Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications: A Primer on US Systems and Future Challenges

The security of nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) systems is becoming increasingly important as they transition from analog to digital technologies. This volume provides an overview of the current NC3 system and its modernization for the digital age, exploring the potential security threats and challenges posed by the transition. It offers valuable insights for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars interested in understanding the current NC3 system and its relationship to effective deterrence.

Format: Hardback
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 01 June 2022
Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Concerns about the security of nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) systems are not new, but they are becoming more urgent. While modernization is crucial to the future success of NC3 systems, the transition from analog to digital technologies has the potential to introduce vulnerabilities and unintended consequences. Nuclear infrastructure and command could be penetrated, corrupted, destroyed, or spoofed, leading to a loss of positive control (the ability to fire weapons) or negative control (the ability to prevent unauthorized or accidental use).

Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications explores the current NC3 system and its vital role in ensuring effective deterrence, contemporary challenges posed by cyber threats, new weapons technologies, and the consensus across the nuclear enterprise of the need to modernize the United States Cold War-era system of systems. This volume, edited by James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen, offers the first overview of US NC3 since the 1980s.

Part 1 provides an overview of the history, strategy, and technology associated with NC3 and how it enables deterrence strategy as the basis of national defense. Parts 2 and 3 identify how the US military's NC3 works, the challenges of introducing digital technologies and the potential security threats, and how the system could fail if these considerations are not taken into account. Part 4 explains the progress NC3 has made thus far, and how we might move forward.

During this critical juncture, policymakers, practitioners, and scholars will find this an invaluable resource to understanding our current NC3 system, its relationship to effective deterrence, what we can learn from other countries' experiences, and the steps we need to take to ensure the security and reliability of our nuclear command, control, and communications systems in the digital age.

Weight: 535g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781647122430