
Troubled covert agency responsible for trucking nuclear bombs across America - greenyoda
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nuclear-couriers-20170310-story.html
======
hackuser
This is the fourth among the U.S. nuclear weapons institutions that I've read
is in trouble, going back several years:

1) Air Force ICBM launch operations: The General in charge had a serious
drinking problem (consider that for a moment), to the extent that he went on a
bender in Moscow. Among launch officers, there was widespread cheating on
qualification tests, disregard for regulations (such as sealing doors to
secure rooms), and very low morale.

2) Air Force nuclear bomber operations: At one point, they lost track of a
nuclear bomb (or maybe cruise missile), and it was flown to a base in another
part of the country before anyone figured it out and could track it down. The
Secretary of Defense fired the General in charge.

3) Security at facilities containing highly enriched uranium/plutonium (the
essential material to making weapons; the one component that keeps terrorists
from making one): At one facility, some peace protestors (not James Bond-level
attackers) breached the security and setup a protest next to a building
containing the materials. They were there for something like 30 minutes before
they were discovered and apprehended.

4) And now this.

This isn't a system that can succeed 99.999% of the time. If one nuclear
weapon gets into the hands of someone willing to lose it, millions of people
will die and then you can imagine the response - the course of history and
civilization will change.

~~~
jriley
As a counterpoint, zero defect policies could be be harmful. If everyone must
take a test and score 100% or otherwise end their career, shenanigans happen.

~~~
hackuser
> As a counterpoint, zero defect policies could be be harmful. If everyone
> must take a test and score 100% or otherwise end their career, shenanigans
> happen.

It's not a counterpoint, it's a consideration when designing the system.
Taking this into account, the system must still function 100% of the time. If
what you describe did happen, than the cause of failure would shift somewhat
from the officers to the designers, but the system still failed (however, one
must question the judgment and character of anyone who cheats on a nuclear
weapons launch qualification test, no matter how hard it is).

~~~
AdamJacobMuller
Right. A system can function at (effectively) 100% correctness being composed
of individuals who are not 100% perfect (because nobody is).

If 1 person is 99.99% correct, how correct are 3 people when consensus is
required to make a decision? 5? Its just math.

~~~
eutectic
You can only 'do the math' if you assume uncorrelated errors and no
unanticipated or emergent failure modes.

------
chrissnell
The anti-adblock paywall makes this site unusable for me. Would someone please
post the text of the article here?

~~~
userbinator
Just disable JavaScript, the article is perfectly readable without it.

~~~
0xCMP
Thank you. It really is unreadable without it.

Does anyone know of any plugins that disables javascript on a website basis
for chrome?

~~~
aftbit
Yep. I installed uMatrix specifically for a previous article on this site. :P

------
lr
A friend of mine used to be in the Navy nuclear power program, and worked at
LLNL for a bit, too, and he talked about how they would throw nuclear material
in the back of a van and drive it around. And this was in "Nuclear Free Zones"
in the Bay Area. It is so sad to see people protesting and blocking trains
carying low level nuclear waste (like the suits workers would wear at nuclear
power facilities) through their towns, when this kind of far more dangerous
shit is going on and know one knows about it.

------
ryanmarsh
A couple of my army buddies did this when they got out after Iraq. The money
sounded good and it was work we were used too. I don't talk to them much but I
do know they didn't do it for very long. They said it sucked and that was the
end of it.

------
rodionos
This agency has more reasons to be covert than NSA. How is it possible for
reporters of a major newspaper to obtain access to such material, including
routes (even if obfuscated), number of sorties, names and contact details of
former employees, other operational details? It's one of those cases where
security by obscurity makes sense, I think.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
_hauling the most lethal cargo there is_

I can think of about 50 more dangerous things I'd rather not pass on the
highway.

The truck carrying a nuclear warhead is about a squillion times more dangerous
than the warhead itself.

Trucks have killed more people than nuclear weapons _ever_ will.

~~~
Taniwha
I got stuck next to one of these in a 2 hour jam (something big was on fire
100 miles south of us) on CA I-5 the night before Thanksgiving 20 or so years
back ... it was so obvious - large white unmarked truck, combat-style jeep-
things front and back bristling with big antennas, full of scary dudes in
fatigues and dark glasses - it was like something out of central casting -
throw a McDonalds logo or something on the truck for heaven's sake

While sitting next to a nuke and not really knowing how safe it was was a bit
scary the actions of the security dudes when people started getting out of
their cars to stretch their legs was far more scary - they were actively
menacing while trying not to give away why they were there or that the
unmarked truck between their vehicles was in any way special (despite being
stupidly obvious)

~~~
sandworm101
Sounds more like an aircraft/spacecraft part in transit. Or aircraft weapons.
Regardless of the OP, nukes are small. They dont need big trucks. My money
would be on a shipmemt of missles parts (rocket motors) or similar weaponry
that you donr want shipped by air.

------
ForFreedom
Why dont they just transport by air than on road, safer and quicker. Surely
they have changed tactics from what is given in the article.

~~~
Symbiote
Air has different risks, I wouldn't assume it's safer. Given the accident in
Spain, I assume it's far more dangerous. That accident left a 2km^2 mess of
plutonium.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash)

------
LouisSayers
"That worst case would be a terrorist group hijacking a truck and obtaining a
multi-kiloton hydrogen bomb."

Umm... is it just me, or does this really not seem like _the worst thing_ that
could happen?

You have a truck with nuclear bombs in it, travelling across America... isn't
the bomb already in the place that a terrorist would want it to be?

I would think that _the worst thing_ that could happen, is for one of these
trucks to blow up - or am I missing an understanding of how nuclear bombs go
off?

~~~
shshhdhs
Perhaps someone more familiar with the topic than me can answer, but I believe
the warhead casing protects from most external explosions (unless it is direct
high-kinetic collision).

If it does penetrate the casing, I believe it would not trigger a nuclear
reaction but rather become a dirty bomb. This is obviously still bad, but NOT
AS BAD as you might think.

Side note, I'm not sure why the article says kiloton? Does the US still use
kiloton warheads in its arsenal?

Either way, the reason for the reduced detonation (or imputed dirty bomb) is
because multi-megaton nuclear detonations require hexagonal detonators
arranged around in sphere with near-perfect implosion timing so it creates the
appropriate nuclear reaction (which must implode before it can explode). If a
detonator is triggered arbitrarily, I think a dirty bomb would be the only
effect (yes, still bad). If the timing is off, then I believe the detonation
would be kiloton, not megaton (reduced effectiveness).

~~~
mikeash
The US does indeed have a lot of kiloton weapons. The warheads on the
Minuteman missiles, for example, are 300-500kt. Larger numbers of smaller
warheads are more efficient at destroying stuff if you can deliver them
accurately, so weapons have shrunk quite a lot from their Cold War peak.

I believe all modern American weapons are one-point safe, which means "The
probability of achieving a nuclear yield greater than four pounds of TNT
equivalent, in the event of a one-point initiation of the weapon’s high
explosive, must not exceed one in a million."
([http://www.acq.osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/NMHB/chapters/chapter_7.htm](http://www.acq.osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/NMHB/chapters/chapter_7.htm))
So, if it works as designed, accidental detonation from some external force
won't even be in the kiloton range.

~~~
acqq
I understand "one point safety" to refer to the "detonation of the high
explosives by means other than the firing system" as the firing system is
designed to fire at the multiple points at once. Can anybody honestly claim
that it's completely impossible that the firing system accidentally does the
task that it is its main purpose and... fires?

Speaking just from the point of the computer engineer, bit flips or even more
bit flips actually occur in practice. One specific "if" branch wrongly
taken... one single specific bus line true instead of false... etc...

Only for the first few bombs, the human had to actually add the last piece of
uranium or plutonium for the bomb to have enough radioactive mass inside to
make the nuclear explosion physically possible. In all the more modern designs
everything needed in already inside of the bomb or the warhead. The claimed
safety seems to be "everything's there, but the electronics (or the computer)
controls everything." How calming.

Regarding one in the million, the people who made the PBS documentary say:

For the accident in Damascus, Arkansas, US: "the air force claimed there's
_one in the million_ chance that the fallen socket would hit the missile.
During our shooting of the recreation we dropped 12 sockets and 6 actually hit
the missile":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoxB88rL_2M&t=2m15s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoxB88rL_2M&t=2m15s)

The bomb designer, writing the paper a few years ago:

[http://psam12.org/proceedings/paper/paper_497_1.pdf](http://psam12.org/proceedings/paper/paper_497_1.pdf)

"It is recognized that it is very difficult to provide assurance that the <
1E-03 numerical requirements for a safety subsystem have been met, let alone
the < 1E-04 or 1E-05 assignments given to elements or components within a
safety subsystem. In fact, it is not possible to amass quantitative data that
supports such assertions with a high degree of statistical confidence across
all relevant environmental conditions. In other words, it is not possible to
conceive of all possible abnormal environments, nor can all environments which
can be conceived be tested exhaustively in a repeated fashion to generate
overwhelming statistical certainty of weapon response."

~~~
mikeash
You make some interesting points. Certainly, it seems tough to be truly
confident of that one-in-a-million claim.

It's theorized that modern PALs incorporate the explosive timings into the
authorization code itself. All those different explosive initiators have to be
set off at just the right times, and if this theory is true, then the
information of when each one needs to be triggered isn't even present in the
bomb. This eliminates (well, makes extremely improbable, anyway) the
possibility that the electronics accidentally trigger a full detonation due to
some malfunction.

Of course, whether this is really true or not is unknown....

------
basicplus2
Its a good time to make noises about needing more money for your agency with
Trump just coming into office

------
laretluval
Blast Corps?

------
owly
Seriously, why the hell is the US reviving the nuclear weapons program? It's
against all humanity. What the world really needs are giant robots. As far as
the vulnerability of trucks is concerned, I give you the Fast & Furious film
franchise.

