Single Integrated Operational Plan - Executing The SIOP

Executing The SIOP

In the United States, the decision to use nuclear weapons is vested in the National Command Authority (NCA), composed of the President of the United States and the United States Secretary of Defense or their successors. The President alone cannot order an attack. The ordering of use, communication of orders, and the release of nuclear weapons is governed by the two-man rule at all times.

No one person ever can take such an action. All military personnel that participate in loading, arming, or firing weapons, as well as transmitting launch orders, are subject to the Personnel Reliability Program (PRP).

If the NCA decides that the United States must launch nuclear weapons, they will direct the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) to do so via the Nuclear Football briefcase. At the NCA/JCS level, the orders will be to execute SIOP strike options, broken into Major Attack Options (MAOs), Selected Attack Options (SAOs), and Limited Attack Options (LAOs). Individual countries or regions can be included in or withheld from nuclear attacks depending on circumstances. The CJCS in turn will direct the general officer on duty in addition to one other officer on duty in the National Military Command Center (NMCC) at the Pentagon to release an Emergency Action Message (EAM) containing an Emergency War Order (EWO) to all nuclear forces; another officer will validate that order. Additionally, the message will go to the Alternate National Military Command Center (ANMCC), located in Raven Rock Mountain, Pennsylvania, and also to an airborne command post, either the presidential National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC) or the military E-6 Mercury Looking Glass. If the NMCC is destroyed by a first strike, either the ANMCC, NAOC or TACAMO can issue the orders to execute the SIOP.

As the orders go down the chain of command, always subject to the two-man rule, intermediate headquarters, and eventually the nuclear delivery platforms themselves, will receive Emergency Action Messages (EAM) to arm or launch weapons. For most modern weapons, the EAM will also include codes for Permissive Action Links (PAL).

At a minimum, a PAL code will actually arm a weapon for release. The circuitry controlling the PAL is deliberately positioned inside the warhead such that it cannot be reached without disabling the weapon, at a minimum, to a level that would require a full factory-level rebuild. There may be separate PAL codes for arming and launch. Some weapons have "dial-a-yield" functions that allow the power of the nuclear explosion to be adjusted from minimum to maximum yield. Most weapons have additional arming circuitry that, even if a valid launch code is entered, will not arm the warhead unless the weapon senses that it has been released on an expected delivery path. For example, the first steps of the final arming process for a ballistic missile depend on physical characteristics of the weapon release, such as the acceleration of a rocket launch, zero-gravity coasting, and various physical aspects of hypersonic reentry into the atmosphere. A gravity bomb dropped from an aircraft will detect the altitude of release and the decreasing altitude as it falls.

Journalist Ron Rosenbaum has pointed out that the SIOP is entirely concerned with the identity of the commanding officer and the authenticity of the order, and there are no safeguards to verify that the person issuing the order is actually sane. Notably, Major Harold Hering was discharged from the Air Force for asking the question "How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?"