HH 59 : The Destroyer of Worlds

[Dand]

I thought "BLITZ" meant a shorter episode so it's cool that this is 6 hours.

[Ex-California]

Enjoying the podcast so far, really good stuff. Basically Trinity and Beyond, the geopolitical edition.

Who playing bingo?

+1 fear inducing serum
+1 Sword of Damocles

Having heard any flies in the Gordian Knot, covered by ointment applied by visiting aliens.

[adwinistrator]

I'm only an 1.5 hours in, but I noted Dan began talking about the operational control of nuclear weapons, and how it changed the nature of the presidency.

I doubt he'll discuss the present day in this episode, but a lot of the details about this have changed in the last 2 decades.

We had a pretty decent discussion on this at the old DCF. Smitty schooled me on the basics (OPLAN executed via JCoS and combatant commanders), but I did a lot more digging on the details of how the OPLAN is created and implemented.

This might be worth making a new thread.

Figured y'all might like these slides

Recent Nuclear War Plan History


Strategic War Planning Process (OPLAN drafting)

[doc_loliday]

Dan, destroyer of podcasts, dropped the F bomb in this show.

[Speaker to Animals]

Dan dropped the F bomb in this show.

He must have been still fired up from the women's march against fascism.

[adwinistrator]

Dan, destroyer of podcasts, dropped the F bomb in this show.

Never bring that fucking cretin, doc_loliday, in here again.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Dan, destroyer of podcasts, dropped the F bomb in this show.

Never bring that fucking cretin, doc_loliday, in here again.

[Smitty-48]

I'm only an 1.5 hours in, but I noted Dan began talking about the operational control of nuclear weapons, and how it changed the nature of the presidency.

I doubt he'll discuss the present day in this episode, but a lot of the details about this have changed in the last 2 decades.

We had a pretty decent discussion on this at the old DCF. Smitty schooled me on the basics (OPLAN executed via JCoS and combatant commanders), but I did a lot more digging on the details of how the OPLAN is created and implemented.

This might be worth making a new thread.

Figured y'all might like these slides

Recent Nuclear War Plan History


Strategic War Planning Process (OPLAN drafting)

The issue is not so much that the White House cannot influence the OPLAN, which, IIRC, is currently CONPLAN 8044, they certainly can, no doubt Bush and Obama had some imput, but they don't write the plan, and they don't make the plan on the fly at a whim, but moreover, whatever OPLAN the JCS/JFCC/STRATCOM decides on in the end, the Two Man rule always applies, at every level of the chain of command, starting with General Mattis, to wit, President Trump could not summon the PES and issue the Gold Codes for a preemptive launch, without the SECDEF's consent, and then at each level down from there, the Combatant Commander's and their deputy's have to consent as well.

That's not to say that every officer in the chain of command would not concur with the President, perhaps they would, but that's not the same as the President having unilateral authority to launch a nuclear attack, quite the opposite in fact.

If Nuclear Hitler wakes up in the middle of the night, grabs the Football, pulls the Biscuit, and issues the Gold Codes, without General Mattis doing the same in concert? Not a lawful order, could be declined on the spot.

[adwinistrator]

The issue is not so much that the White House cannot influence the OPLAN, which, IIRC, is currently CONPLAN 8044, they certainly can, no doubt Bush and Obama had some imput, but they don't write the plan, and they don't make the plan on the fly at a whim,

From what I've found, OPLAN 8010-12 is the most current (publicaly discussed) US Nuclear War Plan. CONPLAN 8022 and 8044 are specifically the Global Strike plans, which end up getting integrated into the OPLAN.

The second slide I shared goes into a bit more detail in the description. Basically, the Presidential Study Directive is a memo, a couple pages long, detailing the general goals they'd like to see addressed with a new revision to the OPLAN. For instance, when Obama stated "To put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security…", the next update of the OPLAN included the changes to planning and strategy to reduce the scenarios and readiness needs.

“[The] president’s direction to me was less than two pages; the Joint Staff’s explanation of what the president really meant to say was twenty-six pages.”

but moreover, whatever OPLAN the JCS/JFCC/STRATCOM decides on in the end, the Two Man rule always applies, at every level of the chain of command, starting with General Mattis, to wit, President Trump could not summon the PES and issue the Gold Codes for a preemptive launch, without the SECDEF's consent, and then at each level down from there, the Combatant Commander's and their deputy's have to consent as well.

That's not to say that every officer in the chain of command would not concur with the President, perhaps they would, but that's not the same as the President having unilateral authority to launch a nuclear attack, quite the opposite in fact.

From what I can surmise, the President could order the execution of a specific scenario of the OPLAN, which would require the conditions have been met. This would be how the chain of command would restrict the ad-hoc usage via CinC. The JCS/STRATCOM are not going to write in scenarios that would allow irregular/misjudged usage.

Example: President can order, with SecDef, the execution of the plan for nuclear strike against N. Korea, since they just met the scenario conditions (invading S. Korea and are attempting to launch nuclear strike), the JCS down to CCDR will 2-man authorize and execute. If they have not yet met the scenario requirements, at some level, JCS or CCDR will not continue authorizing/executing until those requirements have been met.

[Smitty-48]

I was assuming that the Carlin-esque "Nuclear Hitler" scenario would have to be a Global Strike LAO rather than say, launch on warning, which would seem to be within the CONPLAN 8044 scope, AFAIK, CONPLAN 8022 was cancelled and is not integrated into 8010-12 at this time.

In other words, for Nuclear Hitler to be Nuclear Hitler, it would have to be a Prompt Global Strike by default. One assumes that even Nuclear Hitler would not be up for committing ritual suicide out of the blue, by invoking a strategic LAO against Russia/China within 8010-12 writ large.