Operation
If the President (who is Commander-in-Chief) decided to order the use of nuclear weapons, he would be taken aside by the "carrier" and the briefcase would be opened. Then a command signal or "watch" alert would be issued to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The President would then review the attack options with the aide and decide upon a plan which could range from a single cruise missile to multiple ICBM launches. These are preset war plans developed under OPLAN 8010 (formerly the Single Integrated Operational Plan). Next, using whatever communications technology the satchel has, the aide would then presumably make contact with the National Military Command Center or, in a retaliatory strike situation, multiple airborne command posts (who likely fly Boeing E-4B) and/or nuclear armed submarines.
Before the order can be processed by the military, the President must be positively identified using a special code issued on a plastic card, nicknamed the "biscuit". The United States has a two-man rule in place and, while only the President can order the release of nuclear weapons, the order must be confirmed by the Secretary of Defense (there is a hierarchy of succession in the event that the President has been killed in an attack). Once all the codes have been verified, the military would issue attack orders to the proper units. These orders are given and then re-verified for authenticity.
The football is carried by one of the rotating presidential military aides, whose work schedule is described by a top-secret rota (one from each of the five service branches). They are occasionally physically attached to the briefcase via a security cable around the wrist. This person is a commissioned officer in the U.S. military, pay-grade O-4 or above, who has undergone the nation's most rigorous background check (Yankee White). These armed officers are required to keep the football readily accessible to the President at all times. Consequently, an aide, football in hand, is always either standing or walking near the President or riding in Air Force One, Marine One, or the presidential motorcade with the President.
There are three such "footballs" in existence. The first travels with the President, a spare is kept at the White House, and the third is with the Vice President.
Read more about this topic: Nuclear Football
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
“It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)