You cannot be serious!

[davidgillon]

The investigative consortium Bellingcat reported Friday that US servicemen responsible for handling nuclear weapons on US airbases in Europe have been practising for tests on their security knowledge by making flashcards of the relevant information. On public apps.

So obviously there's been a bit of a fuss about that.

But what caught my eye was some of the information on the sample flashcards, such as:

"What are the authenticators on the Restricted Area Badge : Volkel* is missing the first L"

What are these people, five?

What is the point of a security test you will automatically pass if you have physically acquired or copied an actual badge?

This would be lackadaisical on many civilian sites, never mind a nuclear weapons storage vault.

*facepalm*

* Major US airbase in the Netherlands

Comments

[redbird]

They seem to be treating the badges like currency, with lots of fiddly details that a counterfeiter either won't think of (rare) or won't be able to replicate easily if at all. That specific one might catch fake IDs made by locals, because people tend to fix spelling errors without noticing.

I hope that there are other, more effective tests that Bellingcat decided not to publish, but this is the US military, which had one launch code for all its nuclear weapons, for many years.

Acdendum: I double-checked this. Many of the missiles needed no code. The ones that did were set to 00000000, and just in case you forgot, it was in the how-to-launch-the-missiles checklist.

[vass]

y i k e s

Less scarily, this reminds me of reading somewhere that there was a problem here briefly with soda machines calling emergency services when they needed refilling. The machines in question (owned by a multinational and produced overseas, naturally) had an automated phone-home feature, and if the number accidentally got reset, it'd default to 00000000. The Australian police/fire/ambulance number is 000.

[ursula]

Wow, this is amazing!

[yhlee]

I want either you or David to use this in a story...

[yhlee]

I related this to my family and got horrified laughter...

[sovay]

This would be lackadaisical on many civilian sites, never mind a nuclear weapons storage vault.

If you're familiar with Eric Schlosser's Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (2013), it is a history of nuclear dumbassery and near-misses. This incident would fit right in.