title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: The Jane specimen has been central to the debate regarding the validity of the proposed tyrannosaurid genus "Nanotyrannus". However, the Jane material has yet to be properly studied and described by scientists. Although Larson (2013) saw Jane as more identical to CMNH 7541 and LACM 28471 than to adult "T. rex" in having a higher tooth count, large pneumatic foramen on the center of the quadratojugal, T-shaped postorbital, and fused shoulder blade and pelvis, Yun (2015) concurred with the opinion of most workers that "Nanotyrannus" is a juvenile "T. rex", noting that a juvenile specimen of "Tarbosaurus" described by Tsuihiji "et al." (2011) also has a T-shaped postorbital. Paleontologists who support the theory that Jane represents a juvenile believe the tyrannosaur was approximately 11 years old at its time of death, and its fully restored skeleton measured long, a bit more than half as long as the largest-known complete "T. rex" specimen, nicknamed "Sue," which measures long. According to Hutchinson "et al." (2011), the weight of the Jane specimen in life was probably between and , being the average estimate.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: This specimen was found in the lower portion of the Hell Creek Formation near Fort Peck Lake in the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in Garfield County, Montana. Its discoverer was Bob Harmon, a fossil preparator for the Museum of the Rockies, and was nicknamed the "B-rex" (or "Bob-rex") in honor of Harmon. The specimen was discovered in 2000, and excavated by MOR from 2001 to 2003. Although only 37 percent of the skeleton was present, this included almost all of the skull (although the skull was nearly completely disarticulated). The specimen also includes several cervical, dorsal, sacral, and caudal vertebrae; several chevrons; some cervical and dorsal ribs; left scapula and coracoid; the furcula; the left ulna; both femora, tibiae, and ulnae; the right calcaneum; right astragalus; and a number of pes phalanges.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: In the March 2005 "Science magazine", Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and colleagues announced the recovery of soft tissue from the marrow cavity of a fossilized femur belong to B-Rex. Flexible, bifurcating blood vessels and fibrous but elastic bone matrix tissue were recognized. In addition, microstructures resembling blood cells were found inside the matrix and vessels. The structures bear resemblance to ostrich blood cells and vessels. However, since an unknown process distinct from normal fossilization seems to have preserved the material, the researchers are being careful not to claim that it is original material from the dinosaur. Paleontologist Thomas Kaye of the University of Washington in Seattle hypothesized that the soft-tissue is permineralized biofilm created by bacteria while digesting and breaking down the original specimen. He has discovered this to be true in many specimens from the same area. In 2016, it was finally confirmed by Mary Higby Schweitzer and Lindsay Zanno "et al" that the soft tissue was medullary bone tissue, like that in modern birds when they are readying to lay eggs. This confirmed the identity of the "Tyrannosaurus" MOR 1125 as a female.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: A "T. rex" specimen was discovered on private land in Harding County, South Dakota, once in 1981 by Michael and Dee Zimmerschied, and again on 4 October 1992 (Alan and Robert Detrich re-discovered Samson after it was originally found and deemed by paleontologists that several bones had washed in and there was nothing left).


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: It was shortly after that when Fred Nuss and Candace Nuss of Nuss Fossils with the Detrich brothers found the most complete and undistorted "Tyrannosaurus rex" skull ever discovered. Following the sale of "Sue," another "Tyrannosaurus rex" skeleton was, the specimen was put up for auction on eBay in 2000 under the name of "Z-rex", with an asking price of over US$8 million. It failed to sell online but was purchased for an undisclosed price in 2001 by British millionaire Graham Ferguson Lacey, who renamed the skeleton "Samson" after the Biblical figure of the same name. It was prepared by the Carnegie Museum starting in May 2004. After preparation was complete in March 2006, the specimen was returned to Lacey. It, along with some other dinosaur skeletons, was sold again at auction on 3 October 2009.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: On 7 July 2013, fossil hunter Robert Detrich of Wichita, Kansas, unearthed the remains of what is believed to be a 4-year-old "Tyrannosaurus rex". Detrich unearthed the fossil dubbed "Baby Bob" in a fossil-rich area near the Eastern Montana town of Jordan. Its femur measures about 25 inches, and if all the preliminary data pans out, that would make it among the smallest "T. rex" specimens ever found. Baby Bob has been fully excavated, although it will take another year to clean. Detrich said the skull, which is about 75 percent complete, and most of the major skeletal elements were found strewn across a flood plain, although very few vertebra and ribs were found.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: "Scotty", cataloged as RSM P2523.8, was discovered in Saskatchewan, Canada in 1991. Since its discovery and extensive subsequent study, "Scotty" has been referred to as the largest "T. rex" ever discovered in the world, the largest of any dinosaur discovered in Canada, and as one of the oldest and most complete fossils of its kind at more than 70% bulk. "Scotty" resides at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum's T. rex Discovery Centre in Eastend, SK, Canada. In May 2019, a second mount was erected at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, where the exhibit reflects the recent discoveries about the fossil.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: "Scotty" was discovered by Robert Gebhardt, a high school principal from Eastend, SK who accompanied palaeontologists from the Royal Saskatchewan Museum on a prospective expedition into the Frenchman Formation in southwestern Saskatchewan on 16 August 1991. It wasn't until June 1994 that the Royal Saskatchewan Museum was able to begin the excavation, which was led and overseen by the Museum's Ron Borden, as well as resident paleontologists Tim Tokaryk and John Storer who were with Gebhardt when he uncovered the first fossils. The bones were deeply packed in dense, iron-laden sandstone, which took more than twenty years for the team to fully remove, excavate, and assemble the majority of the skeleton, with additional trips being made to the site to retrieve smaller bones and teeth. The entire process of excavating the skeleton was also slowed down by its considerable size.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: "Scotty" is reported to be long and weighed an estimated . Despite it not being a complete fossil, paleontologists were able to create the estimation for the weight and length through measurements of important weight bearing bones such as the femur, hip, and shoulder bones that have all been measured to be larger and thicker with "Scotty" than the corresponding bones with "Sue". Going from the latest study "Scotty" exceeds "Sue" in 84.6% of the published measurements. While the reported measurements and weight for "Scotty" are larger than those of "Sue", some scientists posit that the two fossils are too close in size to officially declare "Scotty" the largest.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: Like other "T. rex" fossils, "Scotty" shows signs of trichomoniasis, a parasitic infection in the jaw that left visible holes in the bone and was unique to this specific species of dinosaur. Additionally, a broken and healed rib on its right side, broken tail vertebra, as well as a hole near the eye socket are possibly the result of another "T. rex" attack. Other abnormalities, such as impacted teeth, suggest that "Scotty" was not only bitten, but also bit other animals.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: Commercial paleontologist Craig Pfister discovered the specimen in the lower Hell Creek Formation in Carter County, Montana, in 2010. Its excavation and preservation lasted four years. It was later sold to Danish-born investment banker Niels Nielsen, who loaned the specimen to the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany, for research and exhibition. It has been on display at Museum für Naturkunde between 2015 and 2020, moving to the Natural History Museum of Denmark for one year, and expected back in 2021. Nielsen and his friend Jens Jensen named the specimen Tristan-Otto (short: Tristan) for their sons. The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin lists it under specimen number MB.R.91216. Several European museums have "Tyrannosaurus" casts (replicas) or parts, but Tristan is one of only two original skeletons on display in the continent (the other is "Trix" in the Netherlands). The matte-black fossilised skeleton is about long and tall at the hips. Tristan is among the most complete known "Tyrannosaurus" skeletons: It was re-assembled from about 300 separate parts, 170 of which are original (including 98% of the skull and all the teeth), the rest reproductions. It is estimated to have died when about 20 years old and it was in poor health, having several bone fractures, bite marks to the skull and signs of disease in the jaw. The disease present in Tristan's jaw was suggested to be a case of tumefactive osteomyelitis.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: From 2003 to 2005, Thomas was excavated by NHMLA paleontologists in southeastern Montana. At 17 years old, long and nearly , it is estimated to be a 70% complete specimen. Thomas is mounted in a "growth series" with the youngest-known "Tyrannosaurus rex" fossil, a two-year-old, specimen, and a 13-year-old, juvenile specimen.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: This fossil is one of the geologically youngest "T. rex" specimens known, discovered very near the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: Victoria is a specimen found near Faith, South Dakota in 2013. Victoria is estimated to be around 12 ft tall and 40 ft long, and she is thought to have died in her thirties. Victoria has also been the subject of a traveling exhibition being displayed in places such as the Arizona Science Center. Her cause of death is unknown; however, she was believed to have been bitten in the lower jaw by another "Tyrannosaurus". The bite may have become infected, spreading and leading to sepsis.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: Ivan is a 65% complete "T. rex" displayed at the Museum of World Treasures in Wichita, Kansas. The specimen has the most complete tail of any "T. rex", only missing around 3 vertebrae. Ivan is around 40 ft long and 12 feet high.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: In 2013, a team of paleontologists from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Leiden, Netherlands) traveled to Montana where they discovered and unearthed a large and remarkably complete "Tyrannosaurus rex" specimen that lived 67 million years ago. Black Hills institute collaborated with the team in the excavation. The bones were cleaned and assembled in a mount at Black Hills Institute's installations, with the help of both Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History and the Naturalis Leiden Museum. Chicago's Field museum sent digital models of their famous specimen, FMNH PR 2081 (Sue) to complete the cast and Naturalis museum replicated the bones using 3D-printing technology.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: The specimen was named "Trix" after former Netherlands' Queen Beatrix. At arrival in the Netherlands, it started touring on public display in an itinerant exhibition titled "T. rex in Town". The first exhibit spanned from 10 September 2016 to 5 June 2017 and was set at the only room of the Naturalis museum open to public at the time (the 17th-century building known as "Pesthuis"), due to the fact that the museum was undergoing restoration. When the Netherlands exhibition ended, it continued travelling through other European countries in 2017, 2018 and 2019. As of August 2019, Trix was returned to display at the Naturalis museum where it is installed in a special room that was under construction during Trix's European tour.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: According to Peter Larson (director of Black Hills Institute), Trix is among the most complete "Tyrannosaurus" found. Between 75% and 80% of its skeletal volume was recovered. They are thought to have been at least 30 years old at death


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: "Titus" is the name given to an obsidian-black skeleton of a "Tyrannosaurus rex" discovered in Montana's Hell Creek Formation in 2014 and excavated in 2018. It is 20% complete, and was named after the protagonist in Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus". Exhibited in the Nottingham Natural History Museum for 13 months beginning July 2021, it was during that time only the second specimen of "Tyrannosaurus" to be on exhibit in United Kingdom, the other being the type of the junior synonym "Dynamosaurus imperosus" which has the jaw on display in the Natural History Museum, London. External bone inspection has revealed injuries to Titus' right tibia (possibly a claw or bite wound); a deformed toe on the right foot; and a bitten and healed tail. The bite wound near the end of the tail indicates a possible attack by another "Tyrannosaurus rex".


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: The remains of "Titus" were discovered in September 2014 by commercial paleontologist Craig Pfister near Ekalaka, Carter County, Montana. Excavation of the specimen began in 2018, and took 18 months. The bones of "Titus" were shipped to conservationist Nigel Larkin in the UK, who constructed the mount using a cast of the "Tyrannosaurus" specimen Stan to supplement the known bones of "Titus", after scanning the bones using photogrammetry to create digital models that were 3D printed for use in the exhibition, alongside the display of the real fossil skeleton, and which remained at the museum after the end of the exhibition. For the exhibit at the Nottingham Natural History Museum at Wollaton Hall, Titus was reconstructed "in a walking mode, perhaps searching for prey or returning home after a hunt."


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: In 2016 Greg Wilson, David DeMar, and a paleontology team from the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, the University of Washington, and the Dig Field school excavated the partial remains of a "Tyrannosaurus rex" from Montana. The partial skeleton was found by two Burke Museum volunteers, Jason Love and Luke Tufts, and was named the "Tufts-Love" rex. Paleontologists at the Burke Museum believe that the Tufts-Love rex was around 15 years old when it died. The skull is of average size for an adult "T. rex". The specimen was found in Late Cretaceous deposits and it is estimated to be 66.3 million years old. The Tufts-Love rex is undergoing preparation by Michael Holland and his team at the Burke Museum. The skeleton is estimated to be 30% complete, but it includes a complete (all of the bones of the skull and jaws are preserved) and mostly articulated skull. Holland describes the skull as minimally distorted and in an "exquisite" state of preservation.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: Peter is the nickname given to a specimen on loan to the Auckland War Memorial Museum by an anonymous owner, currently on display alongside “Barbara” until the end of 2023. The specimen is estimated to be 66.8 million years old and almost of adult size. He was recovered from Niobrara County, Wyoming.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: “Peter” is one of only four incredibly rare and visually stunning obisidian black colored tyrannosaurus rex.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: He was likely killed by exocannibalism as entire sections of bone were damaged, and some were split open by huge crushing bite-forces. The nature of the crushing on the femur and tibia, along with size of the bite marks, indicates that these bones were bitten through by another Tyrannosaurus rex. There is also a set of smaller, parallel tooth marks nearby on the shaft that are not attributable to an adult T. rex. Explanations for this behavior range from response to over-crowded populations, limited food supply, sexual dominance, or even play.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: Barbara is the nickname given to a specimen on loan to the Auckland War Memorial Museum by the same anonymous owner as "Peter", currently on display alongside him until the end of 2023.The pair will be the first adult male and female T rex to be displayed together. She is one of a few specimens believed to be pregnant.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: “Barbara’s” circumstances are particularly rare, more so when you take into account that she suffered and survived long after a debilitating foot injury. While she was no longer able to capture her own prey it is suggested that she got by with the help of a mate or cohort feeding her, as the injury would have rendering her immobile for upwards of 6 months. This is vaguely supported by trackway evidence that has been used to imply tyrannosaur group hunting. It is doubtful that ‘Barbara’ ever successfully hunted again as a predator unless its prey was in close proximity.


title: Specimens of Tyrannosaurus

text: This specimen, considered the most complete of any "Tyrannosaurus" specimen at more than 98% preservation, was discovered in Montana in 2006. Following years of unsuccessful attempts to sell it to museums or auction it off, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences started negotiations in 2016, which were prolonged due to a legal battle over the rights to the fossil, which was resolved in 2020. The fossils are set to be displayed by the NC Museum in 2023. The Dueling Dinosaurs "T. rex" is an adolescent that was preserved entangled with a "Triceratops". Given the injuries present on both fossils, it has been theorized that both died while fighting one another. The specimen has not yet been properly studied due to its recent acquisition to science. However, important biological data is likely preserved with the specimen, including body outlines, skin impressions, soft tissues, injuries, stomach contents, and even original proteins.


title: Majorana fermion

text: A Majorana fermion (), also referred to as a Majorana particle, is a fermion that is its own antiparticle. They were hypothesised by Ettore Majorana in 1937. The term is sometimes used in opposition to a Dirac fermion, which describes fermions that are not their own antiparticles.


title: Majorana fermion

text: With the exception of neutrinos, all of the Standard Model fermions are known to behave as Dirac fermions at low energy (lower than the electroweak symmetry breaking temperature), and none are Majorana fermions. The nature of the neutrinos is not settled – they may turn out to be either Dirac or Majorana fermions.


title: Majorana fermion

text: In condensed matter physics, quasiparticle excitations can appear like bound Majorana fermions. However, instead of a single fundamental particle, they are the collective movement of several individual particles (themselves composite) which are governed by non-Abelian statistics.


title: Majorana fermion

text: The concept goes back to Majorana's suggestion in 1937 that electrically neutral spin- particles can be described by a real-valued wave equation (the Majorana equation), and would therefore be identical to their antiparticle, because the wave functions of particle and antiparticle are related by complex conjugation, which leaves the Majorana wave equation unchanged.


title: Majorana fermion

text: The difference between Majorana fermions and Dirac fermions can be expressed mathematically in terms of the creation and annihilation operators of second quantization: The creation operator formula_1 creates a fermion in quantum state formula_2 (described by a "real" wave function), whereas the annihilation operator formula_3 annihilates it (or, equivalently, creates the corresponding antiparticle). For a Dirac fermion the operators formula_1 and formula_5 are distinct, whereas for a Majorana fermion they are identical. The ordinary fermionic annihilation and creation operators formula_6 and formula_7 can be written in terms of two Majorana operators formula_8 and formula_9 by


title: Majorana fermion

text: In supersymmetry models, neutralinos – superpartners of gauge bosons and Higgs bosons – are Majorana fermions.


title: Majorana fermion

text: Using this convention, a collection of formula_14 Majorana fermions (formula_15 ordinary fermions), formula_16 (formula_17) obey the following commutation identities


title: Majorana fermion

text: where formula_20 and formula_21 are antisymmetric matrices. These are identical to the commutation relations for the real Clifford algebra in formula_22 dimensions (formula_23).


title: Majorana fermion

text: Because particles and antiparticles have opposite conserved charges, Majorana fermions have zero charge, hence among the fundamental particles, the only fermions that could be Majorana are sterile neutrinos, if they even exist. All the other elementary fermions of the Standard Model have gauge charges, so they cannot have fundamental Majorana masses: Even the Standard Model's left-handed neutrinos and right-handed antineutrinos have non-zero weak isospin, formula_24 a charge-like quantum number. However, if they exist, the so-called "sterile neutrinos" (left-handed antineutrinos and right-handed neutrinos) would be truly neutral particles (assuming no other, unknown gauge charges exist).


title: Majorana fermion

text: The sterile neutrinos introduced to explain neutrino oscillation and anomalously small S.M. neutrino masses could have Majorana masses. If they do, then at low energy (after electroweak symmetry breaking), by the seesaw mechanism, the neutrino fields would naturally behave as six Majorana fields, with three of them expected to have very high masses (comparable to the GUT scale) and the other three expected to have very low masses (below 1 eV). If right-handed neutrinos exist but do not have a Majorana mass, the neutrinos would instead behave as three Dirac fermions and their antiparticles with masses coming directly from the Higgs interaction, like the other Standard Model fermions.


title: Majorana fermion

text: The seesaw mechanism is appealing because it would naturally explain why the observed neutrino masses are so small. However, if the neutrinos are Majorana then they violate the conservation of lepton number and even of B − L.


title: Majorana fermion

text: but if it does exist, it can be viewed as two ordinary beta decay events whose resultant antineutrinos immediately annihilate each other, and is only possible if neutrinos are their own antiparticles.


title: Majorana fermion

text: The high-energy analog of the neutrinoless double beta decay process is the production of same-sign charged lepton pairs in hadron colliders; it is being searched for by both the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. In theories based on left–right symmetry, there is a deep connection between these processes. In the currently most-favored explanation of the smallness of neutrino mass, the seesaw mechanism, the neutrino is “naturally” a Majorana fermion.


title: Majorana fermion

text: Majorana fermions cannot possess intrinsic electric or magnetic moments, only toroidal moments. Such minimal interaction with electromagnetic fields makes them potential candidates for cold dark matter.


title: Majorana fermion

text: In superconducting materials, a quasiparticle can emerge as a Majorana fermion (non-fundamental), more commonly referred to as a Bogoliubov quasiparticle in condensed matter physics. Its existence becomes possible because a quasiparticle in a superconductor is its own antiparticle.


title: Majorana fermion

text: Mathematically, the superconductor imposes electron hole "symmetry" on the quasiparticle excitations, relating the creation operator formula_25 at energy formula_26 to the annihilation operator formula_27 at energy formula_28. Majorana fermions can be bound to a defect at zero energy, and then the combined objects are called Majorana bound states or Majorana zero modes. This name is more appropriate than Majorana fermion (although the distinction is not always made in the literature), because the statistics of these objects is no longer fermionic. Instead, the Majorana bound states are an example of non-abelian anyons: interchanging them changes the state of the system in a way that depends only on the order in which the exchange was performed. The non-abelian statistics that Majorana bound states possess allows them to be used as a building block for a topological quantum computer.


title: Majorana fermion

text: A quantum vortex in certain superconductors or superfluids can trap midgap states, which is one source of Majorana bound states. Shockley states at the end points of superconducting wires or line defects are an alternative, purely electrical, source. An altogether different source uses the fractional quantum Hall effect as a substitute for the superconductor.


title: Majorana fermion

text: In 2008, Fu and Kane provided a groundbreaking development by theoretically predicting that Majorana bound states can appear at the interface between topological insulators and superconductors. Many proposals of a similar spirit soon followed, where it was shown that Majorana bound states can appear even without any topological insulator. An intense search to provide experimental evidence of Majorana bound states in superconductors first produced some positive results in 2012. A team from the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands reported an experiment involving indium antimonide nanowires connected to a circuit with a gold contact at one end and a slice of superconductor at the other. When exposed to a moderately strong magnetic field the apparatus showed a peak electrical conductance at zero voltage that is consistent with the formation of a pair of Majorana bound states, one at either end of the region of the nanowire in contact with the superconductor. Simultaneously, a group from Purdue University and University of Notre Dame reported observation of fractional Josephson effect (decrease of the Josephson frequency by a factor of 2) in indium antimonide nanowires connected to two superconducting contacts and subjected to a moderate magnetic field, another signature of Majorana bound states. Bound state with zero energy was soon detected by several other groups in similar hybrid devices, and fractional Josephson effect was observed in topological insulator HgTe with superconducting contacts


title: Majorana fermion

text: The aforementioned experiments mark possible verifications of independent 2010 theoretical proposals from two groups predicting the solid state manifestation of Majorana bound states in semiconducting wires proximitized to superconductors. However, it was also pointed out that some other trivial non-topological bounded states could highly mimic the zero voltage conductance peak of Majorana bound state. The subtle relation between those trivial bound states and Majorana bound states was reported by the researchers in Niels Bohr Institute, who can directly "watch" coalescing Andreev bound states evolving into Majorana bound states, thanks to a much cleaner semiconductor-superconductor hybrid system.


title: Majorana fermion

text: In 2014, evidence of Majorana bound states was also observed using a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope, by scientists at Princeton University. These experiments resolved the predicted signatures of localized Majorana bound states – zero energy modes – at the ends of chains of ferromagnetic (iron) chains on the surface of a superconductor (lead) with strong spin-orbit coupling. Follow up experiments at lower temperatures probed these end states with higher energy resolution and showed their robustness when the chains are buried by layers of lead. Experiments with spin-polarized STM tips have also been used, in 2017, to distinguish these end modes from trivial zero energy modes that can form due to magnetic defects in a superconductor, providing important evidence (beyond zero bias peaks) for the interpretation of the zero energy mode at the end of the chains as a Majorana bound state. More experiments finding evidence for Majorana bound states in chains have also been carried out with other types of magnetic chains, particularly chains manipulated atom-by-atom to make a spin helix on the surface of a superconductor.


title: Majorana fermion

text: Majorana fermions may also emerge as quasiparticles in quantum spin liquids, and were observed by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, working in collaboration with Max Planck Institute and University of Cambridge on 4 April 2016.


title: Majorana fermion

text: Chiral Majorana fermions were claimed to be detected in 2017 by Q.L. He et al., in a quantum anomalous Hall effect/superconductor hybrid device. In this system, Majorana fermions edge mode will give a rise to a formula_29 conductance edge current. Subsequent experiments by other groups, however, could not reproduce these findings. In November 2022, the article by He et al. was retracted by the editors, because "analysis of the raw and published data revealed serious irregularities and discrepancies".


title: Majorana fermion

text: On 16 August 2018, a strong evidence for the existence of Majorana bound states (or Majorana anyons) in an iron-based superconductor, which many alternative trivial explanations cannot account for, was reported by Ding's and Gao's teams at Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, when they used scanning tunneling spectroscopy on the superconducting Dirac surface state of the iron-based superconductor. It was the first time that indications of Majorana particles were observed in a bulk of pure substance. However, more recent experimental studies in iron-based superconductors show that topologically trivial Caroli–de Gennes–Matricon states and Yu–Shiba–Rusinov states can exhibit qualitative and quantitative features similar to those Majorana zero modes would make. In 2020 similar results were reported for a platform consisting of europium sulfide and gold films grown on vanadium.


title: Majorana fermion

text: One of the causes of interest in Majorana bound states is that they could be used in quantum error correcting codes. This process is done by creating so called 'twist defects' in codes such as the toric code which carry unpaired Majorana modes. The Majoranas are then "braided" by being physically moved around each other in 2D sheets or networks of nanowires. This braiding process forms a projective representation of the braid group.


title: Majorana fermion

text: Such a realization of Majoranas would allow them to be used to store and process quantum information within a quantum computation. Though the codes typically have no Hamiltonian to provide suppression of errors, fault-tolerance would be provided by the underlying quantum error correcting code.


title: Bandits (2001 film)

text: Bandits is a 2001 American criminal comedy-drama film directed by Barry Levinson. It stars Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. Filming began in October 2000 and ended in February 2001. It helped Thornton earn a National Board of Review Best Actor Award for 2001. Thornton and Blanchett's performances earned praise, as each was nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress Golden Globe Awards for their performances in this film, while Blanchett was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It first opened in theaters on October 12, 2001.


title: Bandits (2001 film)

text: Two friends and convicts, Joe and Terry, break out of Oregon State Penitentiary in a concrete mixing truck and start a bank robbing spree, hoping to fund a dream they share. They become known as the "Sleepover Bandits" because of their "modus operandi": they kidnap the manager of a target bank the night before a planned robbery, then spend the night with the manager's family; early the next morning, they accompany the manager to the bank to get their money. Using dim-witted would-be stunt man Harvey Pollard as their getaway driver and lookout, the three successfully pull off a series of robberies that gets them recognition on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, and ultimately the reward for information leading to their capture is increased to $1 million.


title: Bandits (2001 film)

text: When Kate, a housewife with a failing marriage, decides to run away, she ends up in the hands of the criminals. Initially attracted to Joe, she also ends up in bed with Terry and a confused love triangle begins.


title: Bandits (2001 film)

text: The three of them go on the lam and manage to pull off a few more robberies, but after a while the two begin to fight over Kate, and she decides to leave them. The two criminals then decide to pull off one last job.


title: Bandits (2001 film)

text: The story is told in flashbacks, framed by the story of the pair's last robbery of the Alamo Bank, as told by "Criminals at Large", a fictional reality television show, with which they taped an interview stating that Kate was only a hostage, not a participant. The show tells the story of their last job, which is known to be a failure when Kate tips off the police and the two are caught in the act. The two then begin to argue when Joe tells the police "You won't take us alive!" and the argument gets to the point where the two of them shoot each other dead.


title: Bandits (2001 film)

text: At the end of the film the real story behind the last job is revealed: Harvey used some of his special effects to make it seem as though Terry and Joe were shooting each other. Dressed as paramedics, Harvey and his girlfriend Claire then run in and place the stolen money, Terry, and Joe in body bags while Kate (who was in on the plan) distracts the police by pretending to pass out in shock upon seeing the "bodies." In the ambulance, Harvey used electronics to blow out his tires which sent the ambulance into a junkyard. Under his jumpsuit, Harvey was wearing a fire suit. He lit himself on fire and rigged a bomb to go off. Harvey, Claire, Terry, and Joe flee the scene, leading officials to believe that the bodies were burned beyond recognition. Kate receives the $1 million reward for having turned them in.


title: Bandits (2001 film)

text: Reunited, Joe, Terry, Harvey, and Kate make it to Mexico to live out their dream. The last scene shows Harvey and Claire getting married in Mexico and Kate kissing Joe and Terry passionately.


title: Bandits (2001 film)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "Bandits" has an approval rating of 64% based on 140 reviews, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The story may not warrant its lengthy running time, but the cast of "Bandits" makes it an enjoyable ride." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 60 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert of "The Chicago Sun-Times" gave the movie 2 stars out of possible 4, praising the main performances but criticizing the uneven tone, writing: "It's rare for a movie to have three such likable characters and be so unlikeable itself."


title: Bandits (2001 film)

text: In 2007 in New York, five men were prosecuted and convicted for crimes imitative of this film's plot.


title: Bandits (2001 film)

text: In its opening weekend, the film opened at #2, behind "Training Day", earning $13 million. It beat out other newcomer "Corky Romano" by just over four million dollars. The film grossed $67.6 million worldwide, against a budget of $75 million.


title: Alexander Lascelles, Viscount Lascelles

text: Alexander Edgar Lascelles, Viscount Lascelles (born 13 May 1980) is an English chef, and the third child and second son of David Lascelles, 8th Earl of Harewood, and his first wife Margaret, Viscountess Lascelles. He is heir apparent to the earldom of Harewood, due to his elder brother having been born before their parents' marriage. He is a great-great-grandson of George V.


title: Alexander Lascelles, Viscount Lascelles

text: Lascelles' first child, Leo, was born out of wedlock and is unable to succeed to his grandfather's earldom. On 18 August 2017 at Kew Gardens, Alexander Lascelles married Annika Elizabeth Reed (b. 1984). They have a daughter, Ivy, born in 2018.


title: Peja

text: Peja (Indefinite Albanian form: "Pejë" ) or Peć ( ) is the fourth largest city of Kosovo and seat of Peja Municipality and Peja District. It is situated in the region of Rugova on the eastern section of the Accursed Mountains along Peja's Lumbardh in the western part of Kosovo.


title: Peja

text: In medieval times the city, then commonly known under its Serbian name, was the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1346. The Patriarchal monastery of Peć is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Medieval Monuments in Kosovo.


title: Peja

text: Under Ottoman rule the city, then commonly known under the Turkish name "İpek", became a district capital with mosques and civil architecture.


title: Peja

text: From the end of the nineteenth century until today, the city has been the site of nationalist aspirations and claims for both ethnic Albanians and Serbs, often resulting in tense inter-ethnic relations and conflict.


title: Peja

text: According to the 2011 census, the city of Peja has 48,962 inhabitants, while the municipality has 96,450 inhabitants. The municipality covers an area of , including the city of Peja and 95 villages; it is divided into 28 territorial communities.


title: Peja

text: In Serbian, "peć" means "furnace" or "cave", and its name is probably connected with nearby caves in the Rugova Canyon which served as hermit cells for Serbian Orthodox monks. In medieval Ragusan documents, the Serbian name of the city (Peć, lit. "furnace") is sometimes translated as "Forno", meaning "furnace" in Italian. During Ottoman rule, it was known as Ottoman Turkish "İpek" (ايپك). The Albanian name's definite form is "Peja" and the indefinite "Pejë". Other names of the city include Latin "Pescium" and Greek "Episkion" (Επισκιον). The city was first mentioned as Siparantum, by Ptolemy in his work "Gheographia".


title: Peja

text: The city is located in a strategic position on Peja's Lumbardh, a tributary of the White Drin to the east of the Accursed Mountains. The medieval city was possibly built on the ruins of "Siparant(um)", a Roman "municipium" (town or city). The area has the most unearthed stelae in all of Kosovo.


title: Peja

text: Slavs (Sclaveni and Antes) settled the Balkans, heavily depopulated by "Barbarians", in the 6th century. The Byzantine Empire and the First Bulgarian Empire fought for control of the area until it finally fell under full Serbian control. Between 1180 and 1190, Serbian Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja annexed Peja with its surrounding "župa" (district) of Hvosno from the Byzantine Empire, thus establishing Serbian rule over the city of Peja for next 300 years. In 1220, Serbian King Stefan Nemanjić donated Peja and several surrounding villages to his newly founded monastery of Žiča. As Žiča was the seat of a Serbian archbishop, Peja came under direct rule of Serbian archbishops and later patriarchs who built their residences and numerous churches in the city starting with the church of Holy Apostles built by archbishop Saint Arsenije I Sremac. After the Žiča monastery was burned by the Cumans in the 1290s, the seat of Serbian archbishop was transferred to a more secure location, the Patriarchal Monastery of Peć. The city became a major religious center of medieval Serbia under the Serbian Emperor Stefan Dušan, who made it the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1346. It remained the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church until the abolition of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć in 1766.


title: Peja

text: Peja came under Ottoman rule after its capture in 1455. In Turkish, the town was known as "İpek". The town became the center of the Sanjak of İpek (or Dukagjin), governed by Mahmut Pasha Dukagjini as its first "sanjakbey" (lord). The Sanjak of Dukagjin had four "kazas": Peja, Gjakova, Gusinje and Berane.


title: Peja

text: During the 15th and 16th centuries, Orthodox Albanians formed the majority of the region's population whereas Slavs formed a minority. The Slavs had arrived during the period of Serbian rule in Kosovo through the Middle Ages as colonists from Slavic regions north of Kosovo or as a stratum of the ruling class. In the Ottoman defters of the time, there existed a designation for new arrivals to the region; in the region of Peja and Suhogërla, new arrivals existed within about a third of the villages, with their anthroponomy indicating that only 4 of these new 180 arrivals had Albanian names, whereas the rest had characteristically Slavic names. This suggests that an arrival of a Slavic element to the northeast of the Sanjak of Shkodra occurred during the 15th-16th centuries, and the absence of this trend in the rest of the Sanjak of Shkodra indicates that these Slav populations hailed from Slavic-inhabited regions outside of Peja itself. In 1582, Ottoman cadastral records indicated that 23 villages in the Nahiya of Peja were inhabited by an Albanian majority due to the dominance of Albanian anthroponomy amongst its inhabitants; 85 villages had mixed Albanian-Slavic anthroponomy, and the rest contained almost exclusively Slavic anthroponomy. The villages with a certain Albanian majority were "Osak (Usak), Kramor, Ljepovaç, Trakagjin, Strelec, Romaniça, Sredna Çirna Goi, Nivokas, Temshenica, Trepova pole, Novasel, Dobri Lipari, Boshanica, Brestovac, Baç (Beç), Tokina pole, Novasel (another Novasel), Dujak, Dobroshi i Madh, Vraniq, Mraç or Çirna Potok, Dolina Çirna Goi" and "Preloniça". The documentation of Albanians in Peja at the end of the 15th centuries - which coincides with the very beginning of Ottoman rule in Kosovo - presupposes that the Albanians of Peja were early inhabitants of the region. By the 1582 Defter, the city of Peja itself had been significantly Islamised - several cases exist where Muslim inhabitants have a blend of Islamic and Albanian anthroponomy (such as the widespread Deda family - "Rizvan Deda, Haxhi Deda, Ali Deda..."). The Muslim neighbourhoods include "Xhamia Sherif, Sinan Vojvoda, Piri bej, Ahmed Bej, Hysein, Hasan Çelebi, Mustafa bej, Mahmud Kadi, Orman, Kapishniça, Mesxhidi Haxhi Mahmud, Bali bej" and "Çeribash". The Christian neighbourhoods include "Gjura Papuxhi, Nikolla (abandoned), Nikolla Vukman (abandoned), Andrija (abandoned)" and "Olivir". The inhabitants of the two Christian neighbourhoods - "Olivir" and "Gjura Papuxhi" - had a blend of characteristically Albanian and Slavic/Orthodox anthroponomy.


title: Peja

text: In 1835 the Albanian population supported by other Albanian rebels from Shkodra took over the town from the Ottomans.


title: Peja

text: The Albanian nationalist organization League of Peja established in 1899 was based in the city. The organization, led by Haxhi Zeka, adopted the character of the earlier League of Prizren to defend the rights of Ottoman Albanians and seek autonomous status within the empire. After an armed clash with Ottoman forces in 1900 the organization ended its operations.


title: Peja

text: Ottoman rule came to an end in the First Balkan War of 1912–13, when Montenegro took control of the city on 28 October 1912. On 8 January 1916, during World War I, Austria-Hungary took the city. Peja was taken by Serbian forces on 17 October 1918. After World War I, the city became part of Yugoslavia (at first officially called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes). Between 1931 and 1941 the city was part of Zeta Banovina.


title: Peja

text: During World War II Peja was occupied by the Italian puppet state of Albania. Following Italy's capitulation in the last months of 1943, several hundred Serbs were massacred by Albanian paramilitaries in Peja and its vicinity. After the war, Peja again became part of Yugoslavia as part of the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija (1945–1963), an autonomous unit within the Socialist Republic of Serbia.


title: Peja

text: Relations between Serbs and Albanians, who were the majority population, were often tense during the 20th century. They came to a head in the Kosovo War of 1999, during which the city suffered heavy damage and mass killings. The Panda Bar massacre occurred in Peja, and the perpetrators of the massacre remained unknown until the Serbian government admitted that the massacre was a black operation carried out by Serbian intelligence operatives, although news agencies falsely reported that it was done by the KLA. More than 80 percent of the total 5280 houses in the city were heavily damaged (1590) or destroyed (2774). It suffered further damage in violent inter-ethnic unrest in 2004.


title: Peja

text: Peja in Western Kosovo near the Rugova Canyon or Gorge. Rugova is a mountainous region entered through the North-West part of the city of Peja. It is the third region of Accursed Mountains. In 2013 it became a National Park. Rugova is known for its natural environment and access to the mountains. The city is located some 250 kilometres (155 miles) north of Tirana, Albania, 150 kilometres (93 miles) north-west of Skopje, North Macedonia, 85 kilometres (52 miles) west of Pristina, Kosovo and some 280 kilometres (173 miles) east of Podgorica, Montenegro.


title: Peja

text: Peja has a Oceanic climate (Cfb) as of the Köppen climate classification with an average annual temperature of . The warmest month in Peja is August with an average temperature of , while the coldest month is January with an average temperature of .


title: Peja

text: The municipality covers an area of , including the city of Peja and 95 villages; it is divided into 28 territorial communities. , the whole municipality has a population of approximately 95,723, of which ca. 48,962 live in the city of Peja.


title: Peja

text: Peja is rapidly developing a significant tourist infrastructure. You can find information and maps for the "Trail of Cultural Monuments" at the Tourist Information Office as well as maps and attractions in the Rugova Gorge/Canyon and surrounding mountains. Skiing is available at the Ski Center in Bogë nearby. One of the most exciting new attractions is the Peak of the Balkans trail. The trail wanders through 3 countries with mountain views and can be supported by local guides and tour companies. Pećka Banja is a township located in the municipality of Istok, Kosovo. To many people it is known with the name Ilixhe. It is a touristic-health center with services in Istok and in the region, highly developed infrastructure and every service needed for healthy living. The cite has seen a bloom of tourism with a new Zip Line, and two Via Ferrata, built between 2013 and 2016. In the city there are a number of tour operators that function, with Balkan Natural Adventure, being the main one with a full palette of services.


title: Peja

text: Education in Peja is a system with no tuition or fees, mandatory for all children between the ages of 6–18. It consists of a nine-year basic comprehensive school (starting at age six and ending at the age of fifteen) secondary general and professional education commonly known as high school and higher education at Haxhi Zeka University of Peja. It also includes non-mandatory daycare programs for babies and toddlers and a one-year "preschool". The school year runs from early September to late June of the following year. Winter break runs from late December to early January, dividing the school year into two semesters. Peja is the only city in Kosovo that offers high school education in arts and there is also a school for the visually impaired.


title: Peja

text: The Agjencia e Statistikave të Kosovës (ASK) estimated the population of the municipality of Peja at 96,450 in 2011.


title: Peja

text: According to the 1981 census, the city urban area had a population of 54,497 inhabitants; according to the 1991 census it had grown to 68,163. According to the 2011 census, around 49,000 people live in the city of Peja.


title: Peja

text: The vast majority of the inhabitants are Kosovo Albanians. Most Kosovo Serbs live in the village enclaves of Goraždevac, Belo Polje and Ljevoša. There is also a large Bosniak community in the city of Peja and in Vitomirica, while significant Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities reside in urban and rural areas.


title: Peja

text: The architecture in Peja show different architectural styles, from the medieval Serbian, Ottoman, Yugoslav, and contemporary architecture. Because of this there are many churches, mosques, buildings which are attraction points in the city and were built by the aforementioned influences.


title: Peja

text: Peja has one local cinema, Kinema Jusuf Gërvalla, which also functions as a cultural center. It was built in 1955 with money of the Workers’ Union. Back then, the cinema was called 'Kino Rad' ('Workers' Cinema'). Its goals was to provide a cultural space in the city of Peja. During the period 1955-1998 it served as a central point of joint cultural activities for the residents of Peja. Activities included screenings of the latest films, public discussions, music concerts, theatrical performances and children's programs. The cinema was closed down when the war started in 1998 and was heavily damaged in the years after, just like the rest of Peja. In 2000, the building was renovated and partly reconstructed. In 2001, the cinema was reopened, with its name changed to ‘Kinema Jusuf Gërvalla’ in 2002. However, activities became more sporadic, due to technical difficulties and lack of public interest.


title: Peja

text: In 2016, by a municipal decision, the cinema with all its assets was given to the non-governmental organization Anibar, which since 2010 organized the Anibar International Animation Festival in the cinema. The goal was to revitalize Kinema Jusuf Gërvalla. But later that year the Privatization Agency of Kosovo put the building on the list of buildings for privatization, which meant it would lose its public function. However, backlash emerged against the idea of taking this important historic and cultural site from the local community. The protests secured Kinema Jusuf Gërvalla a spot on the temporary list of protected cultural heritage buildings in Kosovo. Currently, Kinema Jusuf Gërvalla is functioning as a cultural center which hosts movie screenings, musical performances, poetry nights, board game nights, and more. It also offers guided tours, which introduces you to the rich history of the cinema.


title: Peja

text: Peja is one of the more successful cities in Kosovan sport. The city is home to the first Olympic Medal for Kosovo, won by Judoka Majlinda Kelmendi in Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016. Her team also has won numerous other medals including gold and bronze in the World and European championships. The main football team of the city is KF Besa Pejë, its basketball teams is KB Peja. KB Peja is the older and more established basketball team. Additionally the city is host to a handball team, KH Besa Famiglia, a volleyball team KV Besa, a judo team Ippon, an athletic team Besa, as well as a women's basketball team KB Penza. Since June 2008 Peja has also a Taekwondo Team: Tae Kwon Do Club Peja ("Klubi i Tae Kwon Do-së Peja").


title: Peja

text: Peja has its aeroclub called "Aeroklub Peja", which was founded in 1948. Last years this club is part of competitions in several countries. In June 2013 it was the organizer of "second Paragliding event" which included paragliders from Kosovo and Albania In 2014 it was the organizer of an international contest called "Peja open PARAGLIDING CUP 2014".


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) was the United States' general plan for nuclear war from 1961 to 2003. The SIOP gave the President of the United States a range of targeting options, and described launch procedures and target sets against which nuclear weapons would be launched. The plan integrated the capabilities of the nuclear triad of strategic bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), and sea-based submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). The SIOP was a highly classified document, and was one of the most secret and sensitive issues in U.S. national security policy.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The first SIOP, titled SIOP-62, was finished on 14 December 1960 and implemented on 1 July 1961 (the start of fiscal year 1962). The SIOP was updated annually until February 2003, when it was replaced by Operations Plan (OPLAN) 8044. Since July 2012, the US nuclear war plan has been OPLAN 8010-12, "Strategic Deterrence and Force Employment".


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: While much of the United States' nuclear war planning process remains classified, some information on the former SIOP planning process has been made public. The planning process began with the President issuing a presidential directive establishing the concepts, goal, and guidelines that provided guidance to the nuclear planners. The Secretary of Defense then used the President's guidance to produce the Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy (NUWEP) that specified basic planning assumptions, attack options, targeting objectives, types of targets, targeting constraints, and coordination with combatant commanders. The NUWEP was then used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to create the "Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP), Annex C (Nuclear)." This document established a more detailed and elaborate set of goals and conditions that included targeting and damage criteria for the use of nuclear weapons. The final stage in the planning process occurred when the Strategic Air Command (SAC) (from 1961 to 1992) or the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) (from 1992 to 2003) took the guidance from the JSCP and created the actual nuclear war plan that becomes the SIOP. Detailed planning was carried out by the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff (JSTPS) co-located with SAC Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: As part of SIOP planning, Strategic Air Command (SAC, later USSTRATCOM) developed a set of plans and a series of options based on a target set known as the National Target Base (NTB). The number of targets in the NTB varied over time, from 16,000 in 1985 to 12,500 at the end of the Cold War in 1991, to 2,500 by 2001. The SIOP was primarily directed against targets in the Soviet Union (later Russia) but targets in the People's Republic of China, which had been part of the SIOP until the 1970s, were added back into the plan in 1997. In 1999, the NTB reportedly included targets in Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: SIOP, and its renamed successors, is most importantly an "integrated" plan that uses both Air Force and Navy delivery systems; it is "single" only in the sense that it comes out of one planning group. The "plan" actually contains multiple "attack options" that are themselves complex plans.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: There is no evidence that the Soviet Union's contingency plans from the end of World War II to 1950 were anything but routine and defensive, and the substantial postwar demobilization of the Soviet military supports the view that the USSR did not view a new war in Europe as likely. Although Soviet doctrine incorporated an assumption of innate hostility of the capitalist powers to Communism, Soviet leader Josef Stalin apparently believed that neither the USSR nor the West could afford to fight another world war, and was skeptical of the Western ability to raise an army large enough to occupy Soviet territory. Soviet planning thus emphasized defenses against nuclear bombing, and attacks on Western European bomber bases. Plans in 1946 and 1948 assumed that during war with an unspecified enemy, Soviet forces in Germany would assume defensive positions within the Soviet occupation zone and wait for reinforcements before counterattacking.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Soviet conventional forces greatly outnumbered the West's, however, and United States strategic nuclear strike plans were developed accordingly. While the United States was the only nation with the atomic bomb, in 1946 it had only 17 Silverplate B-29 bombers and 11 atomic bombs. Many early American war plans were based on using hundreds of nonexisting weapons; for example, an autumn 1945 plan envisioned using 196 atomic bombs on Soviet industrial targets, but SAC could not deliver such quantities until 1952. The bombs were of the Mark 3 type, weighing five tons and requiring 39 men two days to assemble. The press reported that "atomic-capable" B-29s were deployed to Britain in mid-1948 during the Berlin Blockade, by which time the US possessed about 50 atomic weapons. The Soviets likely knew through espionage, however, that none of the aircraft was a Silverplate; rather, they would have been used as part of plan DOUBLEQUICK, involving World War II-like sustained conventional bombing raids on Soviet air bases in Eastern Europe. Other than increasing its anti-aircraft defenses, the Soviets did not change its military preparations in any way during the blockade, unlike the reaction in the West. Although the Soviets launched an intensive public relations effort in 1949, aided by sympathetic Western European fellow travelers, to oppose the formation of NATO, the new alliance's military strength was so weak that the Politburo did not bother to discuss it for six months after its formation.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Strategic bombing during World War II of key transportation and energy sites was more effective than attacking cities, and early postwar non-nuclear war plans envisioned focusing on the Soviet petroleum industry. US war planners lacked updated maps of the USSR, however, and had to use pre-World War II maps—some older than the Russian Revolution—or perhaps German aerial photos from the war. Due in part to the lack of updated intelligence, nuclear planning increasingly focused on urban areas, which were easier to target and offered the potential for "bonus damage". The early Plan Totality targeted 20 cities with the 30 nuclear bombs then available. Plan BROILER (November 1947) envisioned 34 bombs on 24 Soviet cities. It and later plans such as HALFMOON (May 1948; 50 bombs on 20 cities) and OFFTACKLE (December 1949; 104 urban targets, 220 bombs, 72 more reserved for follow-up attacks) envisioned Western forces in Europe slowly retreating while the United Kingdom was reinforced as an air base for atomic attacks on the Soviet Union. President Harry S. Truman hoped for an international ban on atomic weapons and believed that the American people would not support their use for "aggressive purposes", and ordered JCS to devise a plan for conventional war; however, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in July 1948 ordered it to stop and resume atomic war planning due to the Berlin crisis.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Officials were pessimistic about the effectiveness of the atomic plans, however. Britain's December 1948 SPEEDWAY plan assumed that the Soviets would not have atomic weapons, but nonetheless forecast that the West could not "withstand a Russian advance in Western Europe, even with the full defence co-operation of the Western Powers", including 560 American and British atomic-capable bombers. The American TROJAN (December 1948) envisioned 133 bombs (although only 50 existed) hitting 70 cities. A committee led by General Hubert R. Harmon reported in May 1949 that even if all precisely hit their targets, the USSR would not surrender, its leadership would not be seriously weakened, and its military could still operate in Western Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The attacks would reduce Soviet industrial capacity by 30 to 40%, but only temporarily without follow-up attacks. The Harmon report had three immediate results: 1) It supported those within the United States Navy and elsewhere who criticized the centrality of atomic bombs and mass attacks on cities in American war planning. 2) It led to a substantial rise in nuclear-weapons production. 3) It caused the Joint Chiefs of Staff to, in fall 1949, assign SAC with the duty of slowing a Soviet invasion of Western Europe as part of NATO. Erroneous US and British intelligence reports led to exaggerated NATO estimates of Soviet conventional forces. One 1951 estimate foresaw 175 combat divisions allegedly prepared to simultaneously attack Western Europe, the United Kingdom, the Balkans, the Middle East, and North America. The perceived imbalance in forces was so great that American planners feared that even Britain would have to be abandoned during the invasion, a possibility they did not discuss with their British counterparts.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Stalin did consider the possibility of war in Asia, as opposed to Europe. In January 1950, he approved Kim Il Sung's proposal to conquer South Korea in what became the Korean War that summer, believing that victory there would discredit NATO. The gambit backfired, however; despite their initial optimism the Communists were unable to defeat the US-led forces in Korea, and the war greatly increased Western military spending, for the first time making NATO a significant threat against the Soviets in Europe. By late 1950, the USSR notified its Eastern European satellites to prepare for war by the end of 1952, a date matching Western estimates. In early 1951, based on an alleged NATO plan to launch a European war that year from Western proxy Yugoslavia during the Informbiro period as a response to its defeat in Korea, he ordered a massive increase in Eastern European forces that hurt the weaker Communist economies. Based on the Korean precedent, the Soviets apparently expected that the West would not use atomic weapons in a European war. During Stalin's lifetime, Soviet doctrine foresaw the next war as a more destructive version of World War II similarly decided by giant armies supported by massive home fronts, a type of conflict which benefited from the Soviet Union's innate strengths.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The Soviet Union tested its first atomic weapon in 1949, but Stalin seems to have viewed possessing it as a political rather than military benefit, and he did not integrate atomic weapons into the Soviet military's equipment. A 1951 Warsaw Pact war plan for Poland was, Vojtech Mastny wrote, "unequivocally defensive" even while "NATO was haunted by the nightmare of armed communist hordes sweeping all but unopposed through Europe". The Soviets assumed that Western forces were ready to invade and that Eastern Europeans would see them as liberators; as in the West, the Soviets overestimated their enemies' strength.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: By this time, Truman was pessimistic about international arms control and told his advisors "Since we can't obtain international control we must be strongest in atomic weapons." He approved the Harmon report's recommendation for increased weapons production, and approved another increase soon after the start of the Korean War. JCS decided to emphasize "the destruction of known targets affecting the Soviet capability to deliver atomic bombs", with refineries, chemical and power plants, and shipyards as secondary and tertiary targets. The three categories were codenamed BRAVO (blunting), ROMEO (retardation), and DELTA (disruption/destruction) of the Soviet ability to fight, and formed the basis of American nuclear targeting for almost a decade.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: When military theorist Bernard Brodie studied the resulting target list, however, he strongly criticized the planners' ignorance of actual Soviet military capacity and resulting failure to estimate what effect the attacks would have. Brodie later recalled that "There was no calculated strategy for destroying Soviet capability to make war. The planners "simply expected the Soviet Union 'to collapse' as a result of the bombing campaign... People kept talking about the 'Sunday punch'." He recommended that targets be chosen based on analysis of the results of their destruction, and that "city-avoidance" strategies be studied. Brodie presented his report in April 1951, but JCS found SAC head LeMay more persuasive. LeMay objected to the list because of the difficulty of attacking isolated targets and the requirement for pre-attack reconnaissance for many of them. He preferred attacking industrial targets in urban areas so that even if a bomb missed, "a bonus will be derived from the use of the bomb". The target panel agreed to have SAC review future target lists before sending them to JCS.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: By the end of 1953, SAC would have 1,000 nuclear-capable bombers and was deploying the B-47 jet bomber. In January 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower inherited the Truman administration's large defense budget. The new president believed such expenditures threatened the economy, and cut $5 billion in defense spending that spring. Based on extensive experience with nuclear strategy and targeting from his terms as Chief of Staff of the United States Army and NATO Supreme Allied Commander, the Eisenhower administration's NSC 162/2 of October 1953 chose a less expensive, defensive-oriented direction for the military that emphasized "massive retaliation", still primarily delivered by USAF, to deter war.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The document formalized efforts begun under Truman to deploy newly developed tactical nuclear weapons small enough for most Air Force and Navy planes. The administration believed that they would be useful both during a general war and to deter a local one in Europe, and Eisenhower said of tactical weapons that "on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes, I see no reason why they shouldn't be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else".


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The doctrine of massive retaliation meant that, for the first time, atomic weapons became the basis of NATO strategy rather than an option of last resort. Similarly, the Soviet doctrine of non-atomic warfare began to change after Stalin's death in March 1953. In September that year a general proposed in a military journal that new weaponry might end a war quickly unlike World War II, and in October the Soviet Army held its first military exercise based on the enemy using atomic weapons. In 1954 Soviet forces in Europe received their first tactical atomic weapons, by which time Soviet officers publicly debated in the journal the merits of preemptive war.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Many in the West also seriously discussed the idea of preventive and preemptive war. Truman rejected preventive war, stating that "[s]tarting an atomic war is totally unthinkable for rational men", but Attlee stated in 1945 that "twice is he armed who gets in the first blow". JCS proposed in 1947 that the president be authorized to use atomic bombs to prevent a nuclear attack. NSC 68 of April 1950 opposed "a military attack not provoked by a military attack on us or on our allies", but acknowledged "if possible" the benefits of preemptively "landing the first blow" before the Soviet Union did so. In August 1950 Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews publicly advocated a preventive war, but NSC 68 forecast that even after a massive preventive attack the USSR would likely not surrender and its forces could still "dominate most or all of Eurasia."


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: A committee led by retired general Jimmy Doolittle suggested in spring 1953 that the administration study the possibility of giving the Soviets two years to cooperate, with the threat of possible war otherwise, and an Air Force study in August warned of "The Coming National Crisis" due to having to negotiate with a country run by "the whims of a small group of proven barbarians". Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles discussed that month their fears that, once the Soviets acquired fusion weapons, the resulting situation might force the United States into either war or dictatorship. While the president and other civilian and military leaders doubted the morality or legality of preventive war, preemptive war was much less problematic given that NSC 5410/1 March 1954 acknowledged that "the survival of the United States" was at risk. The Central Intelligence Agency believed that it could warn of a surprise Soviet attack days or even weeks ahead of time because of the necessary preparation time, and that up to 30 days would be needed to deliver all Soviet weapons. The BRAVO-ROMEO-DELTA targeting strategy continued, with tactical weapons to be used in Europe while SAC delivered strategic weapons to the USSR.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: SAC obtained almost independent target selection by 1955. The Air Force often used target lists to justify greater weapons production, then greater spending on delivery systems for the additional weapons. Although other services opposed such "bootstrapping", they did not have the IBM 704 computer that SAC used to analyze target priorities so could not offer competing selection lists. Its Basic War Plan of March 1954 planned for up to 735 bombers to simultaneously and massively attack all targets, military and urban, in the USSR. Eisenhower preferred to avoid civilian targets, and by 1954 several Air Force planners advocated a "no-cities" strategy. Other planners and USAF leadership, however, believed that the Soviet Union could support its ""immense" armed forces for at least two years of intensive warfare" if industrial and government centers were not attacked. The possibility existed, they believed, that SAC could in fact deliver a "decisive" attack on the USSR, a tempting idea given the power of the 15-megaton hydrogen bombs being tested. LeMay stated in a 1988 interview that


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Two studies soon concluded, however, that if such a window existed it had either closed or would soon. Weapons Systems Evaluation Group stated in February 1955 that destroying all known Soviet bases would require twice as large a force as the United States expected to field. A National Security Council study found that by mid-1958 the only defense against a devastating Soviet attack would be to attack first after being warned, which Eisenhower believed was impossible. Given the apparent impracticality of massive retaliation strategy, Army Chiefs of Staff Matthew Ridgway and his successor Maxwell Taylor argued within JCS that deterrence, instead of the "worst case" scenario of a full-scale nuclear war, should be the focus. More conventional forces were needed to prevent limited wars from leading to larger nuclear ones; similarly, tactical nuclear weapons should be avoided in local wars to prevent escalation. Eisenhower, however, believed that tactical weapons should be viewed similarly to very large conventional "blockbusters", and did not want American forces stalled within small wars. Massive retaliation remained the basis of American war planning; the Killian Committee reported in 1955 that ""We have an offensive advantage but are vulnerable to surprise attack"" (emphasis in original), and NATO estimated after the Hungarian revolution of 1956 that during wartime Western forces would retreat to the Rhine River within 48 hours.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: By the 1950s, around 5,500 targets were listed to receive SAC bomber strikes; these targets consisted primarily of industrial sites but included counterforce targets. These plans, primarily by the Air Force, tended to be based on selecting targets in order to use up the available weapons, rather than considering the desired effects or strategic outcomes. From a 1957 letter from John H. Moore, former director of nuclear planning, air operations branch, United States European Command, Air Force target planning methodology can be inferred "blast damage frame," with such references as "damage to concrete structures" and the requirement for a "high probability of cratering runways." He cited the "destructive and disruptive nature of nuclear weapons" with megaton yields: "the cumulative or ancillary effects may be as great or greater than primary damage." Specifically, he considered delayed radiation but not thermal effects, but called attention to the idea of "bonus" effects, in which the totality of weapons effects would allow lower-yield weapons to achieve the "desired destruction." In the letter to the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss, Moore noted that the Pentagon "rigorously suppressed" this study and destroyed all copies.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Prior to the development of SIOP and survivable command and control, Eisenhower predelegated nuclear release authority to certain senior commanders. In April 1956, for example, he authorized Air Defense Command to use Genie air-to-air and Nike Hercules surface-to-air missiles during a surprise attack. There have continued to be Continuity of Nuclear Operations Plans (COOP), which designated enough subordinates who, in the event of the National Command Authority and immediate successors being killed in a "decapitation" attack, could still retaliate. While the details have never been made public, Eisenhower's predelegation, and a Federation of American Scientists summary, give a framework.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: In 1958, George Kistiakowsky, a key Manhattan Project scientist and Science Advisor in the Eisenhower Administration, suggested to the President that inspection of foreign military facilities was not sufficient to control their nuclear weapons. Kistiakowsky was particularly concerned with the difficulty of verifying the number, type, and deployment of nuclear-armed missiles on missile submarines, and proposed that the arms control strategy focus on disarmament rather than inspections. He was also concerned with the short warning times available from intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launches, which took away the lengthy decision time available when the nuclear threat came exclusively from manned bombers.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Eisenhower sent Kistiakowsky to Strategic Air Command headquarters where he was, at first, rebuffed. At the same time as the early nuclear arms control work, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Nathan F. Twining, USAF, sent a memorandum in August 1959, to the Secretary of Defense, Neil McElroy, which suggested that the Strategic Air Command be formally assigned responsibility to prepare the national nuclear target list, and a single plan for nuclear operations. Up to that point, the Army, Navy, and Air Force had done their own target planning. That had led to individual targets being multiply targeted by the different services. The separate service plans were not mutually supporting, as, for example, by the Navy destroying an air defense facility on the route of an Air Force bomber going to a target deeper inland. While Twining had sent the memo to McElroy, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff disagreed on the policy during early 1960. Thomas Gates, who succeeded McElroy, asked President Dwight D. Eisenhower to decide the policy.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Eisenhower said he would not "leave his successor with the monstrosity" of the uncoordinated and non-integrated forces that then existed. When Kistiakowsky was not given access, Eisenhower sent him back with a much stronger set of orders giving SAC officers the choice to cooperate with Kistiakowsky, or resign.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Kistiakowsky's report, presented on 29 November, described uncoordinated plans with huge numbers of targets, many of which would be attacked by multiple forces, resulting in overkill. Eisenhower was shocked by the plans, and focused not just on the creation of the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), but on the entire process of picking targets, generating requirements, and planning for nuclear war operations. Separate operational plans from the Air Force and the Navy were combined to form the foundation of the SIOP.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The first plan, following the White House policy guidance, was developed in 1960, consisting of a list of targets (the National Strategic Target List, or NSTL) and the assets to be used against each target. The targets themselves were pulled from the Bombing Encyclopedia, which listed over 80,000 targets of interest. This first SIOP was extensively revised by a team at the RAND Corporation to become SIOP-62, describing a massive strike with the entire US arsenal of 3,200 warheads, totaling 7,847 megatons, against the USSR, China, and Soviet-aligned states with urban and other targets being hit simultaneously. Nine weapons were to be "laid down" on four targets in Leningrad, 23 weapons on six target complexes in Moscow, 18 on seven target areas in Kaliningrad, etc.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Weapon scientist, George Rathjens, looked through SAC's atlas of Soviet cities, searching for the town that most closely resembled Hiroshima in size and industrial concentration. When he found one that roughly matched, he asked how many bombs the SIOP "laid down" on that city. The reply: one 4.5 megaton bomb and three more 1.1 megaton weapons in case the big bomb was a dud (the Hiroshima bomb was 12.5 kilotons). The execution of SIOP-62 was estimated to result in 285 million dead and 40 million casualties in the Soviet Union and China. Presented with all the facts and figures, Thomas D. White of the Air Force found the Plan "splendid." Disregarding the human aspect, SIOP-62 represented an outstanding technological achievement:


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The first SIOP, based on the massive retaliation doctrine, had little flexibility, treating all Communist countries as a uniform bloc. Document JCS 2056/220 expressed the concerns of U.S. Marine Commandant David Shoup that the 1961 draft was inconsistent with a 1959 NSC policy guidance paper approved by Eisenhower. Shoup was especially concerned with language in the draft SIOP that said


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The National Security Archive commentary reports that Shoup asked USAF/SAC Commander Thomas Power "...what would happen if Beijing was not fighting; was there an option to leave Chinese targets out of the attack plan?" Power was reported to have said that he hoped no one would think of that "because it would really screw up the plan"—that is, the plan was supposed to be executed as a whole. Apparently, Shoup then observed that "any plan that kills millions of Chinese when it isn't even their war is not a good plan. This is not the American way."


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: SIOP-62 included the virtual obliteration of the tiny country of Albania because within its borders sat huge Soviet air-defense radar, which had to be taken out with high assurance. Power smiled at Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and said with a mock straight face: "Well, Mr. Secretary, I hope you don't have any friends or relations in Albania, because we are just going to have to wipe it out." McNamara was left with a "macabre, shallow, and horrifying" impression.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: During 1961–1962, the Kennedy administration revised this plan as supervised by McNamara. He aimed to change the doctrine from massive retaliation to flexible response. SIOP-63 took effect in July 1962 and remained mostly unchanged for more than ten years. Instead of one "spasm" attack, it proposed five escalating attack options:


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Many smaller target options were also created for possible use. The plan contemplated the possibility that options 1 and 2 be used to prevent an "impending major Sino-Soviet Bloc attack upon the U.S. or its allies". By 1963, however, McNamara concluded that such plans were useless, because the situations for which nuclear weapons might be used were so unpredictable that advanced planning was impossible.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The five attack options did not address each target category (much less any subsets) separately. Rather, the options were cumulative, each adding a target category to the previous one. All required the expenditure of thousands of nuclear weapons and were subsequently criticized as "five options for massive retaliation."


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: By the mid-1960s both sides had much more accurate understanding of the opposition's forces. While the Soviets were catching up to the Americans' strategic nuclear weapons, NATO was catching up to the Warsaw Pact's conventional forces, in part with tactical nuclear weapons. This increased both sides' confidence; a 1964 Warsaw Pact plan for Czechoslovakia written as a result of the Berlin Crisis of 1961 assumed that the East could capture Lyon within two weeks after the start of hostilities, while contemporary NATO plans expected that it could stop the Warsaw Pact near the eastern border of West Germany, in contrast to the earlier fears of the English Channel if at all. The Warsaw Pact plan did not consider the possibility that American strategic weapons might have crippled the Soviet Union, assuming that superior Soviet air defenses would have stopped most enemy missiles while invading NATO troops would have, the plan stated, "suffered enormous losses from [Soviet] nuclear strikes".


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The Czechoslovakia plan was approved on 14 October 1964, the day Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was overthrown, and after the Prague Spring in 1968 the Soviets had to completely remove the Czech military from its plans. By the late 1960s they moved to a war strategy that lessened the dependence on nuclear weapons, resembling the West's flexible response. Warsaw Pact plans continued to assume, however, that NATO would make a surprise attack which it would repulse into the west; the East Germans even prepared occupation currency and new street signs.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Studies began in 1972–1973 to provide more flexibility for the use of American nuclear weapons. In January 1974 President Richard M. Nixon approved NSDM-242, intended to add more "limited employment options" to help manage escalation, to SIOP-63. The related Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy (NUWEP) of April 1974 provided targets to achieve various goals; for example, the document stated that the United States nuclear forces must possess the ability to destroy 70% of the industrial capacity the Soviet Union needed to recover after a war. These documents formed the basis of SIOP-5 (January 1976), sometimes called the Schlesinger Doctrine after Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. The ever-expanding target lists were split into classes of targets, with a wider range of plans matching strikes to political intentions from counterforce to countervalue, or any mix/withhold strategy to control escalation. Schlesinger described the doctrine as having three main aspects:


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The SIOP policy was further modified during the Carter presidency under , a key section of which stated


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The employment of nuclear forces must be effectively related to operations of our general purpose forces. Our doctrines for the use of forces in nuclear conflict must insure that we can pursue specific policy objectives selected by the National Command Authorities at that time, from general guidelines established in advance. (S)


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: PD59 explored a "warfighting" doctrine that suggested that nuclear plans might change during a war, and that nuclear weapons were to be used in combination with conventional weapons. Carter's Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, emphasized selective counterforce, but also explicitly threatened the Soviet leadership themselves. Major improvements in U.S. command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I), including making elements survivable during a nuclear war, were instituted to make the PD-59 doctrine feasible. Although secret NATO guidelines reportedly limited the size of nuclear weapons that the alliance could use on its territory to 10 kilotons, and prohibited their use in urban NATO areas, by 1982 SIOP-5 contained more than 40,000 possible targets in four categories:


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Whether Soviet military doctrine recognized the difference between counterforce and a general attack was unknown. A 1982 analysis stated, however, that the technically inferior Soviet attack-assessment system would likely have difficulty in differentiating between such attacks. In any case, given that the majority of Soviet nuclear airfields and missile sites were located west of the Ural mountains, many in major population centers, the analysis concluded that the American plans for flexible use of force were meaningless. The author was also skeptical of whether communications to manage escalation—whether on the Moscow–Washington hotline, or between command authorities and their deployed nuclear submarines and bombers—could be maintained, and observed that use of nuclear weapons "are not suited to signalling any precise and unambiguous message".


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: During the Reagan administration, there was a return to a strong counterforce strategy through NSDD-13. This included development of strategic weapons systems that were more accurate, more survivable, or both. Some of these systems eventually took the role of bargaining chips in arms control negotiations, although some, such as the B-2 "stealth" bomber remained highly classified as potential surprises in war. The B-2 was also seen as a counter to Soviet deployment of mobile missiles, which only a manned bomber could find and attack.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: In 1983, President Reagan gave a speech proposing, at the least, research and development into non-nuclear defense systems against nuclear-armed missiles. The idea of effective Strategic Defense Initiative was a potential disruption to the existing balance of Mutual assured destruction, even with its "warfighting" refinements.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: On 1 March 2003, the SIOP was renamed "OPLAN 8022", and later CONPLAN (contingency plan) 8022. It went into deployment in July 2004, but it was reported cancelled in July 2007. It may have been superseded by an expanded CONPLAN 8044.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Another set of "Global Strike" plans include a jointly coordinated a nuclear option, intended for other than the general nuclear war situations, principally with Russia but possibly also with China, postulated in OPLAN 8022. Global Strike plans are codified in CONPLAN 8044.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The President, as a member of the National Command Authority, (NCA) may order the use of nuclear weapons. Subsequent to the President's decision, the release of nuclear weapons is governed by the two-man rule at all times. All military personnel that participate in loading, arming, or firing weapons, as well as transmitting launch orders, are subject to the Personnel Reliability Program (PRP).


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: If the NCA decides that the United States must launch nuclear weapons, the decision is communicated to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) and through him to the National Military Command Center (often called the "war room") via the Presidential Emergency Satchel, informally referred to as the "football." Inside the football is a black book listing a menu of strike options and "The Biscuit," a 3-by-5-inch card with authentication codes for the president to confirm his identity. The menu of strike options include Major Attack Options (MAOs), Selected Attack Options (SAOs), and Limited Attack Options (LAOs). Individual countries or regions can be included in or withheld from nuclear attacks depending on circumstances.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: To communicate the order, the CJCS, or, in his absence, the senior officer in the NMCC verifies the President's identity with a "challenge code" and the President responds with the corresponding authentication code from the biscuit. Additionally, the message will go to the Alternate National Military Command Center (ANMCC), located in Raven Rock Mountain, Pennsylvania, and also to an airborne command post, either the presidential National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC) or the military E-6 Mercury Looking Glass. If the NMCC is destroyed by a first strike, either the ANMCC, NAOC or Looking Glass can issue the orders to execute the SIOP.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The senior NMCC officer directs preparation of the launch order in the form of an Emergency War Order (EWO) – a message that contains the chosen war plan, time to launch, authentication codes and codes needed to unlock the missiles before firing them. A second officer will validate that order. The order is then broadcast to each worldwide command and directly to launch crews by releasing an Emergency Action Message (EAM) which is an encoded and encrypted message about 150 characters long.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: As the orders go down the chain of command, always subject to the two-man rule, intermediate headquarters, and eventually the nuclear delivery platforms themselves, will receive Emergency Action Messages (EAM) to arm or launch weapons. For most modern weapons, the EAM will also include codes for Permissive Action Links (PAL). At a minimum, a PAL code will actually arm a weapon for release. The circuitry controlling the PAL is deliberately positioned inside the warhead such that it cannot be reached without disabling the weapon, at a minimum, to a level that would require a full factory-level rebuild. There may be separate PAL codes for arming and launch. Some weapons have "dial-a-yield" functions that allow the power of the nuclear explosion to be adjusted from minimum to maximum yield. Most weapons have additional arming circuitry that, even if a valid launch code is entered, will not arm the warhead unless the weapon senses that it has been released on an expected delivery path. For example, the first steps of the final arming process for a ballistic missile depend on physical characteristics of the weapon release, such as the acceleration of a rocket launch, zero-gravity coasting, and various physical aspects of hypersonic reentry into the atmosphere. A gravity bomb dropped from an aircraft will detect the altitude of release and the decreasing altitude as it falls.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Journalist Ron Rosenbaum has pointed out that the SIOP is entirely concerned with the identity of the commanding officer and the authenticity of the order, and there are no safeguards to verify that the person issuing the order is actually sane. "The president has supreme authority to decide whether to use America's nuclear weapons. Period. Full stop," says the Arms Control Association's Kingston Reif. A president could only be stopped by mutiny, he explained, and more than one person would have to disobey the president's orders. Notably, Major Harold Hering was eventually forced out of the Air Force for asking during his missile training course how he could know that an order to launch his missiles was "lawful," that it came from a sane president, one who wasn't "imbalance[d]" or "berserk."


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Although after World War II the formal military alliance between the United States and United Kingdom no longer existed, American postwar war plans required using British air bases until the United States developed ICBMs and long-range bombers. American General Carl Spaatz and Chief of the Air Staff Lord Tedder informally agreed in 1946 to US aircraft using British bases. The discussions, and the subsequent actions such as extending runways, were so secret that it is unclear whether Prime Minister Clement Attlee was aware of them. By 1948, the year of the Berlin Blockade, British leaders expected that "in a future world conflict, US and British forces will find themselves fighting side by side" although the alliance had not been formally renewed. The two countries began coordinating their plans for a Soviet attack in Europe after the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, and later that year General Curtis LeMay, head of Strategic Air Command (SAC), asked Tedder to allow the basing of American atomic weapons in Britain. By the end of 1948, several British bases were atomic-capable or were close to being so, but the ability to fight an atomic war from Britain did not exist until April 1949 when Silverplate B-29 bombers began rotating through the bases, and no American atomic weapons were present in Britain until 1952.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: Aware that with or without bombs, the bases made Britain what Winston Churchill called a "bull's-eye" for Soviet attack, he and other British leaders made repeated unsuccessful attempts to learn details of American war plans, and not until 1951 did the United States formally, if vaguely, agree to consult with Britain before using atomic weapons based there. As Tedder complained during the Berlin crisis, when war at any moment seemed possible, the defense of the West relied "on the use of a weapon about which we in fact know very little". British plans such as SPEEDWAY, which discussed American-British-Canadian joint planning for the early part of a war over the next 18 months, likely incorporated some information informally sent by the United States, including projections on future bomb production and targets. The Chiefs of Staff Committee was dissatisfied, however, writing that "We are at a disadvantage in that ... we do not know the details of the number of [American] atomic weapons to be used and so cannot assess with any accuracy the results that can be achieved."


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: The United States preferred that Britain not develop atomic weapons at all. Because of the American fear of the USSR obtaining British atomic technology after conquering the country, in February 1949 Eisenhower offered to General William Duthie Morgan American atomic weapons if the British nuclear weapons program ended. Britain would have used the weapons in its own aircraft for its own targets, but refused the offer, and the United States decided that partnership was preferable to losing influence with the United Kingdom. The British sought an independent, domestic nuclear deterrent that by itself could persuade the USSR to not attack, in part because they feared that America might not be willing to defend Europe with its nuclear missiles once the USSR could attack the United States itself, or during wartime not prioritize targets that threatened the United Kingdom. In 1950 RAF Bomber Command asked for, and received, 70 B-29s from the United States after offering to place them under the control of SAC during wartime. The bombers were becoming obsolete, however. The British never made them nuclear-capable, and the RAF refused the US's request for SAC's complete targeting control over the sophisticated British-built V bombers which began deploying in 1955. Britain's goal of an independent deterrent aimed at Soviet cities was so important that, when it offered to place the V Bombers under SACEUR authority in 1953 in exchange for American financial aid to purchase new fighters, it refused to agree to them being used in a tactical role against Soviet targets in Europe. The agreement permitted Britain to commit only nominal forces to SACEUR, and presaged future technology and targeting cooperation.


title: Single Integrated Operational Plan

text: As the USAF began in 1955 helping the RAF to convert V bombers to carry American atomic weapons under Project E and hydrogen weapons under Project X, cooperation increased and the United States began sharing some war plan details. Although both nations remained reluctant to fully share their plans—as late as 1956, Britain did not have targeting information even for SAC aircraft it hosted—redundancies were eliminated by one side asking the other whether it planned to attack various targets. In February 1959, the USAF agreed to target 150 Soviet bases that threatened Britain with nuclear weapons, while V bombers would use nuclear weapons to attack Soviet air defenses before SAC arrived. The RAF retained a separate plan to attack 30 Soviet cities with hydrogen bombs. The agreement formed the basis for the ongoing nuclear-targeting cooperation between the two countries, and the different target types resembled the two nations' different priorities during the Combined Bomber Offensive of World War II. The Anglo-American dispute during the 1956 Suez Crisis only briefly disrupted the partnership, and the desire to restore relations to their former level, and the Sputnik crisis, increased American willingness to help Britain improve its atomic weaponry. In March 1957 the United States agreed to sell 60 Thor IRBMs, in 1958 American hydrogen-weapon designs, in 1960 the Skybolt ALBM, and after its cancellation the Polaris SLBM in 1962 as replacement. Polaris was especially notable; British officials initially refused to believe the Americans' offer of state-of-the-art submarine missiles at a moderate price, and one scholar later called it "amazing".