In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie [War]

At a small U.s. Air Force installation in eastern Wyoming, I’m sitting at an electronic console, able to unleash nuclear hell.

In front of me is an odd amalgamation of ’60s-era flip switches and modern digital monitors. It’s the control console for launching an intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM.

On an archaic display screen inside the center of the console, three large letters blink in rapid succession. ” EAM inbound,” says my deputy commander and the second member of the launch crew. An emergency-action message is on its way, maybe from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, maybe from the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, even perhaps from the president. We both mechanically pull down our code books, thick binders swollen with pages of alpha-numeric sequences, and swiftly decipher the message.

After nearly four years of pulling ICBM-alert duty, this process is instinctive. I deliberately recite the encrypted characters to confirm my deputy is on an identical page, literally and figuratively, as six short characters can effectively communicate a wealth of knowledge by utilizing special decoding binders. ” Charlie, Echo, Seven, Quebec, Golf, Bravo, six characters ending in Bravo.” My partner concurs, scribbling in his code book.

” Crowd pleaser,” he adds without emotion, touching on a war plan that mandates immediate release of our entire flight of nuclear missiles, 10 in all.

Of course, this is often just a training scenario. The coded orders are a simulation. The console is a mockup of the important thing, stowed away in a larger hanger and serviced seven days per week by a small staff of Boeing contractors.

If this were a real event, I’d be buried in a steel cocoon 100 feet underground. I’d have shed my standard-issue flight suit and boots. Instead, I’d be wearing sweats, fleece-lined slippers and, naturally, my indispensable, royal blue Snuggie .

America and her nuclear warriors have a wierd relationship. For decades, missileers (as we’re known inside the military) have quietly performed their duties, custodians of a dying breed of weapon. But Americans haven’t any real connection with the shadowy operators who stand the old posts of the Cold War, even supposing they spend up to $8 billion a year to take care of our country’s nuclear deterrent. If truth be told the job is an amazing responsibility, however it’s deeply weird.

Back within the air-conditioned simulator, my deputy and I carefully, but quickly, walk through a precisely choreographed preparation sequence. Unlock codes provided by the president allow us to enable the missiles for launch, a function equivalent to the protection switch of a gun. At this moment, the protection is off.

Several times through the process, we verify that the orders are authentic and formatted properly, and that they originate from the precise command authorities. Both of us keep a sharp eye out for a ” termination message,” a handy guide a rough stand-down notification that might cancel our attack orders. None comes.

We finish our sequence in below a minute, leaving 30 seconds to spare before initiating our practice launch. It appears like an eternity. My deputy stares at his keyboard, while my eyes are locked on an enormous red clock above our heads. The clock is ready to Greenwich Mean Time (” Zulu time” in missile parlance), and is checked against the Navy’s atomic clock twice a day for accuracy right down to the millisecond.

At 10 seconds out, we place our hands on a chain of launch switches. Contrary to popular myth, there is no such thing as a red button. Four launch switches means it takes four hands to launch – it’s among the safety mechanisms built into the system as a way of stopping unauthorized execution of missiles by a lone individual. At five seconds out, I start my countdown, commanding a final ” 3, 2, 1 – execute.”

We turn our keys, and watch as the control screen flashes with missile-launch notifications. Some fly immediately, some with a delay to stop nuclear fratricide when the bombs approach their targets in 20 to 30 minutes.

The Ultimate Enemy: Boredom

In four years on nuclear-alert duty, I ran through a limiteless number of attack sequences and fought countless virtual nuclear wars. I knew the way to target my missiles within minutes and launch them within seconds. The process was rigorous, thorough and completely governed by a checklist that was, to our knowledge, without defect. The room for human error was minimal.

But that training was about as exciting as the job got, a blessing considering the mission. Being a missileer implies that your worst enemy is boredom. No battlefield heroism, no medals to be won. The duty is seen today as a dull anachronism.

Old hats, the squadron commanders who pulled nuclear alert throughout the sunset of the Cold War, spin tales of the nice old days over sweaty mugs of beer at base officer clubs. The cruel mediocrity of missile duty is demanding enough to extract an emotional and physical toll, but cushy enough that missileers are too ashamed to acknowledge any misery. Missileers get warm sheets and hot food; Marines sleep within the mud.

For the missileers of the 9/11 generation, relevancy – a dwindling commodity in a dwindling community – is a vicarious experience. In the course of the Cold War, they’d real-time intelligence briefings, screaming klaxons and a force thrice larger than the current inventory. Today there’s Facebook and PowerPoint.

The missile field is hooked up to Wyoming’s FE Warren Air Force Base, one of three such fields nationwide. It’s approximately the dimensions of Rhode Island.

When the deep silos for the ICBMs and underground alert facilities were dug within the 1960s, military planners spaced each site several miles apart as a survivability feature. The space ensured a perverse tit-for-tat option to nuclear game theory, born of the outdated mutually assured destruction epoch but sophisticated enough in its simplicity. An attack would require one nuke to kill one nuke. It meant a two-hour drive from base to the alert facility, a winding journey through America’s high plains.

During a common four-year tour, missileers spend more than a year separated from their families and work a typical of 25 days a month on alert or in training. Within the good old days, the oncoming alert force would manifest at 0800 for a five-minute pre-deployment briefing. Because of Microsoft’s growing influence within the U.S. military, that five-minute weather and maintenance brief has ballooned into an hour-long PowerPoint extravaganza.

” Alerts” are something of a misnomer, another cultural handle better suited the Cold War. Two officers seal themselves behind a 4-ton blast door, in a small capsule similar in size to an 18-wheeler’s freight rig, for a 24-hour period. Remaining alert is the important challenge.

I’ve spent long, quiet hours with lights dimmed – reading, monitoring the status of the missiles, watching DVDs (Lost and Entourage were favorites), and fighting a growing sense of boredom, containment and isolation.

My First Nuclear ” Strike”

One technique to fend off those symptoms is humor. Early in my tour, I was startled out of the rack by a playful commander who had triggered the hearth alarm, cut the lights and discovered methods to make the capsule sway backward and forward on the heavy chains that anchored it to the ceiling. My training told me that these conditions were indications of a nuclear strike.

To my colleague’s eternal amusement, I sprinted around the capsule in a pair of polka-dotted boxer shorts seeking to simultaneously restore command over the system and nurse the banged head that happened once I was jolted from a nice sleep.

Though tedious, missile duty isn’t without perks. The uniform regulations are relaxed, though not by design. Once the blast door thuds shut and a crew is free from the prying eyes of the public or enlisted personnel topside, out come the pajamas and hooded sweatshirts.

In a favourite missileer uniform patch (right), the bleak Reaper sits at an ICBM console, dressed in bunny slippers. Within the real world, death wears a campus T-shirt, JCrew bottoms and the ever-present Snuggie. The silly blanket-robe hybrid is suited for the missile force, keeping an officer toasty while allowing him to engage with the weapons console unobstructed.

Missileers learn that on alert, comfort is as important as humor. One enterprising fellow liked to string a hammock between the two command chairs and stretch out for his long shifts at the console. Videogame systems are forbidden, a rule that was mocked until it got out that wireless Nintendo Wii controllers may cause the system to detect a false electromagnetic pulse attack and shut down.

I used to imagine that I’d have some type of stiff-upper-lip moment should I receive ” the order,” where I’d shed the Snuggie and slippers, zip up my flight suit, and make imperial references about ” going out proper.”

Though the USSR is gone, the assignment still has a kamikaze feel to it, left over from the Cold War, when a launch meant instant Soviet counter-battery fire. You resign yourself to the indisputable fact that you sit 100 feet underground while bombs that crater all the way down to 200 feet are headed for your direction. It doesn’t make for far peace of mind.

Isolation often gives approach to reflection, and missile duty brings out strange conundrums.

Missile training fosters an unquestioning, automation mentality. I was trained to be a cog within the machine: Orders were orders, and a lawful command from the president was not subject to debate or dissonance.

Every missileer is punctiliously screened for mental aptitude and stability, yet they’re evaluated for their readiness to unleash hell.

Though I never doubted that I might execute a launch order without question, other misgivings occasionally surfaced. We arrested a set of Catholic nuns staging a relaxed protest on one of our launch facilities a number of years back. For a missileer who is a practicing Catholic, this sort of situation brings up questions: If women who have committed themselves to the Word of God feel so strongly concerning the immorality of nuclear weapons that they’re willing to be confined for their convictions, what form of Christian am I to sit down at the launch switch? How do you resolve a conflict between duty in your God and duty for your country? Who wins, faith or flag?

That a capacity for excellent violence sustains great peace is likely one of the genuine paradoxes of our time, and I wrestled with that occasionally. The human factor is the system’s greatest vulnerability, something I unwittingly contributed to whenever I engaged in high-minded navel gazing.

But these philosophical battles were not ours to fight – even within the quiet solitude of an archaic outpost, fighting yesterday’s war.

John Noonan is a policy advisor and defense writer. He served as a Captain within the U . s . Air Force, assigned to the 321st Missile Squadron in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Photos: DoD, courtesy Chuck Penson

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This post is tagged: emergency action, fleece lined slippers, intercontinental ballistic missile, joint chiefs of staff, nuclear missiles, strategic command