[HN Gopher] Minuteman missile communications
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Minuteman missile communications
Author : sklargh
Score : 345 points
Date : 2024-07-20 20:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (computer.rip)
(TXT) w3m dump (computer.rip)
| nirav72 wrote:
| Interesting article. I have always been curious about how weapons
| systems like missiles communicate with command and control
| systems. Especially how the datalinks worked on cold war era
| systems. Not a lot of info out there. So this article was a good
| read.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| Believe it or not, ITAR regulation.
|
| https://isititar.com/
| kejaed wrote:
| As someone who has this week been going through, in detail
| (is there any other way?), the American CCL and Canadian ECL,
| this is absolute gold. Thankfully the items in question are
| no longer on the USML...
| neilv wrote:
| This is hilarious.
|
| One time, I had to speak up, that something might actually
| be ITAR, before an imminent potential violation.
|
| I probably didn't make any new friends on that occasion,
| but the situation was taken seriously, and violation was
| averted.
| XorNot wrote:
| Also a problem for rocket propulsion content on YouTube
| interestingly enough.
| lb1lf wrote:
| ...and the less is spoken of the time I had visited a
| CubeSat workshop at CalPoly carrying the actual flight
| prototype of my university's first effort in my carry-on
| - for compliance testing - the better.
|
| I found out the interesting way when leaving the States
| that ic it goes into space, it comes with lots of ITAR
| red tape of which I and my university had been blissfully
| unaware.
|
| Being escorted onto my flight (which had been held for an
| hour!) by a couple of State Department officials who
| simply told me to sit in the first available seat when we
| got aboard was kind of cool, though. Instant upgrade to
| business class, and the pax in the vicinity probably
| spent the flight wondering who the heck I was and what I
| had been up to...
| picture wrote:
| Cubesat Developer's Workshop? Which year was this, if you
| don't mind me asking?
|
| The funny thing is that I did pretty much the same thing,
| I had our flight computer prototype in my hoodie pocket
| to fidget with (since I'm leading all the electronics for
| the project) but luckily we weren't travelling far and
| didn't get any invitations from the government folks.
| Vecr wrote:
| Is that an ESD hazard? Do you have a special antistatic
| hoodie?
| lb1lf wrote:
| 2004, methinks.
|
| Our first sat, NCUBE, never made it out of the launch
| canister once in space; the 2nd one was on a failed
| launch which probably made some Kazakh farmer's day very
| interesting - judging from the photos I saw, it seems it
| came down in a wheat field - but the third one deployed
| successfully, but at that time, alas, I had graduated.
| minetest2048 wrote:
| This is one of the BS of space engineering. Apparently if
| you combine a Pi CM4 with a carrier board manufactured in
| China running open source Linux, and you say its for a
| cubesat going to space, it might fall under ITAR
|
| This is why a lot of European space hardware sellers have
| ITAR-free as their selling point
| RCitronsBroker wrote:
| this is the best thing I've seen today so far LOL
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Lol. It is because many of those old "cold war" systems are
| still in use today.
| randall wrote:
| my dad was a pm for this stuff. i have no idea what he did as he
| retired by the time i was 8 (92) but this was his world.
|
| anyone know anything else about this stuff? i've often considered
| trying to recreate his career path. (he died about 5 years ago.)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Seek out roles at defense contractors related to work on the
| weapons systems in question.
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| I just started a software engineering job at Lockheed Martin
| a couple weeks ago working on communication systems. Not sure
| if I can say what though to be honest, and I'm going to err
| on the side of safety here. I'll be working on F-22
| communications in a few months when/if my program clearance
| comes through. Super cool so far though.
| kelp wrote:
| I can't really help with what you're specifically looking for,
| but I'm pretty sure my grandfather worked on these as an
| engineer. He retired from Boeing in 1985. Died almost 20 years
| ago.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| It's honestly not too hard to go down a similar path. Defense
| contractors are literally always hiring and most job apps will
| give you a decent idea of what you are working with so you can
| more or less pick your poison before you even join. Of course
| long term you'll get moved around but you can generally pick
| your site (which decides what you work on).
| tamimio wrote:
| Very good read, thanks for sharing it. Side note: All the
| pictures have the geolocation data embedded into them.
| notarealllama wrote:
| A fellow exif fan I see
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| There's actually a KML link buried in the text:
| https://computer.rip/f/minuteman/90th-mw.kmz
|
| It will open directly in Google Earth and put you right on the
| scene in Armageddon, Wyoming, which appears to be roughly
| eighty miles south of Bumfark, Nowhere.
| lazide wrote:
| If ever there was a good place for Armageddon, it would be
| there.
| GrantS wrote:
| Coincidentally, I just toured the South Dakota minuteman launch
| control facility this week [1] and it was fascinating. The park
| ranger giving the tour was a veteran who manned the facility
| decades ago -- amazing stories. You need to book tickets a few
| months in advance but well worth it if you're in the area to
| visit Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, etc.
|
| [1] Run by U.S. National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/mimi/
| chromozonex wrote:
| Yep, I'd highly recommend this as well. We did this a year or
| two ago as well and it was wild how the underground facilities
| worked, how small they were, and how remote and nondescript
| they were. Highly recommend visiting these sites if you're into
| history!
| darknavi wrote:
| There is a Titan II missile silo you can tour an hour out of
| Tucson, AZ. Also well worth it.
|
| https://www.nps.gov/places/titanmissilemuseum.htm
| underbooter wrote:
| A few months in advance? I've gone to another SD site multiple
| times and you don't even need a ticket.
| Onawa wrote:
| Literally one click away from link provided by OP: Delta-01
| Tour Fee and Reservations Alert, Severity, information,
| Delta-01 Tour Fee and Reservations All Delta-01 Launch
| Control Facility Tours require advanced reservations.
| Reservations can be made up to 90 days in advance on-line or
| by phone at 605-717-7629. No SAME-DAY tours available during
| the summer season.
| cbsks wrote:
| You can visit anytime without reservations. For the ranger
| guided tour, reservations are required.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > amazing stories
|
| Please share them!
| GrantS wrote:
| A few small things as I think of them:
|
| -To practice for the moment of a real launch command, he
| would receive encoded messages every day that had to be
| manually decoded as quickly as possible -- this decoding
| would be done independently by him and the second person on
| duty, and they would then compare to make sure they matched.
| In the case of a real launch, not only would the two people
| in the underground facility need to agree that the command
| was issued, but a second team in another facility would need
| to do the same.
|
| -He was not allowed to know the targets of the missiles he
| would be launching, though these targets were fixed for each
| missile.
|
| -It was almost assumed that if they were launching, they
| would have already been hit on the surface by a nuclear
| weapon (locations of the launch facilities were not secret,
| because they wouldn't be a deterrent if they were secret).
| The two people underground are positioned in what looks like
| a shipping container suspended inside a submarine hull, all
| encased and locked behind one giant thick steel (?) door. If
| the elevator shaft had collapsed during an impact, they would
| be stuck inside to die. So they did include an escape hatch
| in the roof, but buried deep underground -- this would
| involve the two men opening the escape hatch, letting a bunch
| of sand fall through, and then digging upward through 100-ish
| feet of ground over many days to get to a surface that was a
| wasteland. He was never really convinced that this would
| work, but the men had to believe that if they did their jobs,
| there would be some way to survive it.
| amluto wrote:
| > Various options including DSL over HICS cables and radio were
| considered, but the current plan is to trench new fiber-optic
| cables across the launch fields. They're less interesting, but
| fiber optic cables have both capacity and reliability advantages
| over telephone cables, and could easily remain in service for the
| life of the Sentinel program.
|
| I was actually a bit surprised there was nothing about lightning
| and EMP suppression. I'm no expert on EMP effects, but multiple-
| mile-long cable loops underground seem like the kind of thing
| that would develop large induced currents in the presence of a
| varying magnetic field.
|
| Nonconductive fiber optic cables are entirely immune to these
| effects. And they're less expensive than copper!
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Lightning protection in these types of cables is well
| understood, since the telephone system contended with the same
| problem. Fortunately EMP effects are mostly accounted for by
| lightning protection, when it comes to the outside plant. There
| are definitely lightning arrestors where cables enter
| facilities, but I would wager the facilities were built with
| halo grounds. There is integral EMP shielding in the design of
| the bunkers, as well, with a steel liner surrounding the
| concrete.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Lightning isn't the only phenomena of interest to ICBM silo
| ops which generates EMP.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| Wouldn't they have already launched before suffering any ill
| effects from EMP?
| ben_w wrote:
| It only takes _one_ nuke to make an EMP that can mess up most
| of the continental USA, that 's something which could
| plausibly be done as a first strike.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse
|
| Now I think about it, how is the international law banning
| nukes in space actually enforced? E.g. if Russia just put one
| on a satellite and didn't tell anyone, does anyone have any
| way to notice?
| pooper wrote:
| > Now I think about it, how is the international law
| banning nukes in space actually enforced? E.g. if Russia
| just put one on a satellite and didn't tell anyone, does
| anyone have any way to notice?
|
| I am way out of my depth to say anything about this but I
| am just asking questions. I think we have to define a few
| words here
|
| > space
|
| what does space mean? I mean where will the detonation take
| place? Is it low earth orbit? geostationary orbit? is it
| past the orbit of Jupiter? outside the solar system (like
| voyager 1)?
|
| > nukes
|
| How big is this nuke?
|
| If it is small enough and far enough, do we care?
| ben_w wrote:
| From my previous link: 10 kT seems to be "big enough" to
| cause problems.
|
| Likewise "space" (for a HAEMP) means "up to about 500 km"
| -- diagram from the previous link, based on h = 400 km:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EMP_mechanism.png
|
| For the purposes of "where can nukes not be stationed
| according to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967": (1) orbit,
| (2) any celestial body, (3) anywhere else in outer space:
|
| > Article IV
|
| > States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in
| orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear
| weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass
| destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or
| station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.
| lazide wrote:
| That's nominally the reason for the CIA - and every other
| national intelligence agency.
| luma wrote:
| > if Russia just put one on a satellite and didn't tell
| anyone, does anyone have any way to notice?
|
| Yes. Satellites are not transparent so they occlude the sky
| behind them for anyone who is watching, which allows
| discovery of new satellites. Imaging them and determining
| trajectory via doppler etc comes after you know it's there.
|
| See: https://www.space.com/amateur-satellite-trackers-on-
| global-l...
| lukan wrote:
| "E.g. if Russia just put one on a satellite and didn't tell
| anyone, does anyone have any way to notice?"
|
| My wild guess would be, a bomb radiates and a satellite
| usually does not, so it might be possible to easily check
| new launched ones or all of the satelites of a certain
| size?
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The main reason NEMP (nuclear EMP) became a big concern
| during the Cold War is its potential for use as a defensive
| weapon. For example, a large part of military EMP research
| was done with the specific aim of hardening strategic
| bombers, after it was realized that the USSR could use a
| single well-placed high-altitude NEMP to disable most of the
| SAC fleet as it passed over the north pole. Similarly, in
| most attack scenarios the USSR would almost certainly have
| made a high-altitude detonation over the ICBM fields one of
| their first moves.
|
| I started off on a more detailed explanation of the timing
| issue, why we may not be able to launch before inbound
| weapons arrive, but it's kind of a complex topic that changed
| quite a bit over time. I might write something more in-depth
| about it later.
| kens wrote:
| I'm researching the Minuteman II's computer, the Autonetics
| D-37B/C so I figured I'd put a note here in case there is anyone
| else looking at it.
| twoodfin wrote:
| For anyone who hasn't seen it, the highly hn-relevant film
| _WarGames_ kicks off with a launch order scene between a MCCC and
| a DMCCC that doesn't depart wildly from the description here.
|
| The rest of the film is pretty good, too!
|
| _Turn your key, sir!_
| wkat4242 wrote:
| What about the fake house? Was that realistic? I've always
| wondered.
|
| I can imagine shaping buildings like a house to fool satellites
| but the furnished living room looked a bit too much. I assume
| these bases were military territory with fences around them.
| ben_w wrote:
| Thinking of (possibly) fake building, was noodling around
| Google Maps looking for some interesting walks in my area,
| and found these _surprisingly widely spaced_ groups of
| buildings:
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/K5MMuAdLtZ63hL8Y8?g_st=com.google.ma.
| ..
|
| Might well be totally mundane, but it sure seems odd to me
| with my complete lack of knowledge about civil engineering.
| crote wrote:
| They're pig or chicken farms, if you go on a walk you can
| tell by the absolutely _awful_ smell. Note the vertical
| cylinders for food storage in your link. I bet the spacing
| is mainly due to environmental regulations.
| ben_w wrote:
| Thanks, I'd missed the vertical cylinders.
|
| Not that it would have helped me without the rest of your
| comment -- although I've seen a vertical cylinder in a
| farm in Aberystwyth I'd assumed that instance was fuel,
| and similar elsewhere were labeled as liquified air
| tanks.
|
| But chicken farms make a lot of sense.
| neilv wrote:
| "Andromeda Strain" has a related filmmakers' conception of a
| secret/discreet government facility:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgDmJzaSd40&t=13s
| justinator wrote:
| Crazy that the communication system doesn't seem to be that much
| more advanced than tin cans and a string when compared to modern
| day. Guess the same can be said for the weapons themselves.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| It is just a different set of requirements. They don't need to
| stream Netflix but they need to survive nuclear war. Simpler,
| lower bandwidth systems are much more "advanced" in this
| context, and much more repairable on-site.
| justinator wrote:
| Good points.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| http://www.airtalk.com/z_ref-4_1.html
|
| For people like me that didn't understand why the cables are
| pressurized.
| stoperaticless wrote:
| Relevant quote:
|
| > This is the basic premise of cable pressurization: Keep the
| pressure within the cable in excess of the pressure that could
| be applied by standing water.
| chiph wrote:
| To keep groundwater out. it's common to use nitrogen, but the
| LCC would be hard to resupply with tanks[0], so (based on the
| photos) they used air that had been dried.
|
| Story time: The airbase I was stationed at in Germany had been
| built by the French, prior to their partial departure from
| NATO[1]. There was a buried cable on base that went bad while I
| was there. It was pressurized but apparently the hole in the
| casing/jacket was large and admitted more water than could be
| kept out by the nitrogen. So the airmen of the outside plant
| had to use their TDR[2] to find the fault and dig it up to
| repair it. To their surprise it turned out to have paper
| insulation[3], as it was made before plastic began to be widely
| used in wiring. It also had swastikas printed on it - because
| the French had used captured Nazi war-surplus cable when they
| built the base in the late 1940's.
|
| [0] It would be hard to maneuver large & heavy steel cylinders
| down the entrance, through the blast doors, and satisfy the
| security concerns of the LCC crew that they were legit. And
| then remove the empties afterwards back through all that. The
| cylinders can not be stored on the surface, for security
| reasons and because the buildings would no longer be present
| after an attack.
|
| [1] https://shape.nato.int/page214871012
|
| [2] Time-domain reflectometer. It's like radar for wiring.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-domain_reflectometer
|
| [3] The water soaked much of the paper for quite a distance in
| either direction of the hole. So they ended up replacing a
| rather long piece of cable instead of just putting in a splice
| junction. Lots of digging & cursing needed.
| tshtf wrote:
| This video depicts a relatively modern Minuteman launch sequence:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWZXinRwCaE
| _joel wrote:
| Handy place if you get caught short, at least if there was a roll
| - https://computer.rip/f/minuteman/teleprinter.jpg
| themadturk wrote:
| The link in the article to the Minuteman missile website [0] kept
| me busy for a couple of hours Saturday afternoon. Good stuff!
|
| [0]https://minutemanmissile.com
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