![]() He kindly provided the documentation, introduction, and document descriptions for this posting. Hopkins III obtained the new material through research in recently declassified U.S. The checklist provides the first fully declassified details of SAC procedures under Defense Readiness Conditions (DEFCON), from 1 to 5, along with the Emergency War Order red dot messages that would have directed SAC bombers and missiles to launch nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union and other targeted adversaries. The National Security Archive at George Washington University is today posting this intriguing document for the first time. Washington D.C., FebruA recently declassified Strategic Air Command (SAC) checklist sheds brand new light on the procedures that SAC would have followed in the mid-1960s if U.S. He also shows how launch-on-warning had become part of the training routine at SAC: “we trained extensively to launch promptly on warning of incoming Soviet warheads and thus avoid the destruction of Minuteman (and Titan) missiles on the ground or in the first few minutes of flight.” Strategic Air Command veteran Bruce Blair takes the story in to the 1970s, with an extraordinary account, based on personal experience, of how SAC would have carried out its nuclear mission if deterrence failed.īlair’s account explains how the Emergency War Orders system had changed by the 1970s, with Red Dot messages used for executing Armageddon-scale nuclear strikes on the Soviet Union and its allies, or on China. ![]() Hopkins on “How the Strategic Air Command Would Have Gone to Nuclear War” provided incredible detail on SAC procedures during the 1960s. Washington, D.C., Ma- Last month’s posting by Robert S. His numerous publications include The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War (Washington, D.C: Brookings, 1993). Bruce is the Co-Founder of Global Zero, an international movement seeking the universal elimination of nuclear s. In 1999, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship Prize for his work on nuclear arms control. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment from 1982 to 1985, and from 1987 to 2000 was a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, Washington D.C. Air Force Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile launch control officer (1972-74), as a project director at the U.S. Blair is a Research Scholar at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. In the early 1970s, when I served as a support officer for the SAC Airborne Command Post ("Looking Glass") and then as a Minuteman II ICBM missile launch officer, the basic procedures (Emergency War Orders) outlined in the 55 th SRW “Checklist” for 1964 remained the same, but the message flag words of the Emergency Action Messages (EAMs) used to generate and execute the missions of strategic bomber and reconnaissance aircraft, Minuteman missiles, and ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) had changed in fundamental ways.īruce G. ![]() The document and the commentary are illuminating and brought to mind my experience with SAC nuclear operations during the following decade. Robert Hopkins has done a public service by unearthing and publishing the 55 th Strategic Wing EWO Checklist for 1964. Update How SAC Would Have Gone to Nuclear War in the 1970s FOIA Advisory Committee Oversight Reports. ![]()
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