


North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump boasted this week that they have the ability to launch nuclear weapons with the push of a button.

Trump — who said his is "bigger" — has no such button, and it is likely that Kim doesn't have one either, nuclear experts say. The reality of launching a nuclear war is more complex.

Even so, a U.S. president can launch nuclear weapons almost as quickly as if he had a button to press in the Oval Office.

“Right now we could launch within 15 minutes around 800 nuclear warheads,” said Bruce Blair, a research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University.

But the system is designed with checks and balances to avoid inadvertent launches or improper orders.

The exchange between Kim and Trump has focused the world’s attention on a process that remains shrouded in lore, fueled by movies such as Dr. Strangelove, a 1962 satire about a rogue Air Force general who orders a first strike on the Soviet Union.

U.S. military officials say they regularly train and review the procedures for a nuclear strike because of the enormous ramifications of such a decision.

“We think about these things a lot,” said Air Force Gen. John Hyten, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees the nuclear arsenal. “When you have this responsibility how do you not think about it?”

Hyten said his job is to provide advice to the president, helping him ensure the response is in line with international law. “We’ll come up with options of a mix of capabilities to respond to whatever the situation is and that’s the way it works,” he said at a recent conference.

The system is streamlined so that nuclear missiles can be launched quickly once a decision is made.

If a strike were contemplated, the president would meet with advisers in the emergency operations center, a secure bunker under the East Wing of the White House, or he would convene a conference call if not in Washington.

The meeting would include about 15 people, including the Defense secretary and the national security adviser. The person briefing the president would be the head of Strategic Command, Blair said.

The nuclear "football," a satchel carried by a military aide who is always near the president, contains documents that describe various nuclear options.

“It’s not a communications device,” Blair said. “The satchel doesn’t carry anything of interest.”

It may contain the codes presidents use to authenticate themselves in issuing a nuclear order, but some presidents have elected to carry the codes on a card, called the “biscuit,” in their pockets. President Clinton lost the card for several months, according to reports at the time.

Once a decision is made, a special command center in the Pentagon issues orders that go directly to missile silos, aircraft or submarines that can launch nuclear missiles. The orders can be quickly authenticated before missiles are launched.

The nuclear chain of command is much quicker than one used for conventional operations, which can take days or weeks. "It is designed to serve the president," Blair said.

Far less is known about North Korea’s process for launching nuclear weapons, though experts say it is probably less developed and more personality driven than the U.S. system, since North Korea only obtained nuclear weapons in recent years and Kim runs his nation as an unrivaled dictator.

“The protocols that would exist would be fairly new or not fully developed,” said Michael Elleman, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The flow of orders would go from Kim Jong Un to a person he trusted in the chain of command.”


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