reply to post by azchuck
Hi Chuck,
good to see the progression of thoughts and ideation on this thread...
Thanks for the link to Dave Lindorff's piece. He basically confirms what we have been saying for some time now. I've never accepted the "official"
story that this was all due to slackness/mistakes on the part of relatively low-level personnel, and it's because of the virtually foolproof security
measures that I still maintain that opinion.
In reference to discussion a page or two back, about the need to load terrain maps into the missiles' guidance systems -- and the argument that it's
a huge amount ("gigabits") of data going into 1980's-era computers, it's my opinion that the USAF has probably done frequent upgrades for those
missiles' (ie plural) hardware and software. These days, we have hand-held devices in use that can store and access 100 GB plus, and what we get is a
level of magnitude at least below the digital gadgetry that the military can lay its collective hands on. (Let's not forget, for example, that the
GPS is primarily set up for the military's benefit and was largely planned and established by them.)
So, it's actually not inconceivable that terrain maps for virtually all the inhabited regions of the globe could be stored and uploaded, with
software that only requires precise launch location and target co-ordinates to be input for the appropriate terrain map sections to be selected and
run.
All of the hardware and software to enable such a facility could very easily fit inside a loadable module no larger than a (small) shoebox.
Some might protest that neither Wikipedia nor any other on-line reference site gives details or even suggests that such upgrades have been done, but
the military is certainly not obliged to make every upgrade of their weaponry
public knowledge and especially not in the case of nuclear-warhead-armed missiles. In any case, Wikipedia articles can be edited by anyone, so if such
info were posted it would get edited out pdq. This has apparently happened before. (At least, it has been alleged in posts on this site that such is
the case.)
Frankly, the technicalities of how the terrain maps would be uploaded is a moot point. I've only mentioned my opinion to hopefully add another angle
to the discussion . What matters is the real reason why those
missiles were uploaded in attack positions on a long-range bomber, with their
nuclear warheads in place.
And yes: we need to wonder how often this has happened before, and if or when it will happen again.
Mike
[edit on 2-11-2007 by JustMike]