C3: Nuclear Command, Control Cooperation

Air & Space Power Journal, Winter, 2004 by Gilles Van Nederveen

C3: Nuclear Command, Control Cooperation by Valery E. Yarynich. Center for Defense Information (http://www.cdi.org/index.cfm), 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036-2109, June 2003, 291 pages, $35.00.

C3 examines how the United States and Russia control their nuclear weapons and what steps exist for managing nuclear deterrence. Bruce Blair--author of the book's preface, president of the Center for Defense Information, and a nuclear strategist in his own right--asserts that the form of Russian negative control is more stable than the American system of permission, action, links, and codes. Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, numerous questions have arisen as to the reliability of the Soviet command, control, and communications (C3) infrastructure. Author Valery Yarynich, who served in the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and then advised members of the Russian Duma on defense matters, is a well-known figure on the American academic-lecture circuit. In C3 he describes the workings of Soviet nuclear command and control, from its origins in the intermediate missile force in the 1950s to its maturity in the 1970s.

Operating under the principle of launch-on-warning, the Russian command system is poised to obtain authority for the release of nuclear weapons within 10 minutes from the president, defense minister, or chief of the General Staff. Physical control of the unlock-and-launch authorization codes resides with the military, but the General Staff has direct access to them and can initiate a missile attack with or without the permission of political authorities.

The General Staff has two methods for launching. Following the American pattern, the unlock-and-launch authorization codes held by the General Staff at its command bunkers can be sent directly to individual weapons commanders, who would execute their launch procedures. Alternatively, the General Staff could direct missile launches directly from command bunkers in the vicinity of Moscow or from other sites. This remote launch of land-based ICBMs would bypass the subordinate chain of command and missile-launch crews. The early-warning system uses Kazbek, an automated process consisting of cables, radio signals, satellites, and relays that make up the heart of Russian command and control. Tied to this automated electronic web are the three nuclear suitcases or Chegets. Once activated, these systems can start a countdown to launch nuclear weapons in the event the entire Moscow command structure is destroyed. Furthermore, an automatic feature exists for raising the nuclear force-readiness level; strategic aviation as well as naval units are tied into the General Staff network. The book also addresses how the USSR incorporated mobile SS-25 and SS-27 units as well as ballistic-missile submarines, which represented new challenges to C3 systems. Mobile ICBMs posed their own problems since they could not be constantly field-exercised to prevent excessive wear and tear.

American readers will be struck by how some defense relationships remain the same in every country and regime. For example, Yarynich details how defense contactors influenced Soviet thinking about C3 and technology, fostered close ties to individual components, and laid the foundation for decades of work. Research institutes, design bureaus, and factories establish close relationships, just as they do in the United States. This type of information sheds light on the similarity of Cold War developments in both the United States and USSR.

The text does have a few shortcomings. Yarynich provides no information about permissive action links (PAL) in the Soviet Union, and Russian weapons-release procedures are not explained in the same detail as those in the United States, which has more open literature on its nuclear structure and practices. Nevertheless, C3 is required reading for strategic nuclear analysts and Soviet-era historians. Modern national-security and military analysts will find it useful for its contribution to understanding how other countries could develop nuclear-weapons safeguards. Although its conclusions about American systems may seem unusually harsh, the book will prove helpful to specialists in both the Russian and Soviet strategic forces. Finally, because C3 includes work by such Americans as Frank von Hippel and Bruce Blair, it offers the most current information available concerning strategic nuclear command, control, and communications.

Capt Gilles Van Nederveen, USAF, Retired

Fairfax, Virginia