A New Nuclear Age
SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. — The Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review, approved by President Bush in January 2002, outlined steps the U.S. should take to ensure its future ability to "defeat any aggressor." Included was a mandate for an "assured, survivable and enduring" communications network, one that would remain functional even after a full-scale nuclear attack.
Defense Department documents recently made available to the Los Angeles Times describe how the government is now moving ahead with a number of new programs toward that end, including a $200-million, eight-year effort to expand and streamline nuclear war planning. Concurrently, the same commercial technologies used in wireless communications and personal computing are being enlisted to achieve a long-standing nuclear war fighter's dream: systems able to operate even during a protracted nuclear war.
According to classified and unclassified briefing and contracting documents, the modernization efforts seek to make existing nuclear war planning systems "more flexible and adaptable on all fronts." The new focus increases the "number of threat countries" included in nuclear war planning and expands the types of targets to be considered. The plans also envision an expanded role for both special operations and cyber- warfare in the event of a full-scale nuclear war. New software tools are being developed to speed up the time it takes U.S. Strategic Command to prepare nuclear options for the president, the secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In May, Northrop Grumman Mission Systems and Lockheed Martin Mission Systems were awarded contracts to begin designing the new planning tools envisioned in the Nuclear Posture Review. According to military documents, they are needed because "the current process has no growth capability to handle the increasing target requests, which are projected to grow tenfold by 2007."
When the eight-year program is complete, key nuclear commanders and civilian decision-makers will not only have a "point-and-click" interface for planning nuclear war; they will also have a new array of specially configured laptops, cell phones and other electronic gear to streamline a variety of tasks.
New communications systems aimed at maintaining presidential control over nuclear forces are also being developed and deployed. The most important, known by the acronym GEMS, will modernize the current systems that handle transmission of nuclear "go codes," or orders from the president to launch a nuclear attack. The update will allow for greater capacity and quicker transmission of information and intelligence.
