global_zero_commission_on_nuclear_risk_reduction_report

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GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESIn reality, national command authorities with fingers on thenuclear button are fallible, and some are quite susceptible tobouts of irrational, reckless, and even delusional behavior.Leader Kim is not exceptional in this respect. There havebeen many occasions in which the top leaders and seniorcommanders entrusted with responsibilities for authorizingthe use of nuclear weapons would not have passed thestress tests of their own nuclear personnel reliability programs– standards of sobriety, physical and mental health,etc. During a protracted crisis, the entire chain of commandmay slide into a degraded state from sleep deprivation andexhaustion alone.Israel’s nuclear status is opaque and speculative. 36 Unofficialsources indicate that Israel has established a survivable andfirmly controlled nuclear arsenal that it keeps at a low levelof alert. But a trend toward stepping up the responsivenessof sea-based forces may be underway. According to some reports,Israel is deploying strategic submarines into the PersianGulf that are capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles.37 Depending on evolving threats in the region – and,particularly, the outcome of the P5+1 negotiations with Iran– Israel may establish regular nuclear-armed sea patrols inthe future.France and the United Kingdom and each keep their arse-36 Israel runs its nuclear program under a thick veil of secrecy, a policysaid to be reflective of an understanding forged 40 years ago betweenPresident Nixon and Prime Minister Meir. David Stout, “Israel’s NuclearArsenal Vexed Nixon,” New York Times, November 29, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/world/middleeast/29nixon.html.37 From what fragments of unofficial data are publicly available, a currentpriority of the Israeli program is to acquire a fleet of 5-6 submarinescapable of firing nuclear-armed cruise missiles, and stationing three ofthem in the Persian Gulf to project a nuclear threat at Israel’s current andonly nuclear-capable adversary, Iran. (Uzi Mahnaimi, “Israel stationsnuclear missile subs off Iran”, The Times [Sunday Times], May 30, 2010,http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7140282.ece; “Report: Israel to deploy nuclear-armed submarines off Iran coast,”Haaretz, May 30, 2010, http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-israel-to-deploy-nuclear-armed-submarines-off-irancoast-1.293005.)The latest models of these boats and their weaponssystems run into the billion-dollar range for each, though Germanyhas absorbed a substantial portion of the costs. According to unofficialsources, Israel also possesses aircraft and land-based ballistic missilescapable of delivering nuclear weapons.nals on a low level of alert in peacetime – except for onesubmarine (out of the four in each country’s fleet) that eachkeeps on routine patrol at all times on an alert status thatis variable. At any given moment, the U.K. submarine maybe days, hours, or minutes from the next regularly scheduleddeployment of a receive antenna to check for ordersfrom higher authority. 38 During a crisis, this schedule woulddoubtless become more frequent if not continuous. Frenchsubmarine communications practices and launch readinessare believed to be similar. Also, both France and the UnitedKingdom normally maintain a back-up strategic submarinein port that can be readied and surged to sea on fairly shortnotice (approximately 1-2 days) in the event of a serious crisis.C. GROWING SAFETY AND SECURITYCOCNERNS; STRAINS ON COMMANDAND CONTROLTaking steps toward advanced operational readiness putsadditional strain on the ability of command systems to keepnuclear weapons under firm control. It increases the risksof an accident that produces a full-yield nuclear detonation,and the risk of terrorist capture. Security against terrorismdeclines the moment nuclear weapons are taken out of storageand dispatched to the field to assume combat alert.Most of the countries possessing nuclear weapons appear tobe more than a decade behind the United States in terms ofsafety and safeguards – lagging in areas like one-point safetyfor warheads, insensitive high explosives used as triggers forimplosion, locking devices integrated with the inner workingsof warheads, and personnel reliability programs.38 France has kept its missile submarines at sea on modified alert, andthe United Kingdom has declared that its strategic monad of missilesubmarines are now routinely at a “‘notice to fire’ measured in daysrather than the few minutes’ quick reaction alert sustained throughoutthe Cold War.” (British Ministry of Defense, Strategic Defense Review,Supporting Essay Five: Deterrence, Arms Control, and Proliferation,London: Stationary Office, June 1998.) The information on the FrenchSSBN modified alert posture is based on personal communications witha French military official.28
GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESAs a result of this lag in safety standards, any increase inthe attack readiness and operational tempo of their forceswill incur increased risk of accidental detonations (as wellas unauthorized detonations and terrorist capture). The earlyexperience of the United States is instructive. During thegrowing pain years from 1950 until 1968, at least 1,200 U.S.nuclear weapons were involved in incidents of varying degreesof severity. The United States came close to disastermany times. 39The accident records for recent years have not been fullydeclassified. One recently released list of so-called “DullSword” incidents shows that 1,500 reportable incidents involvingU.S. Air Force nuclear weapons happened over thefour-year period from 2009 to 2013. 40 They involved everythingfrom mechanical failures of weapons or the equipmentused in handling them, to lapses of security, to violations ofnuclear weapon safety rules – intentional violations in someinstances. The risk of a catastrophic accident will alwayshover above <strong>zero</strong>, and it increases as nuclear forces climbthe ladder of alert readiness.There have been a number of contemporary incidents thatdramatically illustrate operational hazards. The most notoriousof them occurred in 2007 when six nuclear cruisemissiles were loaded by mistake onto a U.S. strategic bomberand flown across the country (from Minot AFB, NorthDakota to Barksdale AFB, Louisiana). For more than a day,no one knew the payload was nuclear and no one knew thenukes went missing. Consequently, they were not guarded.Soviet and Russian nuclear forces also have crashed and sunkon many occasions. Just three years ago, a Russian strategicsubmarine caught fire in dry dock with a full complementof nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles onboard. 41 More recent-39 Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the DamascusAccident, and the Illusion of Safety (New York: Penguin Books,2013).40 The full list of Dull Sword incidents can be accessed online at http://speakingtruthtopower.org/DullSword.pdf.41 “Armageddon averted? Nukes ‘on board’ blazing sub,” RT, February14, 2012, http://rt.com/news/nuclear-sub-fire-missile-165.ly, the Orel, a Russian nuclear submarine, caught fire whileundergoing maintenance at a shipyard in Severodvinsk, althoughit was reported that no weapons or nuclear fuel wereon board at the time. 42Countries with a less advanced safety culture, far fewer resources,and lacking the technological sophistication ofRussia and the United States are bound to run even higherrisks of an accidental nuclear detonation, unauthorizeduse, or theft or seizure of weapons. These risks underscorethe dangers posed by proliferation and nuclear terrorism.The risks are compounded by a growing insider threat insome of the nuclear countries. If jihadist sympathizers succeededin infiltrating the armed forces of one of these countries,for instance, nuclear security could be significantlycompromised, particularly since most nuclear security arrangementsassume that insider collusion would not involvemore than one person. That assumption needs to be revisitedalong with the two-man safety rule that stems from it.A three-man rule makes more sense in an era of extremismand cyber warfare (see next section).Russia and the United States should more fully engage othernations’ nuclear establishments to share knowledge onmatters of nuclear weapons safety and security. PresidentObama’s Nuclear Security Summits have set a precedent forthis. So far the agenda of these summits has studiously concentratedon enhancing the security of civilian nuclear materials.It would be good to extend the discussion to nuclearweapons security, and command and control, and begin todefine best practices in this arena.D. CYBER WARFARE THREATS TO NUCLEARCOMMAND AND CONTROLA new worry about nuclear command and control and missileson high alert status is that they may be exploitable bycyber infiltrators. Questions abound: could unauthorizedactors – state or non-state – spoof early warning networks42 Anna Nemtsova, “Russian Nuclear Submarine Goes Up in Flames,”The Daily Beast, April 7, 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/07/russian-nuclear-submarine-goes-up-in-flames.html.29
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