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Retirednoguilt[_2_]

On 1/25/2021 9:56 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jan 2021 09:43:54 -0500, Retirednoguilt
wrote:

On 1/24/2021 4:36 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 24 Jan 2021 11:32:32 -0500, Retirednoguilt
wrote:

On 1/23/2021 11:39 PM, micky wrote:
Did you all know that for the first time on Jan 20th there were two
nuclear footballs?

The piece of luggage, probably, that contains the means and codes to
contact whoever sends the nuclear missiles.

In all previous presidential turnovers, they outgoing and incoming were
in the same city. Except when Kennedy died they were in eye-sight of
each other. And the luggage is just handed from one aid to another.

But this time someone couldn't bear to watch so one of his military
companions had a football and there was another at the Capitol At the
moment of noon, the first one was disabled and the second one enabled.

Souvenir footballs will be available next to the refreshment stand.

Fail-safe and redundancy are the watchwords of nuclear safety, both for
nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Does anyone realistically believe
that there was only 1 "football"? What if the President was traveling
and there was either a catastrophic mechanical failure causing a crash,
or a rogue attack on the vehicle transporting him, badly damaging or
even destroying the "football" that was with him? How would the
vice-president or anyone else in the chain of command be able to provide
continuity of control over our nuclear deterrent?

Good point. I always thought that "football" was mostly theater
anyway. It was just there to make people feel good.
I am sure a guy who really knows the system could hot wire a nuke and
the subs are autonomous anyway.

As a former submarine qualified Naval Officer, let me assure you that
neither statement you made in your last sentence is true. The nukes are
carefully designed and constructed to preclude "hot wiring". And, the
subs are NOT autonomous with respect to what's required to launch a
nuclear-armed weapon. All amplifying details are highly classified, as
they should be!

That defies logic. You are saying if the communication link between
the POTUS and an individual subs is compromised, we have no response?
Sounds to me like, if that is true, all they have to do is shoot down
one 747 and win the war.
I know that is classified too.

As I previously said, "fail-safe and redundancy". That applies to
command communications channels as well as to permission to launch
procedures.