Command and Control

John H. Rubel — who supervised strategic weapon research and development: Rubel went to work at the Pentagon during the Eisenhower administration and remained there for the first few years of the Kennedy administration, eventually serving as assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering. He spoke to me at length about the trouble with the Minuteman launch procedures and his criticisms of the SIOP. For a man of ninety-three, his memory is astonishing. In a recent book — Doomsday Delayed: USAF Strategic Weapons Doctrine and SIOP-62, 1959–1962, Two Cautionary Tales (New York: Hamilton Books, 2008) — Rubel describes his first briefing on the SIOP. He calls the experience a “descent into the deep heart of darkness, a twilight underworld governed by disciplined, meticulous, and energetically mindless groupthink aimed at wiping out half of the people living on nearly one third of the earth’s surface.” That feeling never entirely left him. Rubel also discussed nuclear weapon issues in an oral history for the John F. Kennedy Library. The entire transcript has been classified, and I’ve requested it under the Freedom of Information Act.

“an accident for which a later apology”: “The Development of the SM-80 Minuteman,” Robert F. Piper, DCAS Historical Office, Deputy Commander for Aerospace Systems, Air Force Systems Command, April 1962 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), NSA, p. 68.

“completely safe”: The quote comes from an Air Force historian’s summary of the Air Force position. See ibid., p. 70.

an independent panel was appointed to investigate: The panel was headed by James C. Fletcher, who later became the head of NASA. For the Fletcher committee’s work, see ibid., p. 71, and Rubel, Doomsday Delayed, pp. 17–21.

a series of minor power surges: The Minuteman launch switches relied on notching motors that rotated a single notch when the proper electrical pulse was sent. The turning of the launch keys transmitted a series of specific pulses — and once they were received, the notching motors rotated the notches, completed a circuit, and launched all the missiles. But a series of small power surges could mimic those pulses and activate the motors. The motors might silently rotate, one notch at a time, over the course of days or even months, without the launch crews knowing. And then, when the final notch turned, fifty missiles would suddenly take off. Rubel interview.

“I was scared shitless”: The engineer was Paul Baran, later one of the inventors of packet switching. Quoted in Stewart Brand, “Founding Father,” Wired, March 2001.

the redesign cost about $840 million: Cited in Ball, Politics and Force Levels, p. 194.

To err on the side of safety: See Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight, pp. 276–79; and “Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Crisis,” pp. 72–73.

“Mr. McNamara went on to describe the possibilities”: “State-Defense Meeting on Group I, II, and IV Papers,” p. 12.

“to fire nuclear weapons”: Ibid.

“whether or not it was Soviet launched”: Ibid.

“every effort to contact the President must be made”: The predelegation policy from the Eisenhower era was largely retained. See “Memorandum from the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson,” September 23, 1964 (TOP SECRET/declassified), in U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume X, National Security Policy (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2002), p. 158.

a strategy of “Assured Destruction”: “Draft Memorandum from Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson,” December 6, 1963 (TOP SECRET/declassified), in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VIII, National Security Policy, p. 549.

“30 % of their population, 50 % of their industrial capacity, and 150 of their cities”: Ibid.

the equivalent of 400 megatons: See Enthoven, How Much Is Enough, pp. 207–10.

McNamara said, “Thank God”: “Transcript, Interview with Robert McNamara, March 1986, Part 2 of 5,” WGBH Media Library and Archives.

The move would improve “crisis stability”: Ibid.

The new SIOP divided the “optimum mix”: For the details of SIOP-4, adopted by the Johnson administration in 1966 and still in effect when McNamara left office, see William Burr, “The Nixon Administration, the ‘Horror Strategy,’ and the Search for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969–1972,” Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 7, no. 3 (2005), pp. 42–47.

The number of nuclear weapons in the American arsenal: At the end of the Eisenhower administration, the United States had about 19,000 nuclear weapons. By 1967, the size of the arsenal had reached its peak: 31,255 weapons. When McNamara left office, the number had fallen slightly to 29,561. See “Declassification of Certain Characteristics of the United States Nuclear Weapon Stockpile,” U.S. Department of Energy, December 1993, and “Fact Sheet, Increasing Transparency in the U.S. Nuclear Stockpile,” U.S. Department of Defense, May 3, 2010.