The most important football in the world isn’t a ball at all, rather it’s the ‘nuclear football’ that the President of the United States carries around that tells them how to launch a nuclear attack – and its contents may surprise most Americans .
Moran Cerf, 46, a professor of neuroscience who studies the procedures for how a president can order a nuclear strike, told The Sunday times what steps the leader of the free world should take to launch a strike.
Cerf said the bag does not contain the technology to directly launch missiles. Instead, it lays out a number of plans for the president to go through.
‘There is a book, a very thick book with all the nuclear options. Essentially it’s like Choose Your Own Adventure,” Cerf said.
“You open the book and it says, ‘If you want to bomb North Korea, go to page 470. And if you want to bomb North Korea and you’re going to focus on Pyongyang, go to 471.’
A military aide is seen carrying the ‘nuclear football’ for President Joe Biden during a visit to Downing Street
When a president selects a plan from the ‘nuclear football’, command is set to a ‘Looking Glass’ plane that is always in the air
The command is then sent to officers in a spherical bunker who launch the nuclear attack
Then the commander-in-chief will tell an aide which plan he has selected and that will begin going down a chain of command.
“(This aide) has a communications device that he uses to connect the president to the command and control center, of which there are two,” Cerf said.
One of these command posts is on board an aircraft that is constantly in the air while three aircraft fly in shifts.
‘There’s always a plane in the sky. It’s called the Looking Glass, Cerf said.
The commando then heads to a military bunker that is ‘spherical in shape, floating on springs in a hollow cavity in the ground’ where two officers are required to fire the missiles.
Cerf said, “Someone reads them the authentication code so they know it’s real. Each of them has a chain with a key around their neck and they both go to a safe and put the keys in it, and then they unlock the safe with two other keys inside. And those are the keys that are actually the keys.’
‘They have to turn the keys at the same time and hold them for eight seconds. And then it is launched and from that moment on no one can stop it anymore.’
One of the president’s five military aides – one from each branch of the armed forces: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard – carries the “nuclear football” near the leader at all times.
It has been worn by every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s.
The president verifies their identity with codes found on a small plastic card they carry. In the event that the president is incapacitated or has died, an identical nuclear football is assigned to the vice president.
In the event of a devastating attack on the US, the president – or vice president as a backup – would confirm their identity via a secure telephone to the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center by reading codes from the Sealed Authenticator System- card – also known as the ‘cookie’ – that they must always have with them.
Military leaders and White House national security advisers would then brief the president or vice president on the nature of the threat and the potential for retaliation. If both people wanted to consult the written options, they could do so.
One expert said modern presidents, including Joe Biden, rarely practice the “nuclear football” protocol
Then the president would choose a retaliatory option and the order would be read to them. Once confirmed, the command center would use the military’s launch authorization codes to release nuclear missiles.
“In the American protocol you have to rehearse the entire process every four months, so three times a year,” says Cerf.
Cerf, however, said modern presidents rarely go through the drill.
“The answer is zero times – (Biden) never does it. He always says, “I’m going to send someone else instead. Not a good time for me…” What about Trump? How many times do you think Trump did it? And the answer is zero.”
“The last person to do this was Carter in the 1970s,” Cerf said.