Fascinating little dive into the history of the safeguards for US missile systems! Somehow I'm not surprised that there were issues... "hard to launch accidentally or without authorization" and...
Fascinating little dive into the history of the safeguards for US missile systems! Somehow I'm not surprised that there were issues... "hard to launch accidentally or without authorization" and "can always be launched at a moment's notice" sounds like a hard combination.
Also this part was really shocking. I guess government budget constraints apply everywhere, even in safety-critical things like nuclear missiles
Also this part was really shocking. I guess government budget constraints apply everywhere, even in safety-critical things like nuclear missiles
Of course the crews had been sleeping on the job all along, in blatant violation of a critical safety rule known as the two-man rule, which required the presence of two qualified individuals (men or women) looking over each others shoulders whenever they came anywhere near nuclear weapons or their control mechanisms. The Air Force had turned a blind eye to this and innumerable other ‘field procedures’ that compromised nuclear security (the kind of violations that surfaced this past year to the great chagrin and embarrassment of the Pentagon). Now that SAC wanted to permit crew members to snooze on the job, it had to find a technical fix to compensate for relaxing its two-man rule.
There's a great documentary produced by Sandia Labs called "Sometimes, Always, Never" that talks about the history of nuclear weapon safekeeping, I'll put a YT link to it in my comment when I get...
There's a great documentary produced by Sandia Labs called "Sometimes, Always, Never" that talks about the history of nuclear weapon safekeeping, I'll put a YT link to it in my comment when I get home from work.
Fascinating little dive into the history of the safeguards for US missile systems! Somehow I'm not surprised that there were issues... "hard to launch accidentally or without authorization" and "can always be launched at a moment's notice" sounds like a hard combination.
Also this part was really shocking. I guess government budget constraints apply everywhere, even in safety-critical things like nuclear missiles
There's a great documentary produced by Sandia Labs called "Sometimes, Always, Never" that talks about the history of nuclear weapon safekeeping, I'll put a YT link to it in my comment when I get home from work.
Was curious and looked for it. Here is the link for anyone interested.
Thank you so much! I'd completely forgotten.
...could've been worse, like O00O0OO0...
Case sensitive: lIillIIliII