Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Communication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBM Snafu

he Air Force swears there was no panic. But for three-quarters of an hour Saturday morning, launch control officers at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming couldn’t reliably communicate or monitor the status of 50 Minuteman III nuclear missiles. Gulp.
Backup security and communications systems, located elsewhere on the base, allowed the intercontinental ballistic missiles to be continually monitored. But the outage is considered serious enough that the very highest rungs on the chain of command — including the President — are being briefed on the incident today.
A single hardware failure appears to have been the root cause of the disruption, which snarled communications on the network that links the five launch control centers and 50 silos of the 319th Missile Squadron. Multiple error codes were reported, including “launch facility down.”


Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/communications-dropped-to-50-nuke-missiles-in-icbm-snafu/#ixzz13ValpG8l

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/communications-dropped-to-50-nuke-missiles-in-icbm-snafu/

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