If we are to believe the reports of the Pentagon, the U.S. has now deprived Iran of its ability to produce nuclear weapons. This was accomplished, remarkably enough, by a single raid involving a tiny number of U.S. bombers, without the element of surprise and — perhaps most astoundingly of all — without using our own nuclear weapons. There were no civilian casualties.
If the U.S. is ever the victim of a disarming strike, we will not get off so lightly.
Eight months ago, I wrote on the emphatic opinion of Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) of the House Armed Services Committee, and other experts, that the U.S. is now highly vulnerable to a nuclear surprise attack. Bacon, a former Air Force brigadier general, had the actual job of giving the order to retaliate in case of a nuclear attack. Such an attack, if successful, would prevent any U.S. retaliation, leaving our enemies a free hand to use their own nuclear weapons to destroy the U.S.
Although the U.S. possesses thousands of nuclear weapons dispersed all around the world, they are all reliant on a single point of failure: the nuclear command, control and communications system. In order to be effective, the system must guard against two catastrophic possibilities: first, that the U.S. will be disarmed by a nuclear surprise attack, and second, that a false warning — a sensory illusion or a phantom on a computer screen — might start an accidental war.
To avert these dangers, the U.S. relies on a small fleet of command aircraft that have all the equipment required to command U.S. nuclear forces in the event of war. The idea is that the aircraft will take off when they receive a warning of an incoming attack, and transmit the order to retaliate only if and when nuclear weapons actually reach U.S. soil. This operation is called Looking Glass, and the system whereby the aircraft take off and command U.S. forces from the air is known as the “ground alert.”
Unfortunately, technology has completely overtaken this ground alert system. Modern hypersonic and submarine-launched missiles are capable of striking the U.S. in less than the 15 minutes it takes for the command aircraft to take off and escape their bases. This fact alone is sufficient to render the existing system obsolete. Even more concerning, the recent surprise attacks against Russia and Iran (both of which made use of cheap, home-made drones to achieve perfect surprise) raise the possibility of neutralizing the command aircraft by previously unforeseen or unconventional means — and with no warning at all.
As many others have rightly pointed out, the recent pattern of small drones overflying sensitive U.S. military bases suggests it would be entirely possible to use the methods of Israel and Ukraine on a far grander scale against our air forces. But what others have missed is the true extent of the danger posed by such an attack. The command aircraft, the very cornerstones of all U.S. military power, are at risk of sudden destruction.
In other words, it may well be possible to disarm and destroy the U.S. with approximately 20 plastic quadcopters.
Perhaps the greatest danger to command aircraft is posed by the emergence of space-based nuclear weapons, such as those now being fielded by Russia. Such weapons may be launched into orbit months or years ahead of time, disguised as ordinary satellites, and then simultaneously brought down upon their targets.
At this point, the reader may wonder how the U.S. government could possibly have been so complacent as to allow such an existential threat to arise, while simultaneously expending large sums of precious defense dollars on controversial items like the Littoral Combat Ship and the M10 Booker. But not only does a solution exist, but it existed and was implemented successfully for 30 straight years before the present system even began.
In fact, the solution is very simple: If no form of reliable command post can be kept safe enough on the ground, then a sufficient number of aircraft must always be in the air, 24/7. This system, called an “airborne alert” is largely immune to surprise attack, because an aircraft that is already in the air is vastly more difficult to find and destroy than an aircraft parked on the ground.
Between 1961, when the command aircraft were first introduced, and the end of the Cold War in 1990, when the airborne alert was downgraded to the current ground alert, a Looking Glass command aircraft was always in the air somewhere above the Continental U.S.
So why was the airborne alert — a purely defensive operation that made America far more secure than it is today, while threatening no other nation — terminated? Astounding as it may seem, no reasonable answer has been proposed to this question.
In the grand scheme of American defense, the savings gained by switching from airborne to ground alert were inconsequential. In 1985, for instance, with the airborne alert in full swing, the cost of the entire command and control system amounted to less than 1 percent of the annual defense budget. This already miniscule cost was only slightly reduced by the downgrade from airborne to ground alert: around 20 aircraft are still needed to maintain the ground alert today, compared to the 50 which were needed before.
This state of affairs is as irrational as it is dangerous. There is no effective backup to the ground alert system; none of the countless other items on the Pentagon’s budget, however well justified, will be of any value if it should fail. Today, approximately 90 percent of the defense budget is spent on non-nuclear forces, all of which would be instantly wiped out or otherwise crippled by a full-scale nuclear surprise attack. And the roughly 10 percent of the budget that is being spent on nuclear weapons will be wasted if none of these weapons can receive the order to fire.
For a moment, think back to June 2023, when a five-man recreational submarine imploded at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. There followed a tidal wave of criticism of the submarine’s designers, who failed to follow standard procedure, provoking vastly more media interest than any of the alarm bells that have been ringing over the state of America’s nuclear deterrence system.
If history must record that the U.S. paid less regard to its ultimate defense than responsible engineers habitually pay to the construction of tourist submarines, then it is likely as not we will suffer much the same fate as the unfortunate crew of the Titan: sudden, unwarned and unavoidable destruction.
Ben Ollerenshaw is a defense journalist who has written for various outlets including RealClearDefense and the National Interest, specializing in nuclear weapons policy. He can be contacted at benollerenshaw2@gmail.com.
