At any rate, the submarines are our most secure and well-protected launch platform, least vulnerable to attack and most likely to survive a first strike, and they can be held in reserve until we know the attack is real and not a false alarm. But they are also the hardest ones to communicate with and coordinate into any kind of war fighting strategy, even a purely defensive one. I think, even after all these years, that there still is no way to send them a message. My guess is the best thing they could do is periodically surface, drag a wire and see if the war had started yet, by monitoring broadcast communications or testing the atmosphere for radiation. I know there has been some effort to develop ELF radio that can penetrate thousands of feet into the ocean, but I always thought that was a bluff. The physics just doesn’t add up.

Wonder what that chain would be? VP, skip the Speaker, Secretary of State, Defense, DHS…obvious beginning, but it would have to go deep to cover a big decapitation strike, like Tom Clancy envisioned.

If I had to pick an existing system to call the “Doomsday Weapon”, I’d nominate nuclear-powered & -armed submarines. Mostly autonomous, and just because “normally” they wouldn’t launch without orders from the chain of command, they also by nature have to be capable of launching on their own, with no more authority than two officers turning their keys. Has to be that way, otherwise the system has a gaping vulnerability to jamming or some other means of breaking the tether. A boomer prioritizes issue #2 over #1. If two officers go nuts, they can launch.

Once upon a time (two years ago), that would have seemed scary. But now we live with the knowledge that one single guy has the launch codes, and he’s already nuts.

I would think a potential enemy would attempt to knock out the President first in order to delay a US counterstrike as long as possible. At any rate, there must be other fingers on the button other than POTUS, which suggests that POTUS alone may not have full authority. I know that units that are nuclear-capable, such as ships, missile silos, submarines, bomber wings, etc must receive authorization from more than one source, and that more than one officer in each command has the final say-so. For example, two launch officers must simultaneously turn launch keys from stations not in physical proximity to one another.

There are two contradictory C and C issues at work here.

1) You cannot let one rogue or deranged officer launch independently, and

2) In the event entire levels of command have been eliminated by an enemy sneak attack, the system must still be able to respond in retaliation.

Otherwise, the entire concept of “retaliation” is meaningless.

And what about related issues, such as targeting, or preemptive strikes, which might make selecting new targets or abandoning old ones, necessary. There’s no point in taking out a silo that has already launched all its warheads, is there?