Single Integrated Operational Plan
Encyclopedia
The Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) was the United States
' general plan for nuclear war from 1961 to 2003. The SIOP gave the President of the United States
a range of targeting options, and described launch procedures and target sets against which nuclear weapons would be launched. The plan integrated the capabilities of the nuclear triad
of bombers with intercontinental range, land-based intercontinental ballistic missile
s (ICBM) and sea-based submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). The SIOP was a highly classified
document, and was one of the most secret and sensitive issues in U.S. national security policy.
The first SIOP, titled SIOP-62, was finished on 14 December 1960 and implemented on 1 July 1961 (the start of fiscal year 1962). The SIOP was updated annually until February 2003, when it was replaced by Operations Plan (OPLAN) 8044. Since December 2008, the US nuclear war plan has been OPLAN 8010, Strategic Deterrence and Global Strike.
establishing the concepts, goal, and guidelines that provided guidance to the nuclear planners. The Secretary of Defense
then used the President's guidance to produce the Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy (NUWEP) that specified basic planning assumptions, attack options, targeting objectives, types of targets, targeting constraints, and coordination with combatant commanders. The NUWEP was then used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff
(JCS) to create the "Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP), Annex C (Nuclear)." This document established a more detailed and elaborate set of goals and conditions that included targeting and damage criteria for the use of nuclear weapons. The final stage in the planning process occurred when the Strategic Air Command
(SAC) (from 1961 to 1992) or the United States Strategic Command
(USSTRATCOM) (from 1992 to 2003) took the guidance from the JSCP and created the actual nuclear war plan that becomes the SIOP.
As part of SIOP planning, SAC or USSTRATCOM developed a set of plans and a series of options based on a target set known as the National Target Base (NTB). The number of targets in the NTB varied over time, from 16,000 in 1985 to 12,500 at the end of the Cold War
in 1992, to 2,500 by 2001. The SIOP was primarily directed against targets in the Soviet Union
(later Russia
) but targets in the People's Republic of China
, which had been part of the SIOP until the 1970s, were added back into the plan in 1997. In 1999, the NTB reportedly included targets in Russia, China, North Korea
, Iran
, Iraq
, Syria
, and Libya
.
- four Trident
Vanguard class submarine
s - are strictly under UK national control, they had two distinct roles under the SIOP. The first was part of a UK-only retaliatory response to a nuclear attack, whether a full strategic strike, or a limited tactical strike. The second role was one in which the Royal Navy participates in the SIOP, in effect becoming an extension of the U.S. Navy's Trident submarines. This role was to be part of a NATO response to a Soviet nuclear strike.
The Royal Navy's contribution to the SIOP was small. The four Vanguard submarines could strike a maximum of 512 separate targets; equivalent to 7% of the total U.S. nuclear strike capacity.
The RAF's V-bomber fleet of nuclear weapon carrying bombers was also previously assigned to participate in the SIOP. The Avro Vulcan
, Handley Page Victor
and Vickers Valiant
bombers based in the UK would have arrived over the USSR before any aircraft of the US Strategic Air Command
(SAC).
period. Plan Totality
targeted twenty cities with the thirty nuclear bombs available. Based on the reports of the strategic bombing operations of WWII the Joint Chiefs of Staff
sought a targeting plan called Delta-Bravo-Romeo, disrupting Soviet war-making capacity, blunting their atomic warfare capabilities, and retarding the Soviet advance into Eurasia
. Lack of any reliable targeting information and the limited number of bombs meant plans continued to rely on striking enemy cities. Curtis LeMay
's SAC Emergency War Plan 1-49 dropped the entire US arsenal of 133 devices on seventy cities over thirty days.
By the 1950s around 5,500 targets were listed to receive SAC bomber strikes; these targets consisted primarily of industrial sites but included counterforce
targets. These plans, primarily by the Air Force, tended to be based on selecting targets in order to use up the available weapons, rather than considering the desired effects or strategic outcomes.
From a 1957 letter from John H. Moore, former director of nuclear planning, air operations branch, United States European Command
, Air Force target planning methodology can be inferred "blast damage frame," with such references as "damage to concrete structures" and the requirement for a "high probability of cratering runways." He cited the "destructive and disruptive nature of nuclear weapons" with megaton yields: "the cumulative or ancillary effects may be as great or greater than primary damage." Specifically, he considered delayed radiation but not thermal effects, but called attention to the idea of "bonus" effects, in which the totality of weapons effects would allow lower-yield weapons to achieve the "desired destruction." In the letter to the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss, Moore noted that the Pentagon "rigorously suppressed" this study and destroyed all copies.
Prior to the development of SIOP and survivable command and control, President
Dwight D. Eisenhower
predelegated nuclear release authority to certain senior commanders. There have continued to be Continuity of Nuclear Operations Plans (COOP), which designated enough subordinates who, in the event of the National Command Authority
and immediate successors being killed in a "decapitation" attack, could still retaliate. While the details have never been made public, Eisenhower's predelegation, and a Federation of American Scientists summary, give a framework.
, a key Manhattan Project
scientist and Science Advisor in the Eisenhower Administration
, suggested to the President that inspection of foreign military facilities was not sufficient to control their nuclear weapons. Kistiakowsky was particularly concerned with the difficulty of verifying the number, type, and deployment of nuclear-armed missiles on missile submarines, and proposed that the arms control strategy focus on disarmament rather than inspections. He was also concerned with the short warning times available from Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
(ICBM) launches, which took away the lengthy decision time available when the nuclear threat came exclusively from manned bombers.
Eisenhower sent Kistiakowsky to Strategic Air Command headquarters where he was, at first, rebuffed. At the same time as the early nuclear arms control work, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
, General
Nathan F. Twining, USAF, sent a memorandum in August 1959, to the Secretary of Defense, Neil McElroy, which suggested that the Strategic Air Command be formally assigned responsibility to prepare the national nuclear target list, and a single plan for nuclear operations. Up to that point, the Army, Navy, and Air Force had done their own target planning. That had led to individual targets being multiply targeted by the different services. The separate service plans were not mutually supporting, as, for example, by the Navy destroying an air defense facility on the route of an Air Force bomber going to a target deeper inland. While Twining had sent the memo to McElroy, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
disagreed on the policy during early 1960.
Thomas Gates
, who succeeded McElroy, asked President
Dwight D. Eisenhower
to decide the policy.
Eisenhower said he would not "leave his successor with the monstrosity" of the uncoordinated and non-integrated forces that then existed. When Kistiakowsky was not given access, Eisenhower sent him back with a much stronger set of orders giving SAC officers the choice to cooperate with Kistiakowsky, or resign.
Kistiakowsky's report, presented on November 29, described uncoordinated plans with huge numbers of targets, many of which would be attacked by multiple forces, resulting in overkill
. Eisenhower was shocked by the plans, and focused not just on the creation of the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), but on the entire process of picking targets, generating requirements, and planning for nuclear war operations. Separate operational plans from the Air Force and the Navy were combined to form the foundation of the SIOP.
to become SIOP-62, describing a massive strike with the entire US arsenal of 3,200 warheads against the USSR, China and Soviet-aligned states.
The early SIOP, however, had little flexibility, treating all Communist countries as a uniform bloc. Document JCS 2056/220 expressed the concerns of U.S. Marine
Commandant David Shoup that the 1961 draft was inconsistent with an 1959 NSC policy guidance paper approved by Eisenhower. Shoup was especially concerned with language in the draft SIOP that said
The National Security Archive commentary reports that Shoup asked USAF/SAC Commander Thomas Power
"...what would happen if Beijing was not fighting; was there an option to leave Chinese targets out of the attack plan?" Power was reported to have said that he hoped no one would think of that "because it would really screw up the plan"--that is, the plan was supposed to be executed as a whole. Apparently Shoup then observed that "any plan that kills millions of Chinese when it isn't even their war is not a good plan. This is not the American way."
In 1963 the Kennedy administration ordered Robert McNamara
to revise this plan, resulting in SIOP-63 — a strong counterforce strategy with a number of options. It was with SIOP-63 that the 'no first use
' policy became implicit. The counterforce approach recognized three missions, sometimes called Alpha, Bravo, and Romeo after the phonetic alphabet symbols for the different goals. The specific plans included options for combining the missions:
' after then-Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger). The ever-expanding target lists were split into classes of targets, with a wider range of plans matching strikes to political intentions from counterforce to countervalue, or any mix/withhold strategy to control escalation. Schlesinger described the doctrine as having three main aspects:
The SIOP policy was further modified during the Carter
presidency under Presidential Directive 59, a key section of which stated
In other words, PD59 explored a "warfighting" doctrine that suggested that nuclear plans might change during a war, and that nuclear weapons were to be used in combination with conventional weapons. Carter's Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown
, emphasized selective counterforce, but also explicitly threatened the Soviet leadership themselves. Major improvements in U.S. command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I), including making elements survivable during a nuclear war, were instituted to make the PD-59 doctrine feasible.
administration, there was a return to a strong counterforce strategy through NSDD-13. This included development of strategic weapons systems that were more accurate, more survivable, or both. Some of these systems eventually took the role of bargaining chips
in arms control negotiations, although some, such as the B-2
"stealth" bomber remained highly classified as potential surprises in war. The B-2 was also seen as a counter to Soviet deployment of mobile missiles, which only a manned bomber could find and attack.
In 1983, President Reagan gave a speech proposing, at the least, research and development into non-nuclear defense systems against nuclear-armed missiles. The idea of effective strategic defense was a potential disruption to the existing balance of Mutual Assured Destruction
, even with its "warfighting" refinements.
. It went into deployment in July 2004, but it was reported cancelled in July 2007. It may have been superseded by an expanded CONPLAN 8044.
Another set of "Global Strike" plans include a jointly coordinated a nuclear option, intended for other than the general nuclear war situations, principally with Russia but possibly also with China, postulated in OPLAN 8022. Global Strike plans are codified in CONPLAN 8044.
(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?"
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
' general plan for nuclear war from 1961 to 2003. The SIOP gave the President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
a range of targeting options, and described launch procedures and target sets against which nuclear weapons would be launched. The plan integrated the capabilities of the nuclear triad
Nuclear triad
A nuclear triad refers to a nuclear arsenal which consists of three components, traditionally strategic bombers, ICBMs and SLBMs. The purpose of having a three-branched nuclear capability is to significantly reduce the possibility that an enemy could destroy all of a nation's nuclear forces in a...
of bombers with intercontinental range, land-based intercontinental ballistic missile
Intercontinental ballistic missile
An intercontinental ballistic missile is a ballistic missile with a long range typically designed for nuclear weapons delivery...
s (ICBM) and sea-based submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). The SIOP was a highly classified
Classified information
Classified information is sensitive information to which access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of persons. A formal security clearance is required to handle classified documents or access classified data. The clearance process requires a satisfactory background investigation...
document, and was one of the most secret and sensitive issues in U.S. national security policy.
Planning Process
While much of the United States' nuclear war planning process remains classified, some information on the former SIOP planning process has been made public. The planning process began with the President issuing a presidential directivePresidential directive
Presidential Directives, better known as Presidential Decision Directives or PDD are a form of an executive order issued by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of the National Security Council...
establishing the concepts, goal, and guidelines that provided guidance to the nuclear planners. The Secretary of Defense
United States Secretary of Defense
The Secretary of Defense is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in other countries...
then used the President's guidance to produce the Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy (NUWEP) that specified basic planning assumptions, attack options, targeting objectives, types of targets, targeting constraints, and coordination with combatant commanders. The NUWEP was then used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense who advise the Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and the President on military matters...
(JCS) to create the "Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP), Annex C (Nuclear)." This document established a more detailed and elaborate set of goals and conditions that included targeting and damage criteria for the use of nuclear weapons. The final stage in the planning process occurred when the Strategic Air Command
Strategic Air Command
The Strategic Air Command was both a Major Command of the United States Air Force and a "specified command" of the United States Department of Defense. SAC was the operational establishment in charge of America's land-based strategic bomber aircraft and land-based intercontinental ballistic...
(SAC) (from 1961 to 1992) or the United States Strategic Command
United States Strategic Command
United States Strategic Command is one of nine Unified Combatant Commands of the United States Department of Defense . The Command, including components, employs more than 2,700 people, representing all four services, including DoD civilians and contractors, who oversee the command's operationally...
(USSTRATCOM) (from 1992 to 2003) took the guidance from the JSCP and created the actual nuclear war plan that becomes the SIOP.
As part of SIOP planning, SAC or USSTRATCOM developed a set of plans and a series of options based on a target set known as the National Target Base (NTB). The number of targets in the NTB varied over time, from 16,000 in 1985 to 12,500 at the end of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
in 1992, to 2,500 by 2001. The SIOP was primarily directed against targets in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
(later Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
) but targets in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, which had been part of the SIOP until the 1970s, were added back into the plan in 1997. In 1999, the NTB reportedly included targets in Russia, China, North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
, and Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
.
United Kingdom participation
While the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrentNuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom was the third country to test an independently developed nuclear weapon, in October 1952. It is one of the five "Nuclear Weapons States" under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the UK ratified in 1968...
- four Trident
Trident missile
The Trident missile is a submarine-launched ballistic missile equipped with multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles . The Fleet Ballistic Missile is armed with nuclear warheads and is launched from nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines . Trident missiles are carried by fourteen...
Vanguard class submarine
Vanguard class submarine
The Vanguard class are the Royal Navy's current nuclear ballistic missile submarines , each armed with up to 16 Trident II Submarine-launched ballistic missiles...
s - are strictly under UK national control, they had two distinct roles under the SIOP. The first was part of a UK-only retaliatory response to a nuclear attack, whether a full strategic strike, or a limited tactical strike. The second role was one in which the Royal Navy participates in the SIOP, in effect becoming an extension of the U.S. Navy's Trident submarines. This role was to be part of a NATO response to a Soviet nuclear strike.
The Royal Navy's contribution to the SIOP was small. The four Vanguard submarines could strike a maximum of 512 separate targets; equivalent to 7% of the total U.S. nuclear strike capacity.
The RAF's V-bomber fleet of nuclear weapon carrying bombers was also previously assigned to participate in the SIOP. The Avro Vulcan
Avro Vulcan
The Avro Vulcan, sometimes referred to as the Hawker Siddeley Vulcan, was a jet-powered delta wing strategic bomber, operated by the Royal Air Force from 1956 until 1984. Aircraft manufacturer A V Roe & Co designed the Vulcan in response to Specification B.35/46. Of the three V bombers produced,...
, Handley Page Victor
Handley Page Victor
The Handley Page Victor was a British jet bomber aircraft produced by the Handley Page Aircraft Company during the Cold War. It was the third and final of the V-bombers that provided Britain's nuclear deterrent. The other two V-bombers were the Avro Vulcan and the Vickers Valiant. Some aircraft...
and Vickers Valiant
Vickers Valiant
The Vickers-Armstrongs Valiant was a British four-jet bomber, once part of the Royal Air Force's V bomber nuclear force in the 1950s and 1960s...
bombers based in the UK would have arrived over the USSR before any aircraft of the US Strategic Air Command
Strategic Air Command
The Strategic Air Command was both a Major Command of the United States Air Force and a "specified command" of the United States Department of Defense. SAC was the operational establishment in charge of America's land-based strategic bomber aircraft and land-based intercontinental ballistic...
(SAC).
History
SIOP, and its renamed successors, is most importantly an "integrated" plan that uses both Air Force and Navy delivery systems; it is "single" only in the sense that it comes out of one planning group. The "plan" actually contains multiple "attack options" that are themselves complex plans.Early targeting after the Second World War
Strategic nuclear strike plans were developed during the immediate post-World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
period. Plan Totality
Plan Totality
Plan Totality was a nuclear plan established by U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower on the direction of President Harry S. Truman.The plan envisioned a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union with 20 to 30 atomic bombs...
targeted twenty cities with the thirty nuclear bombs available. Based on the reports of the strategic bombing operations of WWII the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense who advise the Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and the President on military matters...
sought a targeting plan called Delta-Bravo-Romeo, disrupting Soviet war-making capacity, blunting their atomic warfare capabilities, and retarding the Soviet advance into Eurasia
Eurasia
Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...
. Lack of any reliable targeting information and the limited number of bombs meant plans continued to rely on striking enemy cities. Curtis LeMay
Curtis LeMay
Curtis Emerson LeMay was a general in the United States Air Force and the vice presidential running mate of American Independent Party candidate George Wallace in 1968....
's SAC Emergency War Plan 1-49 dropped the entire US arsenal of 133 devices on seventy cities over thirty days.
By the 1950s around 5,500 targets were listed to receive SAC bomber strikes; these targets consisted primarily of industrial sites but included counterforce
Counterforce
In nuclear strategy, a counterforce target is one that has a military value, such as a launch silo for intercontinental ballistic missiles, an airbase at which nuclear-armed bombers are stationed, a homeport for ballistic missile submarines, or a command and control installation...
targets. These plans, primarily by the Air Force, tended to be based on selecting targets in order to use up the available weapons, rather than considering the desired effects or strategic outcomes.
From a 1957 letter from John H. Moore, former director of nuclear planning, air operations branch, United States European Command
United States European Command
The United States European Command is one of ten Unified Combatant Commands of the United States military, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. Its area of focus covers and 51 countries and territories, including Europe, Russia, Iceland, Greenland, and Israel...
, Air Force target planning methodology can be inferred "blast damage frame," with such references as "damage to concrete structures" and the requirement for a "high probability of cratering runways." He cited the "destructive and disruptive nature of nuclear weapons" with megaton yields: "the cumulative or ancillary effects may be as great or greater than primary damage." Specifically, he considered delayed radiation but not thermal effects, but called attention to the idea of "bonus" effects, in which the totality of weapons effects would allow lower-yield weapons to achieve the "desired destruction." In the letter to the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss, Moore noted that the Pentagon "rigorously suppressed" this study and destroyed all copies.
Prior to the development of SIOP and survivable command and control, President
President
A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
predelegated nuclear release authority to certain senior commanders. There have continued to be Continuity of Nuclear Operations Plans (COOP), which designated enough subordinates who, in the event of the National Command Authority
National Command Authority
National Command Authority is a term used by the Department of Defense of the United States of America to refer to the ultimate lawful source of military orders. The NCA comprises the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense jointly, or their duly deputized successors, i.e...
and immediate successors being killed in a "decapitation" attack, could still retaliate. While the details have never been made public, Eisenhower's predelegation, and a Federation of American Scientists summary, give a framework.
Presidential involvement and start of civilian policy direction
In 1958, George KistiakowskyGeorge Kistiakowsky
George Bogdan Kistiakowsky was a Ukrainian-American chemistry professor at Harvard who participated in the Manhattan Project and later served as President Eisenhower's Science Advisor...
, a key Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
scientist and Science Advisor in the Eisenhower Administration
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
, suggested to the President that inspection of foreign military facilities was not sufficient to control their nuclear weapons. Kistiakowsky was particularly concerned with the difficulty of verifying the number, type, and deployment of nuclear-armed missiles on missile submarines, and proposed that the arms control strategy focus on disarmament rather than inspections. He was also concerned with the short warning times available from Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
Intercontinental ballistic missile
An intercontinental ballistic missile is a ballistic missile with a long range typically designed for nuclear weapons delivery...
(ICBM) launches, which took away the lengthy decision time available when the nuclear threat came exclusively from manned bombers.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is by law the highest ranking military officer in the United States Armed Forces, and is the principal military adviser to the President of the United States, the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council and the Secretary of Defense...
, General
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
Nathan F. Twining, USAF, sent a memorandum in August 1959, to the Secretary of Defense, Neil McElroy, which suggested that the Strategic Air Command be formally assigned responsibility to prepare the national nuclear target list, and a single plan for nuclear operations. Up to that point, the Army, Navy, and Air Force had done their own target planning. That had led to individual targets being multiply targeted by the different services. The separate service plans were not mutually supporting, as, for example, by the Navy destroying an air defense facility on the route of an Air Force bomber going to a target deeper inland. While Twining had sent the memo to McElroy, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense who advise the Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and the President on military matters...
disagreed on the policy during early 1960.
Thomas Gates
Thomas Gates
Thomas Gates may refer to:*Sir Thomas Gates , of the Virginia Company, an early leader and governor of the Colony of Virginia*Thomas Sovereign Gates , U.S. educator, first president of the University of Pennsylvania...
, who succeeded McElroy, asked President
President
A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
to decide the policy.
Eisenhower said he would not "leave his successor with the monstrosity" of the uncoordinated and non-integrated forces that then existed. When Kistiakowsky was not given access, Eisenhower sent him back with a much stronger set of orders giving SAC officers the choice to cooperate with Kistiakowsky, or resign.
Kistiakowsky's report, presented on November 29, described uncoordinated plans with huge numbers of targets, many of which would be attacked by multiple forces, resulting in overkill
Overkill
Overkill is the use of excessive force or action that goes further than is necessary to achieve its goal.-Nuclear weapons:Overkill is especially used to refer to a destructive nuclear capacity exceeding the amount needed to destroy an enemy...
. Eisenhower was shocked by the plans, and focused not just on the creation of the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), but on the entire process of picking targets, generating requirements, and planning for nuclear war operations. Separate operational plans from the Air Force and the Navy were combined to form the foundation of the SIOP.
The first SIOP
The first plan, following the White House policy guidance, was developed in 1960, consisting of a list of targets (the National Strategic Target List, or NSTL) and the assets to be used against each target. This first SIOP was extensively revised by a team at the RAND CorporationRAND
RAND Corporation is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company. It is currently financed by the U.S. government and private endowment, corporations including the healthcare industry, universities...
to become SIOP-62, describing a massive strike with the entire US arsenal of 3,200 warheads against the USSR, China and Soviet-aligned states.
The early SIOP, however, had little flexibility, treating all Communist countries as a uniform bloc. Document JCS 2056/220 expressed the concerns of U.S. Marine
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
Commandant David Shoup that the 1961 draft was inconsistent with an 1959 NSC policy guidance paper approved by Eisenhower. Shoup was especially concerned with language in the draft SIOP that said
The United States should utilize all requisite force against selected targets in the USSR--and as necessary in Communist China, European Bloc and non-European bloc countries--to attain the above objectives. Military targets in Bloc countries other than the USSR and Communist China will be attacked as necessary.
The National Security Archive commentary reports that Shoup asked USAF/SAC Commander Thomas Power
Thomas S. Power
General Thomas Sarsfield Power was commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command and an active military flier for more than 30 years.-Early career:...
"...what would happen if Beijing was not fighting; was there an option to leave Chinese targets out of the attack plan?" Power was reported to have said that he hoped no one would think of that "because it would really screw up the plan"--that is, the plan was supposed to be executed as a whole. Apparently Shoup then observed that "any plan that kills millions of Chinese when it isn't even their war is not a good plan. This is not the American way."
In 1963 the Kennedy administration ordered Robert McNamara
Robert McNamara
Robert Strange McNamara was an American business executive and the eighth Secretary of Defense, serving under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968, during which time he played a large role in escalating the United States involvement in the Vietnam War...
to revise this plan, resulting in SIOP-63 — a strong counterforce strategy with a number of options. It was with SIOP-63 that the 'no first use
No first use
No first use refers to a pledge or a policy by a nuclear power not to use nuclear weapons as a means of warfare unless first attacked by an adversary using nuclear weapons...
' policy became implicit. The counterforce approach recognized three missions, sometimes called Alpha, Bravo, and Romeo after the phonetic alphabet symbols for the different goals. The specific plans included options for combining the missions:
- Alpha: neutralize the enemy's capability to conduct an atomic attack
- Bravo: blunt the enemy's ability to produce materials to support military operations
- Romeo: retard the enemy's ability to move into friendly territory, primarily Western Europe
Counterforce migrates to deterrence and warfighting
Counterforce dominated SIOP plans until SIOP-5 in 1976 when the plan became a model for deterrence based on Nixon's NSDM-242 (sometimes called the 'Schlesinger DoctrineSchlesinger Doctrine
The "Schlesinger Doctrine" is the name, given by the press, to a major re-alignment of United States nuclear strike policy that was announced in January 1974 by the US Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger...
' after then-Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger). The ever-expanding target lists were split into classes of targets, with a wider range of plans matching strikes to political intentions from counterforce to countervalue, or any mix/withhold strategy to control escalation. Schlesinger described the doctrine as having three main aspects:
-
- The National Command Authority or its successors should have many choices about the use of weapons, always having an option to escalate.
- Targeting should make it very explicit that the first requisite is selective retaliation against the enemy's military (i.e., tailored counterforce).
- Some targets and target classes should not be struck, at least at first, to give the opponent a rational reason to terminate the conflict. Reduced collateral damage was another benefit of this "withhold" method.
The SIOP policy was further modified during the Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
presidency under Presidential Directive 59, a key section of which stated
The employment of nuclear forces must be effectively related to operations of our general purpose forces. Our doctrines for the use of forces in nuclear conflict must insure that we can pursue specific policy objectives selected by the National Command Authorities at that time, from general guidelines established in advance. (S)
These requirements form the broad outline of our evolving countervailing strategy. To meet these requirements, improvements should be made to our forces, their supporting C3 and intelligence, and their employment plans and planning apparatus, to achieve a high degree of flexibility, enduring survivability, and adequate performance in the face of enemy actions. The following principles and goals should guide your efforts in making these improvements. (S)
In other words, PD59 explored a "warfighting" doctrine that suggested that nuclear plans might change during a war, and that nuclear weapons were to be used in combination with conventional weapons. Carter's Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown
Harold Brown (Secretary of Defense)
Harold Brown , American scientist, was U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1977 to 1981 in the cabinet of President Jimmy Carter. He had previously served in the Lyndon Johnson administration as Director of Defense Research and Engineering and Secretary of the Air Force.While Secretary of Defense, he...
, emphasized selective counterforce, but also explicitly threatened the Soviet leadership themselves. Major improvements in U.S. command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I), including making elements survivable during a nuclear war, were instituted to make the PD-59 doctrine feasible.
Return to counterforce, with strategic defense
During the ReaganRonald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
administration, there was a return to a strong counterforce strategy through NSDD-13. This included development of strategic weapons systems that were more accurate, more survivable, or both. Some of these systems eventually took the role of bargaining chips
Bargaining
Bargaining or haggling is a type of negotiation in which the buyer and seller of a good or service dispute the price which will be paid and the exact nature of the transaction that will take place, and eventually come to an agreement. Bargaining is an alternative pricing strategy to fixed prices...
in arms control negotiations, although some, such as the B-2
B-2 Spirit
The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit is an American heavy bomber with low observable stealth technology designed to penetrate dense anti-aircraft defenses and deploy both conventional and nuclear weapons. The bomber has a crew of two and can drop up to eighty -class JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen ...
"stealth" bomber remained highly classified as potential surprises in war. The B-2 was also seen as a counter to Soviet deployment of mobile missiles, which only a manned bomber could find and attack.
In 1983, President Reagan gave a speech proposing, at the least, research and development into non-nuclear defense systems against nuclear-armed missiles. The idea of effective strategic defense was a potential disruption to the existing balance of Mutual Assured Destruction
Mutual assured destruction
Mutual Assured Destruction, or mutually assured destruction , is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of high-yield weapons of mass destruction by two opposing sides would effectively result in the complete, utter and irrevocable annihilation of...
, even with its "warfighting" refinements.
Renaming and refocusing
On 1 March 2003, the SIOP was renamed "OPLAN 8022", and later CONPLAN (contingency plan) 8022CONPLAN 8022-02
According to the Washington Post, the United States Strategic Command contingency plan for dealing with "imminent" threats from countries such as North Korea or Iran is formally known as CONPLAN 8022-02. The plan was reportedly completed in November 2003, resulting in a preemptive and offensive...
. It went into deployment in July 2004, but it was reported cancelled in July 2007. It may have been superseded by an expanded CONPLAN 8044.
Another set of "Global Strike" plans include a jointly coordinated a nuclear option, intended for other than the general nuclear war situations, principally with Russia but possibly also with China, postulated in OPLAN 8022. Global Strike plans are codified in CONPLAN 8044.
Executing the SIOP
In the United States, the decision to use nuclear weapons is vested in the National Command AuthorityNational Command Authority
National Command Authority is a term used by the Department of Defense of the United States of America to refer to the ultimate lawful source of military orders. The NCA comprises the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense jointly, or their duly deputized successors, i.e...
(NCA), composed of the President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
and the United States Secretary of Defense
United States Secretary of Defense
The Secretary of Defense is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in other countries...
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
Two-man rule
The two-man rule is a control mechanism designed to achieve a high level of security for especially critical material or operations. Under this rule all access and actions requires the presence of two authorized people at all times.-Nuclear weapons:...
at all times.
Personnel Reliability Program
Personnel Reliability Program is a United States Department of Defense psychological evaluation program, designed to permit only the most trustworthy individuals to have access to nuclear weapons, chemcial weapons, biological weapons....
(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
Nuclear Football
The nuclear football is a briefcase, the contents of which are to be used by the President of the United States of America to authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room...
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
National Military Command Center
Located in the Pentagon, the National Military Command Center houses the logistical and communications center for the National Command Authority of the United States of America. The facility, which is composed of several war rooms, is the principal command and control center of the Department of...
(NMCC) at the Pentagon to release an Emergency Action Message
Emergency Action Message
An Emergency Action Message is a preformatted message that directs nuclear-capable forces to execute specific Major Attack Options or Limited Attack Options in a nuclear war...
(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
Site R
The Raven Rock Mountain Complex is a United States government facility on Raven Rock, a mountain in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is located in Liberty Township, Adams County, about east of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, and north-northeast of Camp David, Maryland. It is also called the Raven...
(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
Looking Glass (airplane)
Looking Glass is the code name for an airborne command center currently operated by the U.S. Navy. It provides command and control of U.S. nuclear forces in the event that ground-based command centers are destroyed or otherwise rendered inoperable.The Looking Glass was initiated by the U.S...
. If the NMCC is destroyed by a first strike, either the ANMCC, NAOC or TACAMO
TACAMO
TACAMO is a U.S. military term meaning "Take Charge and Move Out". TACAMO refers to a system of survivable communications links designed to be used in nuclear war to maintain communications between the decision makers and the triad of strategic nuclear weapon delivery systems...
can issue the orders to execute the SIOP.
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
Hypersonic
In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that is highly supersonic. Since the 1970s, the term has generally been assumed to refer to speeds of Mach 5 and above...
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
Ron Rosenbaum
-Life and career:Rosenbaum was born into a Jewish family in New York City, New York and grew up in Bay Shore, New York. He graduated from Yale University in 1968 and won a Carnegie Fellowship to attend Yale's graduate program in English Literature, though he dropped out after taking one course...
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
Sane
Sane is an English word meaning "of sound mind"; see Sanity.Sane or SANE may also refer to:* Sane Ancient Greek city* An archaeological site and a modern name of Sani, Greece*Sane, Mali...
.
Notably, Major Harold Hering
Harold Hering
Major Harold L. Hering was an officer in the United States Air Force, who was discharged for questioning the process for launching nuclear missiles.Hering served in Vietnam in the Air Rescue Service...
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?"
SIOP in Fiction
- In Dale BrownDale BrownDale Brown is an American author and aviator, most famous for his aviation techno-thriller novels, with thirteen New York Times best sellers to his name.Brown was born in Buffalo, New York...
's novel Plan of Attack, it is revealed that Patrick McLanahan is one of the most highly valued personnel in the U.S. military because of his involvement in classified projects and knowledge of the American SIOP. However, because of McLanahan's involvement in controversial highly-classified military actions, President Thorn largely ignores this fact and the warning of an imminent Russian attack until Russia launches a nuclear campaign against the United States of America. - In Eric L. Harry's novel Arc LightArc LightArc Light is the debut novel by Eric L. Harry, a techno-thriller about limited nuclear war published in 1994 and written in 1991-2.As China and Russia clash in Siberia in June 1999, nuclear missiles strike the United States. The U.S. retaliates against Russia, and World War III begins...
, the President decides to execute "SIOP 6-C" in a counterforceCounterforceIn nuclear strategy, a counterforce target is one that has a military value, such as a launch silo for intercontinental ballistic missiles, an airbase at which nuclear-armed bombers are stationed, a homeport for ballistic missile submarines, or a command and control installation...
strike against Russia after a Russian general gained control of the nuclear codes and launched a massive attack against the United States. In the book, "SIOP 6-C" had six thousand nuclear warheads assigned to be used, some of which were held in reserve. - In William Prochnau's novel Trinity's ChildTrinity's ChildTrinity's Child is a 1983 novel by William Prochnau. The book depicts a nuclear war waged between the United States of America and the Soviet Union.-Plot summary:...
, a Soviet nuclear sneak attack triggers US retaliation. There is discussion of SIOP among the unnamed US President, the military commander codenamed Alice on board the SAC Looking Glass aircraft who is advising the President, a newly sworn-in President aboard Air Force One, and his primary military advisor. After the destruction of cities on both sides, Alice and the original President battle those on board Air Force One for control of the American missile submarine fleet. At stake is the expectation that launch of the Tridents plus Soviet retaliation will raise the total death toll into the billions. - In What Ifs? of American HistoryWhat Ifs? of American HistoryWhat Ifs? of American History, subtitled Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, is a collection of seventeen essays dealing with counterfactual history regarding the United States of America. It was published by G.P...
, edited by Robert CowleyRobert CowleyRobert Cowley is an American military historian, who writes on topics in American and European military history ranging from the Civil War through World War II...
, one essay ("The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust", by Robert L. O'Connell) outlines a scenario where the Cuban Missile Crisis leads, via miscalculations, incompetence and trigger-happiness on both sides, to a two-day thermonuclear war, with horrific results in terms of both overkill and long-term effects on the world. - In Tom ClancyTom ClancyThomas Leo "Tom" Clancy, Jr. is an American author, best known for his technically detailed espionage, military science, and techno thriller storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War, along with video games on which he did not work, but which bear his name for licensing and...
's novel Without RemorseWithout RemorseWithout Remorse is a thriller novel published in 1993 by Tom Clancy and is a part of the Jack Ryan universe series. While not the first novel of the series to be published, it is first in plot chronology. The main setting of the book is set during the Vietnam War, in the American city of Baltimore...
, the U.S. intelligence community learns that United States Air Force Colonel Robin Zacharias, shot down over Vietnam and reported KIA by the Vietnamese, is in fact alive and being held in a POW camp. He is being debriefed by a Russian military intelligence officer and there is particular concern because Zacharias has been involved in strategic war plans and has knowledge of America's SIOP. - In Stephen CoontsStephen CoontsStephen Coonts is an American thriller and suspense novelist.Coonts grew up in Buckhannon, West Virginia, a small coal-mining town and earned an B.A. degree in political science at West Virginia University in 1968...
' novel Final Flight, terrorists set out to steal nuclear weapons from the aircraft carrier USS United States, anchored off Naples, Italy. The crew's response to various perceived threats that arise after the assault and theft is quite severe because supposedly by virtue of their geographic location they are now "part of SIOP" and different, more aggressive rules of engagement apply.
See also
- 625th Strategic Operations Squadron625th Strategic Operations SquadronThe mission of the 625th Strategic Operations Squadron is to find, analyze, and evaluate strategic nuclear targets for U.S. nuclear forces inside OPLAN 8044, formerly known as the SIOP.-Mission:...
- Nuclear strategyNuclear strategyNuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons.As a sub-branch of military strategy, nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends...
- Nuclear posture reviewNuclear posture reviewThe Nuclear Posture Review is a process “to determine what the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. security strategy should be.”The first NPR of 2002 was the second of these quadrennial reviews of United States nuclear forces undertaken by the United States Department of Defense. The first took place...
- Mutual assured destruction (MAD)Mutual assured destructionMutual Assured Destruction, or mutually assured destruction , is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of high-yield weapons of mass destruction by two opposing sides would effectively result in the complete, utter and irrevocable annihilation of...
- Nuclear utilization target selection (NUTS)Nuclear utilization target selectionNuclear utilization target selection is a theory regarding the use of nuclear weapons often contrasted with mutually assured destruction . NUTS theory at its most basic level asserts that it is possible for a limited nuclear exchange to occur and that nuclear weapons are simply one more rung on...
- Nuclear FootballNuclear FootballThe nuclear football is a briefcase, the contents of which are to be used by the President of the United States of America to authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room...
- Operation DropshotOperation DropshotOperation Dropshot was the United States Department of Defense code-name for a contingency plan for a possible nuclear and conventional war with the Soviet Union and its allies in order to counter the anticipated Soviet takeover of Western Europe, the Near East and parts of Eastern Asia expected to...