Failure Shuts Down Squadron of Nuclear Missiles
October 27th, 2010This is an extremely curious situation. I’m not even going to say which previous event this reminds me of.
Via: The Atlantic:
President Obama was briefed this morning on an engineering power failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), one-ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline on Saturday.
The base is a main locus of the United States’ strategic nuclear forces. The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. They’re on full-time alert and are housed in a variety of bunkers across the base.
On Saturday morning, according to people briefed on what happened, a squadron of ICBMs suddenly dropped down into what’s known as “LF Down” status, meaning that the missileers in their bunkers could no longer communicate with the missiles themselves. LF Down status also means that various security protocols built into the missile delivery system, like intrusion alarms and warhead separation alarms, were offline. In LF Down status, the missiles are still technically launch-able, but they can only be controlled by an airborne command and control platform like the Boeing E-6 NAOC “Kneecap” aircraft, or perhaps the TACAMO fleet, which is primarily used to communicate with nuclear submarines. Had the country been placed on a higher state of nuclear alert, those platforms would be operating automatically.
According to the official, engineers believe that a launch control center computer (LCC), responsible for a package of five missiles, began to “ping” out of sequence, resulting in a surge of “noise” through the system. The LCCs interrogate each missile in sequence, so if they begin to send signals out when they’re not supposed to, receivers on the missiles themselves will notice this and send out error codes.
Since LCCs ping out of sequence on occasion, missileers tried quick fixes. But as more and more missiles began to display error settings, they decided to take off-line all five LCCs that the malfunctioning center was connected to. That left 50 missiles in the dark. The missileers then restarted one of the LCCs, which began to normally interrogate the missile transceiver. Three other LCCs were successfully restarted. The suspect LCC remains off-line.
Commanders at the Air Force Base sent warning notices to colleagues at the country’s two other nuclear missile command centers, as well as the to the National Military Command Center in Washington. At that point, they did not know what was causing the failure, and they did not know whether other missile systems were experiencing similar symptoms.
According to the official, engineers discovered that similar hardware failures had triggered a similar cascading failure 12 years ago at Minot AFB in North Dakota and Malmstrom AFB in Montana. That piece of hardware is the prime suspect.
The defense official said that there had not been a power failure, though the official acknowledged that that explanation had made its way through public affairs channels. Engineers working on the system presented a draft of their initial findings late this afternoon, the official said.
An administration official, speaking about the president’s ability to control nuclear forces, said: “At no time did the president’s ability decrease,” an administration official said. ”
Still, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, was immediately notified on Saturday, and he, in turn, briefed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
“We’ve never had something as big as this happen,” a military officer who was briefed on the incident said. Occasionally, one or two might blink out, the officer said, and several warheads are routinely out of service for maintenance. At an extreme, “[w]e can deal with maybe 5, 6, or 7 at a time, but we’ve never lost complete command and control and functionality of 50 ICBMs.”
The military contends that command and control — “C2” in their parlance — was not lost.
I’ll tell you what it reminds me of Kevin, and then you can decide whether to approve this comment or not. This reminds me of the eyewitness accounts from military personnel regarding the UFO encounters at RAF Woodbridge / Rendlesham Forest in the UK. Of course, that incident had all the bells and whistles and lights etc of a UFO incident, whereas this one just has cascading computer systems failures. But that’s the only other large scale cascadig failure of nukes in their silos that I can recall.
I can think of three possible scenarios here and I don’t know which one causes more “shrinkage” of my soft parts:
1) the Stuxnet (sp) virus;
2) the ET’s taking command of the world’s killing machines (like we haven’t killed enough already and need to be stopped in our tracks;
3) or Dick Cheney in his command and control center trying to take control of nuclear weapons just as in the Moinbot “didn’t know we had armed nuclear weapons on board flying across CONUS scenario.”
I’m hoping its scenario 2. Sure we of the omnipotent weapons of mass destruction gang (to the tune of billions of dollars per year)believe there is NO WAY for ANYONE to take control of our holier-than-all nukes. And there are also those of the “we are the most advance race and believe in the Best God in the universe clubs” who wouldn’t believe scenario number two if lives depended on it.
I’m keeping my mind on number two as the best hope of an explanation. Just hoping that something will save us from ourselves and our weapons of mass destruction.
Ok, why not…
Malmstrom
http://www.nicap.org/malmstrom67-3.htm
https://cryptogon.com/?p=17836
re: the Stuxnet (sp) virus
I doubt this is the one because the systems in question are:
A) “Air gapped” (physically isolated from other networks)
and
B) (I’m pretty sure) Not running Windows on any launch related systems
While the original gear obviously didn’t use any Microsoft products (Minuteman 3 went into service in 1970), a massive upgrade was carried out starting in 1998. Much of this is classified info.
Someone reading this probably knows the answer: Is Windows running on any of the critical systems in the LCC (Launch Control Center) at Warren Air Force Base? (I’m not talking about stuff connected to LCC Netlink.) I seriously doubt it, but nothing would surprise me.
This page contains a large image of the current REACT console used with the Minuteman 3 system. That whole thing looks built from scratch to me, but, again, I’m definitely no expert on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Execution_and_Combat_Targeting_System
Umm…rather interesting to see Minot mentioned. That was my second thought after the UFO thing.
(To clarify: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Minot+Missing+Nukes )
can’t comment on windows for nukes, but it’s far from unlikely, given what else goes on:
Windows for Warships nears frontline service
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/26/windows_boxes_at_sea/
i’d be surprised if this wasn’t a UFO related incident.
@uranian
Yeah, yeah, I know, but I’m still waiting for someone to show me where Windows is used in any system directly related to targeting, monitoring, or launching of the Minuteman 3.
Anyway, there’s just about a zero chance that the public account of this incident has anything to do with what actually happened.
Wow. I thought I’d be the lone ranger on this post.
I read and back track on so many things I have no clue at this time where I read what I am going to attempt to transpose by memory. And thank you Kevin for opting with the other worldly phenomenom.
So from memory here goes:
The explosion of the of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki tore of hole through the universe. The usual easy come and go of souls was highly disrupted. So terribly painful to the universe was the explosion of these bombs on the peaceful order of life and death on Earth, and so disruptive to the ethers in the Universe, the “life” in the rest of the Universe said: Never Again.
Like I said, I don’t know where I read this. In the long run in doesn’t matter where or what I read.
What brings peaceful enjoyment to my soul this fine Fall evening is that these nukes being rendered powerless is nothing to fear. This Is GREAT.
So if it takes an unknown entity to make this happen, do we need to freak out? I don’t think so.
I’ve always believed in intelligent life not on Earth. Doesn’t necessarily need to be from another Planet.
The Life Force exists everywhere. There is no way to contain it or stop it, and no need to be afraid of the life force.
I am giving a prayer of thanks and praise to the Place within me that is, well that is private.
Anyways, AWESOME.
I’ll never have to turn on a TV as long as I read Cryptogon.
Am going to have to build Faraday cages and get lots of metal trash containers to keep my access up.