To Launch a Nuclear Strike, President Trump Would Take These Steps

By Dave Merrill, Nafeesa Syeed and Brittany Harris

Updated January 20, 2017

How much power does the president alone have to launch a nuclear strike? Bloomberg News asked Bruce G. Blair, a former Minuteman missile-launch officer and research scholar at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, to spell out the step-by-step procedure.

The president considers a nuclear strike

The commander-in-chief’s power is clear: He or she has sole authority to use nuclear weapons.

The top brass is brought in

Before initiating military action, the president convenes a conference with military and civilian advisers in Washington and around the world to talk through options. In the White House, the call takes place in the Situation Room. If traveling, the president is patched in on a secure line. A key participant in the meeting: the Pentagon’s deputy director of operations, an officer in charge of the National Military Command Center, also known as the “war room.” This around-the-clock operations center is responsible for preparing and ultimately transmitting a launch order from the president. The head of all U.S. strategic nuclear forces at Strategic Command in Omaha would probably also be asked for a briefing on strike options.

[Time elapsed: less than one minute]

The consultation lasts as long as the president wishes, but if enemy missiles are heading toward the U.S. and the president must order a counterstrike, the consultation may last just 30 seconds. The tight time line raises the risk of launching hastily on a false warning.

The president decides to launch

Some advisers may try to change the president’s mind or resign in protest—but ultimately, the Pentagon must comply with the commander-in-chief’s order.

The order is verified

The senior officer in the Pentagon war room must formally authenticate that the person ordering the strike is indeed the president. The officer reads a “challenge code,” often two phonetic letters from the military alphabet, such as “Delta-Echo.” The president retrieves the “biscuit,” a laminated card the president or military aide carries at all times, and finds the matching response to the challenge code: “Charlie-Zulu,” for instance.

The order goes out

The war room prepares the launch order, a message that contains the chosen war plan, time to launch, authentication codes and codes needed to unlock the missiles before firing them. The encoded and encrypted message is only about 150 characters long, about the length of a tweet. It is broadcast to each worldwide command and directly to launch crews.

[Time elapsed: two or three minutes]

The submarine and ICBM crews receive the message within seconds of the broadcast. Just a few minutes have passed since the initial conference call.

Launch crews take over

Launch message in hand, the crews open locked safes to obtain sealed-authentication system (SAS) codes prepared by the National Security Agency and distributed throughout the military’s nuclear chain of command. They compare the SAS codes in the launch order with those in their safes.

If the missiles are launched from a submarine:

The captain, executive officer and two others authenticate the order. The launch message provides the combination to an on-board safe holding the “fire-control” key needed to deploy the missiles. Missiles are ready for launch about 15 minutes after receiving the order.

If the missiles are launched from land:

Five launch crews in various underground centers control a squadron of 50 missiles. Each crew consists of two officers. The individual teams are spread miles apart. Each receives the orders, opens safes and compares their SAS codes to those sent by the war room. If they match, the crews enter the message’s war plan number into their launch computers to re-target missiles from their peacetime targets in the ocean to their new targets. Using additional codes in the message, the crews enter a few more keystrokes to unlock the missiles before turning launch keys retrieved from their safe. At the designated launch time, the five crews turn their keys simultaneously, sending five “votes” to the missiles.

Mutiny is unlikely

It takes just two “votes” to launch the missiles. So even if three two-officer ICBM crews refuse to carry out the order, it won’t stop the launch.

Missiles are launched

About five minutes may elapse from the president’s decision until intercontinental ballistic missiles blast out of their silos, and about fifteen minutes until submarine missiles shoot out of their tubes. Once fired, the missiles and their warheads cannot be called back.

Close Calls with Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear weapons are different.

If a nuclear weapon exploded in a major city, the blast center would be hotter than the surface of the sun; tornado-strength winds would spread the flames; and a million or more people could die. Survivors would have no electricity, phones and hospitals would be overwhelmed…if they were still standing.

The opportunities for catastrophe are wide and terrifying with nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. The possibility of an accidental, mistaken or unauthorized launch is real. The scenarios below show how close we've come.

More than two decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia still keep roughly 1,800 nuclear weapons ready for immediate launch against each other. This dangerous "hair trigger status" means leaders in a crisis would have just minutes to check facts and decide whether to use nuclear weapons. Command and control systems are not perfect. People make mistakes. Sabotage can happen. Technology has flaws and systems fail.

A nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia could end human life on earth—and could be triggered by a false warning planted by a cyber-terrorist. We know that terrorists are seeking nuclear weapons themselves.

Seven more countries—in addition to the U.S. and Russia—have nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, China, France, the United Kingdom, Israel and North Korea. Any one of these countries could be the cause of a catastrophe.

How long will we continue to rely on luck?

The Russian Nuclear Football

rocket launching

On June 25, 1995, a U.S. scientific missile lifted off from an island near the coast of Norway to study the northern lights. Across northern Russia, radars tracked the missile, and an early warning center read the rocket as a nuclear missile launched from a U.S. submarine, capable of hitting Moscow with hundreds of nuclear warheads in 15 minutes. President Boris Yeltsin and his top nuclear advisors went into crisis mode. His advisors opened up the nuclear briefcase, placed the button on Yeltsin’s desk and said: "We're under attack." President Yeltsin had ten minutes to decide whether or not to launch Russian missiles in response. Two minutes before the decision deadline, the warning center’s senior duty officer told President Yeltsin that the missile's flight path posed no threat. Days after the crisis, the Russians discovered that the U.S. notification of an upcoming satellite launch never made it up the chain of command.

The Computer Chip

intercontinental ballistic missile

Hours before dawn on June 3, 1980, President Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was awakened with the news that Soviet submarines had launched 220 missiles at the United States. It was a time of intense hostility between the superpowers. The Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan and the U.S. and its allies responded by boycotting the Moscow Olympics – dealing an international humiliation to the Soviets. Brzezinski asked for confirmation; seconds later, he was told that not 220 but 2,200 missiles were on their way. The Pentagon called a Threat Assessment Conference. Crews started the engines on their nuclear bombers. Missile crews opened their safes. As Brzezinski was calling the President to recommend a retaliatory strike, fresh data came: the command centers and radar sites disagreed again. This time, there were no radar warnings of a missile attack, and the incident was declared a false alarm. The culprit? A defective computer chip that was replaced for under a dollar.

Nukes Over North Carolina

B-52 bombers

Three days after President Kennedy was inaugurated, a B-52 nuclear bomber carrying two 4-megaton hydrogen bombs took off from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base for an airborne alert patrol. After more than ten hours in the air, the plane began to leak fuel and broke apart at 10,000 feet over Faro, North Carolina. The locking pins came out of one of the nuclear weapons, and the bomb fell from the plane. Despite precautions, the bomb behaved as if it had been released above a target. The parachutes activated. But when the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent. Incredibly, the bomb did not explode. Every safety mechanism designed to prevent detonation failed except one. A single safety switch prevented a nuclear catastrophe. Had it exploded, the bomb – which had the power of 250 Hiroshimas – would have caused lethal radioactive fallout over Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City – and forced an evacuation of Washington, D.C.