FAIL SAFE

Yes, and with planes. It happened to the Germans all the time as the UK spoofed commands by the ground controllers. We also played with the guidance signals coming out of Nazi German for bombers with fake signals. I don't remember the corp number, but one Soviet Corp fighting Army Group North in the summer of 1942 was dealing with the Germans constantly spoofing the codes, and the corp by mistake cut off communication with the Soviet Army. Both sides were using the same authentication codes. I am sure there are a lot more examples. A key point is that code books do get lost. Spies do compromise codes. Sometimes the bad guys just break the codes. And the guy who did the spoofing had done that as his job in the regular army, and he believe not only in a war would people try, but people would succeed. He believed both sides would have success, both NATO and Warsaw Pact. Both the USA and USSR had full time military intelligence officers who knew more about the enemy forces than the average Colonel in command. There are people who are brought into the military complex trained only to think like an enemy officer.

And you comment on using real authentication procedures is why bringing the wife on to recall the bomber does not work in most cases. Most of the time someone would try a stunt like this, it is the enemy, not your friend. If I am at SAC with the real code books, there should never be a reason not just to use the code books. The reason I gave the story is to show what happens when you start ignoring the procedures and designing radio procedures on the spot. You normally end up with massive security holes that the enemy can exploit. The sister battalion had code books, but got lazy and decide not to use them, for whatever reason.

Now the premise of the movie is that after a certain point, the Air Force had determined the odds of a false soviet signal was too great to allow the Air Force to attempt recall orders. While for plot devices, I would have chosen a different method, I think the movie is plausible. Let us look at some possible issues. First, as you approach Soviet territory, you are likely jammed and can't communicate. It is easier for the Soviets to send you radio message than the USA since the Soviets control the jamming. The USA knew the Soviets had good spies that often had big successes. The Soviets had stolen big pieces of the Manhattan project, so it is possible to think they might have SAC code books. There was the Cambridge 5. During Able Archer (1983), the Soviets had access to the information in the most secure NATO room. The also knew the frequency used for a real nuclear attack, and might have the the actual command codes. The Walker family gave the Soviets US Navy codes for over a decade. The only missing piece is a USA Radio or a Soviet Radio that can mimick the USA radio.

I can easily see the Soviets sending out fake recall orders using real authentication codes. I can see them working some of the time. I can see the Soviets spying on the family of bomber squadron commanders to get a few tidbits of information, so they could put out fake wives. How hard is it to get an agent into a country club or hair salon near a SAC base? Compared to getting in NATO most secure room. For that matter, if you can get spies into the Manhattan project, why is it a stretch to think they might have one at SAC HQ? I would expect SAC would know that the USSR was constantly trying to spy on the program, and become more worried about a spoof than a fail-dangerous command. So I find the movie plausible.

Redundancy in MAD was not a case of making sure that once the Bombers went up they couldn't be called back, that would be crazy, since getting the bombers up would be one of the last steps in deterence. It was a case of having multiple launchs vectors. In the 60s ICBMs would be the primary weapons. I am not familiar with SAC codes, and expect what is avaiable online and in bocks to be falible, but I would expect something along the lines of one time pads issued at take off. Those are very hard to break, unlike simpler to break encryption codes used in voice radio to rapidly encode mission orders.
During WW2 the mains problem was jamming, and in fact the LW had at one time to ressort to having the pilots tune in to music broadcasts and follow the "if its Bethoven they're over Berlin" method.
It's the double premiss that a. Nuclear attacks can be launched by mistake and b. once launched they can't be called off that I find manipulative.
The wife thing is clearly just a bad plot device to get a dramatic response. Not the thing you'de have time to do. Of course you can have the pilot say to his crew "damm, even my wife his a commie spy, lets nuke those devious bastards" but plausability just gets thinner and thinner.
Dr Strangelove worked because it was pure satire, starting with the "doomsday device" idea to really generate Totally Assured Destruction...
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Redundancy in MAD was not a case of making sure that once the Bombers went up they couldn't be called back, that would be crazy, since getting the bombers up would be one of the last steps in deterence. It was a case of having multiple launchs vectors. In the 60s ICBMs would be the primary weapons. I am not familiar with SAC codes, and expect what is avaiable online and in bocks to be falible, but I would expect something along the lines of one time pads issued at take off. Those are very hard to break, unlike simpler to break encryption codes used in voice radio to rapidly encode mission orders.
During WW2 the mains problem was jamming, and in fact the LW had at one time to ressort to having the pilots tune in to music broadcasts and follow the "if its Bethoven they're over Berlin" method.
It's the double premiss that a. Nuclear attacks can be launched by mistake and b. once launched they can't be called off that I find manipulative.
The wife thing is clearly just a bad plot device to get a dramatic response. Not the thing you'de have time to do. Of course you can have the pilot say to his crew "damm, even my wife his a commie spy, lets nuke those devious bastards" but plausability just gets thinner and thinner.
Dr Strangelove worked because it was pure satire, starting with the "doomsday device" idea to really generate Totally Assured Destruction...

It not crazy. It may not have happened, but it is plausible. The bombers are taking a 12 hours or so trip to Russia. Having them not be recallable immediately after taking off would be insane, but somewhere along the way after they are near Soviet territory makes since.

And on breaking, we know the Soviets had large portions of our naval codes for decades IOTL. It is a simple POD to get to the movie. The Walkers join the Air Force, not Navy. We also know the had access to the most secret NATO room IOTL for about 3-5 years near 1983. It is a simple TL to write. To me the jamming device is the least logical part.

And to point of no returns, we can find them IOTL. Take Japan starting WW1, and their communication system. The carriers left about 2 weeks early in fail safe mode. If they did not get the go order, the come home. After "Climbing Mt. Nikita", they now are in fail dangerous mode. If handwavium, the Japanese and USA reach a peace deal on December 6th/7th and the USA has a jamming device on Pearl that can jam the carriers, then we could still have them attack. To me, the perfect jamming device never before used is the least plausible part of the order.

I don't know if you are aware of this, but military orders often come written in terms of D-Day, H-Hour. You know you are going to attack, but you are communication "fail safe" until you get the time. Once I get the message on what H-Hour is, I now become "fail dangerous". i.e. The artillery units will fire at a certain time unless they get a confirmed new order. Phase lines are also used for this purpose. In many ways, the assembly area for the bombers is just the air version of a phase line. i.e. "Hold on phase line Blue to wait for attack order". Once they get the attack order (by mechanical mistake) and then are jammed, things just happen. It is pretty standard procedure to continue executing the battle plan if the enemy is jamming.

On very large attack plans, there is a point where it is too late to recall the attacking forces with certainty, and this happens before the first shot is fired. You don't want to get into a situation where the President has ordered an attack on Russia and he cancel the orders 15 minutes before the bombs are dropped, only to learn that 5% of the USA forces still launch due to communication issues. As you get closer to the attack time, it can make sense to not have procedures for recalling the attack.
 
It seems a good number of you have seen the movie. It also sees that none of you actually paid attention.

The reason the USSR accepts the New York for Moscow tit for tat is that the USSR is equally complicit in the catastrophe occurring.

While the SAC bombers were orbiting at their fail safe points, the USSR tested a device which deliberately fucked with those bombers comm equipment. The bombers are heading for Moscow because the US piled up an avalanche and the USSR then triggered it.

In the movie's logic, each side shares responsibility and thus each side is punished.

There's a reason Fail Safe was banned in the Soviet Union and that's because the USSR was equally guilty in the events. If the movie's story was the simplistic "US systems fuck up" story so many of you think it was, the Kremlin would have made it part of the Soviet kindergarten curriculum.

The movie was meant to be a warning to both sides. Naturally, only one side got to see it.

I don't recall that in the movie. I haven't read the novel so it might be true there but i don't recall in the movie that the USSR feels or actually is equally responsible. Be that true then it explains the movie a lot better.
 
It not crazy. It may not have happened, but it is plausible. The bombers are taking a 12 hours or so trip to Russia. Having them not be recallable immediately after taking off would be insane, but somewhere along the way after they are near Soviet territory makes since.

And on breaking, we know the Soviets had large portions of our naval codes for decades IOTL. It is a simple POD to get to the movie. The Walkers join the Air Force, not Navy. We also know the had access to the most secret NATO room IOTL for about 3-5 years near 1983. It is a simple TL to write. To me the jamming device is the least logical part.

And to point of no returns, we can find them IOTL. Take Japan starting WW1, and their communication system. The carriers left about 2 weeks early in fail safe mode. If they did not get the go order, the come home. After "Climbing Mt. Nikita", they now are in fail dangerous mode. If handwavium, the Japanese and USA reach a peace deal on December 6th/7th and the USA has a jamming device on Pearl that can jam the carriers, then we could still have them attack. To me, the perfect jamming device never before used is the least plausible part of the order.

I don't know if you are aware of this, but military orders often come written in terms of D-Day, H-Hour. You know you are going to attack, but you are communication "fail safe" until you get the time. Once I get the message on what H-Hour is, I now become "fail dangerous". i.e. The artillery units will fire at a certain time unless they get a confirmed new order. Phase lines are also used for this purpose. In many ways, the assembly area for the bombers is just the air version of a phase line. i.e. "Hold on phase line Blue to wait for attack order". Once they get the attack order (by mechanical mistake) and then are jammed, things just happen. It is pretty standard procedure to continue executing the battle plan if the enemy is jamming.

On very large attack plans, there is a point where it is too late to recall the attacking forces with certainty, and this happens before the first shot is fired. You don't want to get into a situation where the President has ordered an attack on Russia and he cancel the orders 15 minutes before the bombs are dropped, only to learn that 5% of the USA forces still launch due to communication issues. As you get closer to the attack time, it can make sense to not have procedures for recalling the attack.[/

You still have too accept that it would take the soviets to compromise the code books, wich you might say happened at the source of the one time pads, and get somebody to send the right signal to the right bomber, and then when that fails to convince the pilot produce someone who can imitate his wife, CO, kid, and the barking of his dog, all in the time after entering the fail safe area, wich I'm gonna assume was when entering soviet air space. All this in an all out war, where the pilot could think, well, if they fool me, there are still hundreds of other bombers in flight?
It's extremely contrived.
And it would have to be a very strange mess to allow for the bombers to get that far before somebody realised it had been a wrong call.
The pilot going on without a "proceed" signal would be easier to understand, since he could be on a post strike retaliation mission. The no radio option would be more believable.
And like you've said, carrying on when jammed is understandable, it's the carrying on when not not being jammed that annoys me.
In you example, you're on blue line, you have comms, you get a "abort" order, you validate that order using authentication procedures, nobody else is firing, and you still attack just the same, because they migh have been trying to fool you.
 
I honestly doubt the Fail Safe Solution would do any good at preventing nuclear war. Moscow is gone, NYC is gone, the people who ordered it all are dead and beyond any justice. The public and military forces of both nations are going to be looking at their fellows going "Did you support this!?" and imo this as good an incident as any to start either a shooting war between the two, a nuclear civil war on both sides, or both a vs and civil war at the same time.

I mean, seriously, people are going to be going 'WHAT THE FUCK!?' bonds of loyalty and duty are going to vanish as both sides will have plenty o people who will consider this a betrayal of... everything ever...

Both sides are culpable enough that you don't think some KGB officer who knows the truth and whose family was immolated in Moscow won't get it out that the USSR basically invited the US to strike? And its 1000x worse on the US side since they don't even have the police state apparatus to possibly stop someone from spilling the beans.

Best case scenario is both governments falling almost simultaneously to uprisings. The military instating marshal law and then purging everything and only 10 years or so of global depression and massive popular unrest while both nations disarm since both side have rational leadership who aren't willing to risk further nuclear exchange. And that's probably the pie in the sky dream scenario.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
You still have too accept that it would take the soviets to compromise the code books, wich you might say happened at the source of the one time pads, and get somebody to send the right signal to the right bomber, and then when that fails to convince the pilot produce someone who can imitate his wife, CO, kid, and the barking of his dog, all in the time after entering the fail safe area, wich I'm gonna assume was when entering soviet air space. All this in an all out war, where the pilot could think, well, if they fool me, there are still hundreds of other bombers in flight?
It's extremely contrived.
And it would have to be a very strange mess to allow for the bombers to get that far before somebody realised it had been a wrong call.
The pilot going on without a "proceed" signal would be easier to understand, since he could be on a post strike retaliation mission. The no radio option would be more believable.
And like you've said, carrying on when jammed is understandable, it's the carrying on when not not being jammed that annoys me.
In you example, you're on blue line, you have comms, you get a "abort" order, you validate that order using authentication procedures, nobody else is firing, and you still attack just the same, because they migh have been trying to fool you.

I don't have to accept the USSR has code books, but I do accept it was possible ITOL and ITTL. All I have to accept for this part of the movie to be plausible is that SAC/Pentagon believes that in some situations the codes can be compromised. And with the history of WW1 and WW2, I would believe most Generals would understand that from time to time, codes and communications are compromised.

I have been told in conversation lasting hours that it is easy to spoof a commander/wife/whoever on voice communications. I simply take the word of two people who did this for a living over yours.

Now yes, the bomber pilot might think that, but his training would be to ignore. The military wants orders to be followed in combat, not to have debates. It does not bother me that he ignored the communication that violated procedures. I was trained to do the same. I was taught to simply ignore communication that did not follow procedure. Period. No debate. This is not the kind of order that one has the option of ignoring.

In the movie, the bombers only got that far due to a new "super" USSR jamming system used on exactly the right day. This is the least plausible part of the movie.
 

Flubber

Banned
Here's the pertinent part of the movie script for all those who haven't seen the film and for all those who have seen the movie but didn't pay attention because there weren't giant robots, huge explosions, silicon enhanced breasts, multiple axe murders, or whatever else is needed to keep the attention of the ADHD Generation's Ritalin Rangers. :rolleyes:

The scene is a secure room within the White House. Only the President, Henry Fonda, and the Interpreter on duty, Larry Hagman, are present. Fonda speaks into a phone handset. Hagman is wearing a headset and translates both the Soviet Premier's side of the conversation plus any background speech he can hear.


President: "Mr. Chairman, let me ask you something. Just before our planes took off from their fail-safe point... there was a white flash on our plotting board. We think this is connected to some mechanical failure that might have activated their "go" signal. Could this have been caused by your radio interference?"

Interpreter (describing background conversations): "They're arguing with him again, sir... telling him not to answer... the information is too secret.

President: "Was it your jamming that kept us from getting through to our planes?"

Premier (translation): "I do not know about this jamming."

Interpreter (speaking for himself): "I think he does."

Premier (translation): "We cannot be responsible for your mechanical failures."

President: "Is it possible? Could it have happened? You asked for proof, Mr. Chairman. This could be it."

Interpreter (describing background conversations): "They're arguing back and forth." "Don't trust you." "Have to trust you." "It's a trick."

President: "We're paying for our mutual suspicions, Mr. Chairman."

Premier (translation): "I realize that, but the wall must be broken."

President: "We have to break it down now. We can't afford not to trust each other."

Premier (translation): "We jammed your radios with a special device even I did not know about. I suppose I must be very proud of our scientists. It was more effective than anyone dreamed."

President: "But why? Why this time?"

Premier (translation): "We have computers, like yours. They computed that this time your alert might be real."

President: "On what grounds?"

Premier (translation): "Probability. The law of averages. They have their own logic."


In the film's "logic" both sides are equally culpable for the catastrophe because the actions of both sides were necessary for the catastrophe occurring. However, the film's "logic" is basically horseshit. It has no basis in reality.

Alex1guy stated it very well so I'll simply repeat what he wrote:

I get it was an artistic piece with a good message, but it's so far off the wall that you can't really ask what would happen if this did happen, because it's so unrealistic therefore trying to ground it in realism is basically impossible.
 
I don't have to accept the USSR has code books, but I do accept it was possible ITOL and ITTL. All I have to accept for this part of the movie to be plausible is that SAC/Pentagon believes that in some situations the codes can be compromised. And with the history of WW1 and WW2, I would believe most Generals would understand that from time to time, codes and communications are compromised.

I have been told in conversation lasting hours that it is easy to spoof a commander/wife/whoever on voice communications. I simply take the word of two people who did this for a living over yours.

Now yes, the bomber pilot might think that, but his training would be to ignore. The military wants orders to be followed in combat, not to have debates. It does not bother me that he ignored the communication that violated procedures. I was trained to do the same. I was taught to simply ignore communication that did not follow procedure. Period. No debate. This is not the kind of order that one has the option of ignoring.

In the movie, the bombers only got that far due to a new "super" USSR jamming system used on exactly the right day. This is the least plausible part of the movie.


I'm not talking about him ignoring comms that break procedure. I'm talking about the lack of a "abort" procedure. I agree that from a certain point units would not halt mission for lack of a Go code, but I find it strange that they ignore a valid "No Go" code. I find the premisse that they were issued orders to ignore all comms from a certain point forced. There were allways ICBM and the bombers were used because they had the flexibility of being a manned vector. Issuing a "ignore all orders once you're in soviet airspace" rule turns them basically into manned Cruise Missiles, and makes one wonder what is the point of having pilots at all.
Didn't they had, for example, retargetting options? The planes that were going to take out Soviet ICBM get blasted and you can't redirect a sqaudron about to nuke the Hermitage to a more pressing military target?
And EW people bragg. Of couse a EW guy would tell you he could convince you he was your uncle on the radio.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Ritalin Rangers?

Really?

Don't be an ass.
Here's the pertinent part of the movie script for all those who haven't seen the film and for all those who have seen the movie but didn't pay attention because there weren't giant robots, huge explosions, silicon enhanced breasts, multiple axe murders, or whatever else is needed to keep the attention of the ADHD Generation's Ritalin Rangers. :rolleyes:

The scene is a secure room within the White House. Only the President, Henry Fonda, and the Interpreter on duty, Larry Hagman, are present. Fonda speaks into a phone handset. Hagman is wearing a headset and translates both the Soviet Premier's side of the conversation plus any background speech he can hear.


President: "Mr. Chairman, let me ask you something. Just before our planes took off from their fail-safe point... there was a white flash on our plotting board. We think this is connected to some mechanical failure that might have activated their "go" signal. Could this have been caused by your radio interference?"

Interpreter (describing background conversations): "They're arguing with him again, sir... telling him not to answer... the information is too secret.

President: "Was it your jamming that kept us from getting through to our planes?"

Premier (translation): "I do not know about this jamming."

Interpreter (speaking for himself): "I think he does."

Premier (translation): "We cannot be responsible for your mechanical failures."

President: "Is it possible? Could it have happened? You asked for proof, Mr. Chairman. This could be it."

Interpreter (describing background conversations): "They're arguing back and forth." "Don't trust you." "Have to trust you." "It's a trick."

President: "We're paying for our mutual suspicions, Mr. Chairman."

Premier (translation): "I realize that, but the wall must be broken."

President: "We have to break it down now. We can't afford not to trust each other."

Premier (translation): "We jammed your radios with a special device even I did not know about. I suppose I must be very proud of our scientists. It was more effective than anyone dreamed."

President: "But why? Why this time?"

Premier (translation): "We have computers, like yours. They computed that this time your alert might be real."

President: "On what grounds?"

Premier (translation): "Probability. The law of averages. They have their own logic."


In the film's "logic" both sides are equally culpable for the catastrophe because the actions of both sides were necessary for the catastrophe occurring. However, the film's "logic" is basically horseshit. It has no basis in reality.

Alex1guy stated it very well so I'll simply repeat what he wrote:
 
I'll repeat this again seeing as you didn't get it. This is film logic and not reality.


The OP and others are using a movie - and not a very plausible one - as a starting point. With plausibility ignored from the outset, this thread isn't going to go anywhere, sadly.

Have just reviewed all the comments here as I posted this originally, I think it is quite legitimate to use a movie as a starting point, not necessarily because of the plausibility or not of the starting point but because of the impression created. The movie, if you enter into it as I did when I watched it, creates a powerful narrative of things going wrong in such a way that drastic action has to be taken to avert an even worse catastrophe.

We know that in the history of the cold war there were numerous less serious but potentially lethal incidents, eg Colonel Petrov, alerts due to wildlife during the cuban missile crisis etc. We also know in history of the way in which events are set in train that prove impossible to retrieve, eg outbreak of WWI.

The movie puts the two together. I accept that the plausibility in detail is flawed but the plausibility in principle remains. My initial thought was really what next and I enjoyed the responses to that. I apologise BTW to those who had previously discussed it on a thread at the beginning of 2011, I did do a search before launching the thread but failed to put a hyphen between fail and safe which may be the reason I didn't see it.
 
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