Recent news has revealed that US lost the communication with some fifty missiles for about 45 minutes, which made it very difficult to launch these missiles or to send the military to determine the cause of incident.
The incident was significant enough that President Barack Obama was briefed on it this week. A defense official said a power failure disrupted communication between a control center and the missiles at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.
A few days ago, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Hugh Shelton said in his just published chronicle Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior that President Bill Clintons White House lost the “presidential authorization codes” for launching a nuclear strike, and they were missing “for months.”
These are some of the recent incidents. There are numerous widely known incidents of technical failures in the weapon systems and a large number of accidents involving nuclear weapons carriers (ships, planes and rockets). Luckily no accident has occurred yet. But the question is can we have a system fully uncontaminated from human error? Do the great powers really think that their nukes are safer when they blame other states for their nukes to be more vulnerable to terrorists?
MAIMUNA ASHRAF
Rawalpindi
