27-10-2010, 03:05 AM
Air Force lost some communication with nuclear missiles
From Larry Shaughnessy and Chris Lawrence,
CNNOctober 27, 2010 -- Updated 0023 GMT (0823 HKT)
Embedded video at the link
Washington (CNN) -- The Air Force lost partial communications with 50 nuclear missiles for almost an hour last weekend, an Air Force spokesman said Tuesday.
The problem, characterized as a "single hardware issue," affected more than 10 percent of the country's ICBM arsenal on Saturday morning, according to Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley Miller IV.
Because of redundant systems, at no time was the Air Force unable to monitor, communicate with or, if need be, launch the intercontinental ballistic missiles on the president's command, several military officials said.
"Any time the president wanted to fire those missiles, he could have," a senior defense official said. At no time was the public in jeopardy, according to another military official.
The Minuteman III ICBMs are multiple warhead missiles that are controlled from Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming but are in missile silos spread out over a wide area around the base.
After the problem was detected, each silo was inspected by base personnel to make certain all 50 missiles were safe and secure.
The exact nature of the problem is still under investigation.
"The specific cause for the disruption is currently being analyzed on site by engineers from the ICBM systems program office," according to an Air Force statement.
A senior defense official said it was an underground cable that got disrupted.
The United States currently has 450 Minutemen III ICBMs. While the squadron of 50 that had problems Saturday represents 11 percent of America's ICBM arsenal, the United States also has bomber-based and sea-based nuclear weapons.
The Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz, informed Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, about the problem during the weekend.
Mullen made sure Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was informed. President Obama was briefed on the issue on Tuesday morning, according to a report in Atlantic Monthly.
Gates takes nuclear weapon security very seriously. In 2008, Gates took the unprecedented step of firing both the Air Force secretary and the Air Force chief of staff because of two highly publicized mistakes involving Air Force nuclear weapons.
First there was the embarrassing revelation in August 2007 that a B-52 bomber took off from North Dakota with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles that no one knew were live weapons until after the plane landed in Louisiana.
Then came word that the Air Force mistakenly shipped fuses that are used in nuclear weapons to Taiwan in 2006 in crates believed to contain helicopter batteries.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/10/26/nuk...nications/
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Failure Shuts Down Squadron of Nuclear Missiles
October 27th, 2010 This is an extremely curious situation. I’m not even going to say which one 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.
From Larry Shaughnessy and Chris Lawrence,
CNNOctober 27, 2010 -- Updated 0023 GMT (0823 HKT)
Embedded video at the link
Washington (CNN) -- The Air Force lost partial communications with 50 nuclear missiles for almost an hour last weekend, an Air Force spokesman said Tuesday.
The problem, characterized as a "single hardware issue," affected more than 10 percent of the country's ICBM arsenal on Saturday morning, according to Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley Miller IV.
Because of redundant systems, at no time was the Air Force unable to monitor, communicate with or, if need be, launch the intercontinental ballistic missiles on the president's command, several military officials said.
"Any time the president wanted to fire those missiles, he could have," a senior defense official said. At no time was the public in jeopardy, according to another military official.
The Minuteman III ICBMs are multiple warhead missiles that are controlled from Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming but are in missile silos spread out over a wide area around the base.
After the problem was detected, each silo was inspected by base personnel to make certain all 50 missiles were safe and secure.
The exact nature of the problem is still under investigation.
"The specific cause for the disruption is currently being analyzed on site by engineers from the ICBM systems program office," according to an Air Force statement.
A senior defense official said it was an underground cable that got disrupted.
The United States currently has 450 Minutemen III ICBMs. While the squadron of 50 that had problems Saturday represents 11 percent of America's ICBM arsenal, the United States also has bomber-based and sea-based nuclear weapons.
The Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz, informed Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, about the problem during the weekend.
Mullen made sure Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was informed. President Obama was briefed on the issue on Tuesday morning, according to a report in Atlantic Monthly.
Gates takes nuclear weapon security very seriously. In 2008, Gates took the unprecedented step of firing both the Air Force secretary and the Air Force chief of staff because of two highly publicized mistakes involving Air Force nuclear weapons.
First there was the embarrassing revelation in August 2007 that a B-52 bomber took off from North Dakota with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles that no one knew were live weapons until after the plane landed in Louisiana.
Then came word that the Air Force mistakenly shipped fuses that are used in nuclear weapons to Taiwan in 2006 in crates believed to contain helicopter batteries.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/10/26/nuk...nications/
####
Failure Shuts Down Squadron of Nuclear Missiles
October 27th, 2010 This is an extremely curious situation. I’m not even going to say which one 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.
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