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In the 21st Century Nuclear Command-and-Control has become too complex

The humbling truth is that strategic analysts have no clue as to what unanticipated event or events in combination may trigger nuclear war in the 21^st century. It behooves us to start thinking about it

Nuclear command-and-control in the Millenials era Nautilus Institute by Peter Hayes17 February, 2015 

SUMMARY

In this report Peter Hayes writes about the risk of nuclear war and complexity. He states that “very few leaders or even strategic scholars pay attention to the new complexity of the operating environment in which national nuclear command-and-control systems operate, or the new characteristics of the command-and-control systems and their supporting CISR systems that may contribute to the problem of loss-of-control and rapid escalation to nuclear war.

“Today, the underlying ground is moving beneath the feet of nuclear-armed states. The enormous flow across borders of people, containers, and information, and the growth of connectivity between cities, corporations, and communities across borders, is recasting the essential nature of security itself to a networked flux of events and circumstances that no agency or state can control. The meta-system of nuclear command-and control systems has emerged in this new post-modern human condition.”

Peter Hayes is Co-founder and Executive Director of Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability; Honorary Professor at the Center for International Security Studies, Sydney University, Australia…………

REPORT BY PETER HAYES

Nuclear command-and-control in the Millenials era

Introduction

A 1989 computer game, Nuclear War, released in 1989 and played on DOS, set different nuclear weapons states against each other, each trying to blow the other to smithereens. In this game, random events interrupted the “normal” business of nuclear war. Exemplary wild cards including the arrival of aliens and rapidly growing populations, or firing a cow against an opponent which leads to a stampede that kills millions of people. If the game is drawn, everyone loses and the Earth explodes—which is the cheerful screenshot image used to illustrate this essay.[1] These metaphorical allusions incorporated real aspects of the Cold War nuclear balance of terror: alien populations stand in for grossly inflated threat estimates; and hurtling cows to the risk of inadvertent war due to false alarms by the early warning systems then in use, for example.

In contrast, the premise of strategic theory is the anti-thesis of this game: no-one loses when the game is drawn due to reciprocal and unavoidable threat of nuclear annihilation which creates a condition of strategic stability. However, the perceived security derived from the “delicate balance of nuclear terror” in the real world rested on managing and exploiting the risk of nuclear war at the same time. As the cost of nuclear war between great powers was essentially infinite, all that could be manipulated in their direct relationship was the probability of war and escalation to nuclear war. This left little room for coercive diplomacy based on the threat of nuclear war between the great power nuclear weapons states, and displaced much of their competition into peripheral contested zones involving non-nuclear forces and non-nuclear states……….

Cold War Nuclear Command-and-Control Lessons……….

Impact of US Advanced Conventional Weapons on Regional Military Forces..…….This interplay of conventional and nuclear forces and their C4ISR systems generates a set of cascading critical research questions. To what extent are US, allied, and adversary militaries rebuilding their respective communication, intelligence, and computer systems to support their respective conventional and nuclear command and control functions? What are the critical military imperatives that shape these choices? And do the resulting architectures reflect the threat posed by conventional forces in ways that contribute to strategic instability, that is, would increase the fear of pre-emptive strikes by adversaries at the brink of a war?

Interplay of US Nuclear and Conventional Command and Control Systems………

What Measures Reduce the Risk of Nuclear War Arising from this Interplay? The issues outlined above pose serious questions about how best to manage this meta-system rather than leaving it to each national nuclear command-and-control system to fend for itself. It is sobering to recognize that many high-technology systems fail even though individual components perform perfectly as designed. ……….

Conclusion 

Many observers have noted the analogy between the situation leading up to the outbreak of World War I and today. However, there was no equivalent at that time to the existence of nuclear weapons today. In comparison, events moved at a glacial pace compared with the seconds, minutes, and hours, and at most, days, in which a nuclear war would start, be fought, and end. And, information moved relatively slowly in the pre-digital era.

Where the analogy may be apt is the fact that the trigger event that led to World War I was not anticipated at the time. Similarly today, very few leaders or even strategic scholars pay attention to the new complexity of the operating environment in which national nuclear command-and-control systems operate, or the new characteristics of the command-and-control systems and their supporting CISR systems that may contribute to the problem of loss-of-control and rapid escalation to nuclear war in spite of all the putative caution-inducing attributes of nuclear weapons, including the multiple safety and control systems that might disable their usage even if ordered.

Just as we now live in one global city in which New York is a suburb of Karachi, Kiev is a suburb of Melbourne, and Tokyo is a suburb of Lagos, so we now live in a globalized world of states armed with nuclear weapons. Albert Wohlstetter famously called this living in a nuclear-armed crowd.[38]  However, this phrase doesn’t capture the modern meaning of a globalized nuclear-armed world which goes far beyond the nth-country problem of horizontal proliferation by states.  The problem is more akin to managing nuclear weapons in a world of hyper-connectivity, perhaps characterized as one of Millenials nuclear command-and-control.

Today, the underlying ground is moving beneath the feet of nuclear-armed states. The enormous flow across borders of people, containers, and information, and the growth of connectivity between cities, corporations, and communities across borders, is recasting the essential nature of security itself to a networked flux of events and circumstances that no agency or state can control. The meta-system of nuclear command-and control systems has emerged in this new post-modern human condition.

The humbling truth is that strategic analysts have no clue as to what unanticipated event or events in combination may trigger nuclear war in the 21^st century. It behooves us to start thinking about it. http://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/nuclear-command-and-control-in-the-millenials-era/

February 18, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war