WI: Cuba Steals Soviet Nuclear Weapons

Well what about the 3 missile keys for launching a nuclear torpedo? I see your point about the protections beyond physical locks, though for the ground weapons.

Talking battlefield weapons. Nixon offered PAL tech to the USSR along with France and UK. Soviets declined.
 
First the Cubans have to get past the KGB folks guarding the weapons, doable, but not over in 60 seconds. I'm sure there was a protocol for these troops as to what to do to ensure that live weapons did not fall in to the hands of anyone else - protocols to render them non functional. Beyond that the Cubans would have to mate the warheads to the missiles, and then be able to target the missiles, fuel them and fire them off. None of those things were the Cubans trained to do. I'm sure the minute the Soviets lost control of the nukes, or some of them, they would be very quick to tell the USA what had happened, because they would very much want to avoid a situation where, for example, Miami gets nuked by Fidel and the USSR gets blamed and goodbye USSR. Khruschev was not a fool, and the smart move would be to give the USA the info on where the nukes were and the missiles as soon as possible so the USA could take them out.

There is no way the USA will allow nukes in Cuba owned by Fidel - nukes owned by the Russians, who while an enemy were seen as reasonably rational, were not OK - owned by Fidel???
 
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