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Wikipedia / Post-Attack Command and Control System

The Post Attack Command and Control System (PACCS) was a network of communication sites (both ground and airborne) for use before, during and after a nuclear attack on the United States. PACCS was designed to ensure that National Command Authority would retain exclusive and complete control over American nuclear weapons. Among other components, it included Strategic Air Command assets such as the Looking Glass aircraft and mission, and various hardened command and control facilities.

Belief by the Soviet Union in the reliability of PACCS was a crucial component of the American mutual assured destruction doctrine, ensuring a long-term stalemate.

History

The Strategic Air Command headquarters staff, under the direction of General Thomas S. Power assessed the feasibility of placing a continuous command and control element in an airborne mode. The purpose of such a system would be to use the aircraft as a platform for specially installed communications equipment to ensure delivery of command directives to SAC strike forces in the event ground-based headquarters were destroyed.

The original plan envisioned an aircraft, crew, and command and control team on 15-minute ground alert. This was later changed to a continuous airborne alert posture. The functions of this PACCS Airborne Command Post kept expanding until it became a true alternate command and control system, complete with force status monitoring, initiation or relay of launch/execution directives, a battle staff, communications to support an alternate CINCSAC, and limited capabilities to reconstitute and replan residual resources.

PACCS, in later variants, included an Airborne Launch Control System (ALCS) capability, which provided an alternate means for execution message delivery to missile combat crews and a back-up launch control center, forcing the Soviet Union to target each missile silo, rather than just the launch control centers, to incapacitate the Minuteman force.

Components

Airborne

E-4B National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP)

EC-135 Airborne Command Post (ABNCP) "Looking Glass"

22d Air Refueling Squadron - March Air Force Base, California; West Auxiliary Command Post (West AUXCP)

  • Ground Entry Point - Lamar, Colorado

99th Air Refueling Squadron - Westover Air Force Base, Massachusetts; East Auxiliary Command Post (East AUXCP)

  • Ground Entry Point - Plano, Illinois

913th Air Refueling Squadron - Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana; Central Auxiliary Command Post (Central AUX)

  • Ground Entry Point - Lyons, Nebraska

EB-47L

Ground

Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska (Strategic Air Command Headquarters)

Communications

Gallery

See also

References