pinnacle nucflash

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Fri Jan 20 02:41:17 PST 2006


http://nfttu.blogspot.com/2006/01/pinnacle-nucflash.html

 To the left: the "football". This is the satchel that follows the US
President with him wherever he goes. It contains the "go codes" to launch
nuclear strikes.

Take any good nuclear Armageddon movie, from Dr. Strangelove, to Fail Safe, to
The Sum of All Fears, there.s always a scene in which the erstwhile lightly
engaged president is either tendered an urgent note or handed a telephone by
his top aide. Cut to a closeup on the president's face. His expression changes
immediately, the color drains from his face, followed by a sound-on-sound
slash cut that takes the viewer to an underground bunker, deep under a
Virginia mountain. There, a collection of grim faced, high-ranking military
men work determinedly to avoid a global catastrophe. . .

What words are written on that note, what could it say that can make the
President go white in an instant? What are the words that the president never
wants to see on a note thrust into his hand while he is busy giving a speech?
I believe the answer is .PINNACLE/NUCFLASH..

Pinnacle/nucflash is the military communications code word designation that
instructs all military communication personnel to stop whatever else they.re
doing and transmit the message that immediately, because there's some bad
news, really, really bad news that you need to act on right now.

There is a set of instructions that describes exactly how information relating
to military threats to the USA is designated, prioritized, and delivered. The
rules are spelled out in precise military fashion in a document called
OPREP-3, the US Military.s written guideline for operational reports relating
to important events involving nuclear weapons.

.PINNACLE/NUCFLASH. are the flagwords or header that presages an electronic
transmission through the U.S. military's command and control structure that
reports an actual or possible detonation of a nuclear weapon. Not only that,
these code words mean that the explosion was not an accident and the risk of
nuclear war is imminent.

As one might expect, .PINNACLE/NUCFLASH. has the highest precedence in the
OPREP-3 reporting structure. Men and women train for months, years, in order
to be able to coolly and efficiently handle the communications that follow an
OPREP-3 PINNACLE level flagword. There are several OPREP-3 code word
designators with a chilling cold war/Tom Clancy/John Lecarre ring to them.
None of these foreshadow good news. I'll write more on those later.

Well, going back to the movies mentioned in the first paragraph, do you know
of any other nuclear armaggeon movies? Any movie in which the bomb actually
went off? I'm making a list. (I like to make lists of movies. Sometime I'll
share my list of movies with trebuchets.)

posted by Bill Gurstelle at 6:35 AM
45 Comments:

    *

      The details of the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) are
certainly a fascinating area of military protocol. The SIOP, which includes 5
Major Attack Options and 165 Limited Attack Options is the plan that is
initialized by the nuclear football. I know that it takes two people from a
list in order to order a strike, and that they do so through the STRATCOM
headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. Redudant facilities that can serve this
purpose include the National Alternative Military Command in Pennsylvania and
'Looking Glass' - a ruggedized 747. What I wonder is what mechanism is used to
pass authentication tokens (or whatever control is used) from one person to
another in the event that they are killed or incapacitated. I could imagine
either an automated system based on some kind of network of dead-man switches
or the use of a trusted third party (in which case, I would be interested in
knowing their authentication and verification protocols).

      With regard to films involving nuclear weapons, the non-fiction
documentary "Fog of War" is an excellent example.

...

--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
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