threat”, a first strike scenario when the threat of imminent attack was certain, “Launch on Attack”, the retaliatory response to their first strike, and “Launch Reserve”, the second strike.  

The trigger program was first developed back in the early 1980s during times of budget restrictions, and the prototype met the minimum standards called for in the defense contract. The final production program was supposed to be developed from the prototype, and run on DoD mainframes, but this never happened. The prototype code continued in service, continued to run on a PC in the lab at Lawrence Livermore, patched when bugs were found, and new modules added from time to time. Most of the code was written by sub-contractors in India and Pakistan.

It ran under Windows 3.1, known to just quit working sometimes for no apparent reason. That was a shame, too, because the trigger system had a built-in redundancy feature. If the program stopped running during execution, it would switch to a backup, running the older Windows 3.0, and if that failed it would declare a military emergency and issue the order to launch everything available at the latest known targets – counterforce – and then launch all the available leftovers at population centers – countervalue.

Here it gets even more complex because our missile arsenal contains not only the latest in sophisticated weaponry, but some old clunkers, as well, missiles left over from the cold-war days of the 1960s.

New missiles have internal guidance and control systems that not only can track the delivery missile’s flight path, but also the trajectories of each MIRV – Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles – and accept control information inflight.

Some of the older missiles were “fire and forget” – once they were gone, they would fly on a predetermined course for a predetermined time or distance and then shut down and fall to their targets, using the same type of calculations early gunners used to figure out how to lob a cannonball into the distant fort.

After the launch, while the missiles were in flight, if it turned out to be a false alarm, the newer missiles could be destroyed in flight, and the warhead deactivated.

Not the old stuff.

And that’s the problem. Once in flight, even if the recall were issued, many, many megatons of warheads would be on their way and couldn’t be stopped. The other side will correctly perceive this as an attack and set off their retaliatory plan.

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