by Colin Clark
he security of nuclear command and control is the Holy Grail of the US military. Nothing, especially in these turbulent days, matters more. Aside from occasional talk about the nuclear football — as the case containing the nuclear codes is known — most Americans know little about what would happen in the event that the president needed to order a nuclear strike.
In a moment of utter lucidity on the topic, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul Selva outlined this morning just what the standards and broad actions are governing the most grim order anyone would ever have to make. He spoke at a breakfast on nuclear issues sponsored by the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute.
I asked Selva if there were lessons to be learned for the next iteration of the nuclear command and control system from the Air Force’s early work on the Multi-Domain Command and Control system (MDC2), designed to take data from as many sources around the world as possible and allow commanders to use that data to good effect no matter whether it’s from a ship, a submarine, a plane, a soldier, sailor, airman, Marine or a satellite.
I spoke after his remarks with a very experienced nuclear warfare expert who said Selva’s description was the clearest and most concise he had ever heard about nuclear command and control.
http://breakingdefense.com/2017/08/ordering-nuclear-war-gen-selva-tells-us-what-happens/
