|
The program went out, after a delay of a week, on Thursday 15th November 2007; it was the leading feature on the program for the evening.
The point that the program presenters wanted to get over related primarily to current Polaris submarines and the fact that British nuclear weapons do not have the American Permissive Action Link [PAL] system installed, although the British authorities had the option to have it fitted if wanted. The presenters put this forward as the ‘Dr. Strangelove Scenario’; but I feel this was a little fanciful. Their contention was that without this link, which passes an arming code to the submarine crew before a weapon can be released, then a ‘rogue’ captain could launch on his own authority. Correct; but hopefully crew procedures on the boat would prevent this, it would need more than one mad captain, there would need to be collusion for it to go ahead.
The Dr Strangelove comparison does not hold up. For those who have seen the film the fact that the B52 force in the film had PAL installed did not prevent the mad Base Commander from launching his bomber wing, nor did it prevent Slim Pickens and crew from continuing. The PAL system failed, as it did in a similar US film of a US nuclear sub where the captain decided to continue an attack because the cancellation message was not complete. Any system with human intervention has the potential for a ‘rogue’ to cause a problem; who checks the sanity of the guy who sends the PAL codes, or for that matter, who checks the sanity of the US President or UK Prime Minister if they control PAL.
|
|
Brian was contacted before me, in fact he put them onto me because of this site; they wanted to talk to Brian about the weapon and myself as someone from the ‘operational’ side. They filmed at my house before going up to see Brian at Cosford. Brian had a dummy round to show them, and how the SEF key etc. worked. While they were with me I explained the whole two-man principle to them, but they wanted to make an issue out of the fact that there was no PAL. They were very excited about the fact that it only needed a barrel key and an allen key to make the settings on the weapon, but said nothing about the weapon safety devices that I had mentioned to them. What tool is used to make the settings is not material, but their implication in the program was that the ‘bicycle key’ was the only safety device. I think an uneducated viewer would have come away from the program feeling there were almost no safety systems. I guess that’s how you make TV.
However, they did include my comment that I believed at the time that the system did operate well and safely, and while you could have a ‘rogue’ situation in a Vulcan, you would need all crew members in on the conspiracy, and again, all human systems will be prone to failure.
|
