Power Failure Shuts Down Squadron of Nuclear Missiles

Power Failure Shuts Down Squadron of Nuclear Missiles

www.theatlantic.com

President Obama was briefed this morning on a power failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), one-ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline on Saturday.

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Malmstrom Nuclear base~5 UFO incidents over a 30 year period

The base is a main locus of the United States' strategic nuclear forces. The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. They're on full-time alert and are housed in a variety of bunkers across the base.

On Saturday morning, according to people briefed on what happened, a squadron of ICBMs suddenly dropped down into what's known as "LF Down" status, meaning that the missileers in their bunkers could no longer communicate with the missiles themselves. LF Down status also means that various security protocols built into the missile delivery system, like intrusion alarms and warhead separation alarms, were offline.

In LF Down status, the missiles are still technically launch-able, but they can only be controlled by an airborne command and control platform like the Boeing E-6 NAOC "Kneecap" aircraft, or perhaps the TACAMO fleet, which is primarily used to communicate with nuclear submarines.

"At no time did the president's ability decrease," an administration official said.

Still, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, was immediately notified, and he, in turn, briefed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

"We've never had something as big as this happen," a military officer who was briefed on the incident said. Occasionally, one or two might blink out, the officer said, and several warheads are routinely out of service for maintenance. At an extreme, "[w]e can deal with maybe 5, 6, or 7 at a time, but we've never lost complete command and control and functionality of 50 ICBMs."

The military contends that command and control -- "C2" in their parlance -- was not lost.

An Air Force spokesperson, Christy Nolta, said the power failure lasted less than an hour. "There was a temporary interruption and the missiles themselves were always protected by multiple, redundant, safety, security and command and control features. At no time was there any danger to the public," she said.

Another military official said the failure triggered an emergency inspection protocol, and sentries were dispatched to verify in person that all of the missiles were safe and properly protected.

When on alert, the missiles are the property of the U.S. Strategic Command, which controls all nuclear forces. When not on alert status, the missiles belong to the Global Strike Command.

A White House spokesperson referred questions about the incident to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and to the Air Force. A spokesperson for the Global Strike Command did not immediately respond to questions.

The cause of the failure remains unknown, although it is suspected to be a breach of underground cables deep beneath the base, according to a senior military official.

It is next to impossible for these systems to be hacked, so the military does not believe the incident was caused by malicious actors. A half dozen individual silos were affected by Saturday's failure.

There are about 450 ICBMs in America's nuclear arsenal, some of them bearing multiple warheads. 150 are based at Minot AFB in North Dakota and 200 are housed at Malmstrom AFB in Montana. The chessboard of nuclear deterrence, a game-theory-like intellectual contraption that dates from the Cold War, is predicated upon those missiles being able to target specific threat locations across the world. If a squadron goes down, that means other missiles have to pick up the slack. The new START treaty would reduce the number of these missiles by 30 percent, but the cuts are predicated upon the health of the current nuclear stockpile, from warhead to delivery system to command and control.

An administration official said that "to make too much out of this would be to sensationalize it. It's not that big of a deal. Everything worked as planned."

Senate Republicans have been pressing Senate Democrats to spend more money ensuring the current strategic nuclear arsenal, which dates to the early 1980s, is ready to go. The treaty requires the vote of two-thirds of the Senate to be ratified.

In 2008, Gates fired the Secretary of the Air Force and its chief of staff after a series of incidents suggested to Gates that the service wasn't taking its nuclear duties seriously enough. At one point, a B-52 bomber flew across the continental U.S. without realizing that its nuclear weapons were "hot."

www.theatlantic.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Is the above story the first step in exposing what is truly causing the interference?
Watch Videos and Decide for Yourself:

reply to post by EyeHeartBigfoot


What could breach a power line buried deeply below a missile silo?
IF that was the true cause, how could it come back online in less than an hour?

If they are several silos scattered across an entire base, how could a single breach affect them all?

Why was the president briefed on Tuesday for a nuclear incident on Saturday!?!?

These stories never add up, and I suspect we are getting about 5% of the real story!

I dunno, sounds like alot of smoke screening taking place, whose to say it wasn't the same haX0ring that happened to the Iranians - perhaps its the Chinese doing it - and they did Iran first as a smoke screen...

o.0

It was 4chan hackers!

Next time they plan to launch a nuke and make it look like the Chinese did it.

so, let me get this straight. for a specified period of time up to 50 multiple warhead icbm's were offline, meaning that control in the vicinity was lost. not that total control over these weapons was lost, but localized control.
presuming it wasn't maintenance, computer hacking, or just plain bad luck where circuits or electronics just broke... some outside interference? the kind that shut down some military target?

I wonder why this is in the news? Shouldn't stuff like this be classified? Seriously, who needs to know?

In all honesty, they could take all of our nukes offline and the rest of the world wouldn't know the difference.

The second video demonstrates the thing that always gets me.

Are they hostile?

You tell me...Have they attacked?

What, are they waiting for us to develop better weapon systems so it will be a fair fight?

I'm gonna run with they mean us no harm. By many accounts we have been visited for thousands of years and yet we are all still here.

Whatever they are waiting for or are planning, sooner or later they'll let us know. Until then we are nothing more than a wildlife preserve.

"Wave to the monkeys children."

What I am most surprised about is that this happen on Saturday and the president wasn’t informed about it till Tuesday....why is that?

just mentioned this story to an older lady who i work with, first thing she said was "was it aliens again?"

this really shocked me because this lady is a no nonsense very serious person, i was surprised that her first thought was "aliens" i guess all this talk of ufo's and such on the nightly news is really starting to effect the average person (rather then just us conspiracy junkies)

reply to post by Shar


Covering your own asses is top priority before alerting your civilian "commander-n-chief".

Besides, we had more than enough nukes ready to destroy all life on the planet still up and running, ready for launch if needed.

If you are looking for facts in this case, or any real truth regarding anything that happened involving an issue with our nuclear weapons, you'll never get it.

Maybe there was a breach of security, and the power supply was computer controlled, and maybe hackers were able to get in and make some temporary changes?

If so, all the more reason to implement new laws and controls over the internet, it is now a very serious issue!

reply to post by Aggie Man


gig'em. what class are you? 91 here.

I am having a real difficult time trying to find any reliable corroborating links to this story. I can understand if the USAF are trying to bury this but the POTUS was briefed and I would think many-a news organizations would jump on this story.

Here is another journalist/blogger's view from WIRED.COM

WIRED.COM

Cut & Paste:

Communication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBM Snafu
By Noah Shachtman Email Author October 26, 2010 | 5:15 pm | Categories: Nukes


The Air Force swears there was no panic. But for three-quarters of an hour Saturday morning, launch control officers at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming couldn’t reliably communicate or monitor the status of 50 Minuteman III nuclear missiles. Gulp.

Backup security and communications systems, located elsewhere on the base, allowed the intercontinental ballistic missiles to be continually monitored. But the outage is considered serious enough that the very highest rungs on the chain of command — including the President — are being briefed on the incident today.

A single hardware failure appears to have been the root cause of the disruption, which snarled communications on the network that links the five launch control centers and 50 silos of the 319th Missile Squadron. Multiple error codes were reported, including “launch facility down.”

It was a “significant disruption of service,” an Air Force official familiar with the incident tells Danger Room. But not unprecedented: “Something similar happened before at other missile fields.”

A disruption of this magnitude, however, is considered an anomaly of anomalies.

“Over the course of 300 alerts — those are 24-hour shifts in the capsule — I saw this happen to three or four missiles, maybe,” says John Noonan, a former U.S. Air Force missile launch officer who first tweeted word of the issue. “This is 50 ICBMs dropping off at once. I never heard of anything like it.”

“There are plans and procedures available to deal with individual broken missiles,” Noonan adds, “but they are wholly inadequate to handle an entire squadron of missiles dropping offline.”

The incident comes at a particularly tricky time for the Obama administration, which is struggling to get the Senate to ratify a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. In conservative political circles, there’s a distrust of the nuclear cuts — and a demand that they be matched with investments in atomic weapon upgrades. Saturday’s shutdown will undoubtedly bolster that view.

The disruption is also dark news for the Air Force, which has been hustling to restore the “zero defects” culture that was the hallmark of its nuclear forces during the Cold War.

After a series of mishaps — including nosecone fuses mistakenly sent to Taiwan, and warheads temporarily MIA — the Air Force has made restoring confidence in its nuclear enterprise a top priority. Officers have been fired and disciplined for nuclear lapses. The Air Force’s top general and civilian chief have been replaced. A new Global Strike Command has been put in place, to oversee all nuclear weapons. Nuclear Surety Inspections, once relatively lax, have become pressure cookers. These days, a few misfiled papers or a few out-of-place troops means the entire wing flunks the NSI.

“Any anecdotal exposure of a weakness … could result in an unsafe, unsure, unsecure or unreliable nuclear weapon system,” Maj. Gen. Don Alston, who oversees the Air Force’s entire ICBM arsenal, told Danger Room last year. “And I am not encouraged when people can rationalize: ‘but for that mistake, we were, y’know, kicking ass.’ Well, but for that mistake, you would have passed. But you didn’t. You failed. Tough business. And it needs to stay that way.”

Yet the Air Force official claims there was “no angst” about Saturday’s incident.

“Every crew member and every maintainer seemed to follow their checklists and procedures in order to establish normal communications,” the official says. “I haven’t detected anyone being particularly upset with what happened.”

Photo: DoD

My thoughts are that this was just an exercise to keep our military prepared (calm,cool & collected) if an emergency would arise. I would figure that the president would be briefed on how it went.

I'm going to post up a link to the National Exercise Program 5yr exercise schedule (subject to change). Some ATS members may already have this.
5yr exercise schedule

This event may fall under the "WMD or MANPADS exercise" (Man-portable air-defense systems)
or
Vigilant Shield 2011.

Thats my take on it... but nonetheless, great catch & thread. I gave this thread a star, you never know we might have to come back to this in the future.

reply to post by EyeHeartBigfoot


this is what happens when you cut defense budgets

those bunkers and missile systems and related equipment are decades old

this doesnt surprise me.

add the fact that not one nuclear weapons has been built since the reagan

meanwhile the rest of the world arms and what do we do? disarm and let the current system degrade to non usable status.

this irks me but suprises me not.

reply to post by Aggie Man


Exactly..... "Why" are they letting us know.....????

Therein lies the rub....eh????

RT Russia Today has posted a news segment regarding this incident. Still no word from the MSM.

Every post here on this thread has brought up many good points regarding this incident but I still feel that we have not even scratched the surface of the whole story yet.

Originally posted by freetree64
reply to post by Aggie Man

 

Exactly..... "Why" are they letting us know.....????

Therein lies the rub....eh????

Taking the foolishness of the supposed UFO angle out of this occurrence, The RT video made specific mention of the lack of security regarding other nuclear weapons incidents and the need for this old technology to be dismantled which seemed to take away from the seriousness of the USA's defenses being down and not prepared to serve their true purpose. As stated previously, I do not believe we are anywhere near the whole story.

Given the minimal data currently available - I have two thoughts in regards to this story being leaked in the most modest manner:

#1. The Intrepid Masters of Spreading Fear; FOX NEWS, have not yet reported on this incident. Doesn't this story reek of the exact scare mongering tactics that Fox News thrives upon? Why have they not spun this into a "Blame The Democrats...Blah, Blah Blah" or another "It's The Beginning of The END Again... Blah, Blah, Blah and of course more Blah" scare the populous in the name of greed piece?

#2. Could this be another attempt at a False Flag NUCLEAR TERRORIST piece to lay the ground work towards a distraction and/or slight of hand of a much more serious, genuine and real world occurrence?

Thank You to all for the intelligent posts and looking forward to our ATS members who are experts at reading between the lines coming post.

Best Regards,

t

reply to post by freetree64


This type of info should be Top Secret and we should not know about it for 20 yeatrs, if then. I don't get it??

CNN's Wolf Blitzer has finally reported a very short segment regarding this incident. At Last The MSM chirps in and tells us absolutely NOTHING.

Will keep checking for more informative and relevant data and will post as it becomes available.