Monday Night's Nuclear Missile Crisis Update 7-7-2007

Jul 07, 2007 11:46

UPDATE July 7, 2007 to "Monday Night's Nuclear Missile Crisis" posted Jun 29, 2007

The incident was apparently between US and Russian forces. The story was picked up by Bill Gertz in "Inside the Ring" on July 5 2007.

The US spun the story with ambiguity but the ham operators heard the frantic open conversations. There was too much traffic to encrypt all of it, and their urgency left them no choice but to use open radio to assure that the messages got through. Gertz wrote:

"International radio operators picked up large numbers of coded Air Force communications being sent around the world on June 26 that indicated some type of military activity was about to take place.

A U.S. military official said the radio traffic was monitored from the Air Force Global High Frequency System (GHFS) that some observers regarded as "extraordinary" because of the unprecedented length of messages. They were sent to Air Force commanders at Andrews Air Force Base; Wideawake Airfield on Ascension Island; Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska; Andersen Air Force Base, Guam; Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii; Lajes Field in the Azores; Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska; Salinas Air Base, Puerto Rico; Thule Air Base, Greenland; and Yokota Air Base, Japan. All are sites of GHFS ground stations.

The messages appeared to be emergency action messages, coded communications sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to U.S. Air Force strategic nuclear forces.

The messages sent June 26 included 174 characters, much longer than normal 30-character messages, and amateur radio monitors say they have not seen the size of this message since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Air Force Maj. Tom Knowles, a U.S. Strategic Command spokesman, said there were no large-scale exercises going on that would account for what were likely "routine" messages."

Good work Hawk!

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