Is there a good on-line description of EXACTLY how nukes are armed and launched?
It varies by platform. A submarine launch typically requires the cooperation of two senior officers to arm the system, and has a Chief Petty Officer pull the trigger (it's literally a trigger, like on a 1980s computer game joystick). A silo launch is almost exactly as seen in
the opening sequence of the movie War Games, (minus some minor elements of artistic licence) with two people required to arm the system by simultaneous turning of widely separated keys - Both silo and submarine systems can be operated by two people acting in concert, without authorisation, though they are under strict orders not to do so unless duly authorised.
The most implausible aspect of the
War Games opening sequence, by far, is the refusal of any of the silo personnel to act on a lawful and confirmed launch order. They would have done all the steps repeatedly in training, and would have been weeded out at that stage if they had any hesitation in following their orders exactly and promptly. (I would also expect the relief crew to pass through security separately, one at a time).
Access to the arming keys is constrained by trust - the captain and senior officers of a nuclear armed submarine are able to act on their own initiative, but are trusted not to do so, and to each act against the other to prevent any unauthorised attempt to launch.
And the B52 forces depicted in
Dr Strangelove were so accurate that the Pentagon were worried that someone from the USAF had assisted the set designers to include classified details of the aircraft interior layout and capabilities.
I've wondered if General Jack D. Ripper could really have started a nuclear war.
Absolutely. The scenario shown in
Dr Strangelove (and in the novel
Red Alert, which was the same exact tale but not played for laughs) was entirely possible, under the systems, technologies, and procedures in use at the time.
Everyone was far more worried that a Soviet strike might break the chain of command needed to retaliate, than they were about a rogue element in the military exceeding its authority.
Could Hegseth unilaterally nuke San Francisco if the libtards keep pissing him off?
Unilaterally? No. And it would be
very difficult to persuade
all of the junior military personnel in the chain of command that a strike against a US target was authorised, justified, and lawful.
(I suppose the POTUS "by definition" can do whatever he likes.)
Only to the extent that his subordinates accept that the orders he gives are both lawful and authentic. The 25th Amendment would probay be invoked if he tried to nuke a US or NATO target, unless a conventional war was already in progress.
Probably.
Is there some specific group of 4 or 5 non-coms who, among them, have access to the secrets and switches needed to start World War III?
Two would suffice, though probably at least one would need to be an officer.
A more pertinent question might be: Could Trump be foiled if, in a psychotic fit, he unilaterally decides to destroy some enemy capital like Tehran or Copenhagen?
Yes, easily. He doesn't know how to launch a nuke himself, and even if he did, he would require to be at a launch facility, and to have cooperation from at least one other person.
If Trump gave the order to nuke Copenhagen, via the normal chain of command, and without a preexisting military stand-off with Denmark, there are a dozen or so people, any one of whom could simply refuse what is clearly an unlawful order, and block the launch. Whether they
would is a different question. And if the target was Tehran, where there's longstanding enmity, I for one would be expecting that they wouldn't.
The DP Manager of Texas Instruments main data center took us on a brief tour of his acreages filled with row-after-row of communications hardware and with several 3033MPs and their attendant boxes. He'd forgotten where their little baby -- a 370/145 retailing for only a megabuck or so -- was hidden among all the acres (/exaggeration?) of disk drives and tape drives.
