13.01.2025

The Challenges of Nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3)

Militaries – and some politicians – have a lot to say about command and control: usual regarding military operations but rarely are they averse to talking about how their experiences of C2 relate to the remainder of the national security environment (from policing to running a related industry). There is one topic, however, that few are willing to discuss or opine on: nuclear command and control, often including the dedicated communications pathways necessary for this boutique task (hence it is more commonly referred to as NC3).

That definition works in many states but for the major players in nuclear strategy, the sobriquet NC3 also includes the intelligence support and systems needed to inform decision-makers who will give the executive order delated to nuclear weapon employment. In these states NC3 includes a vast array of systems, sensors, nodes, and mediums that enable decisions to be taken by political leaders at the highest levels (see Heather Williams’ 10 December 2024 article in CSIS online for a useful overview, notes section has a link).

It is not simply those things that make NC3 so starkly different to military C2 in every other aspect of national security. People that do not understand the theories of strategic stability – the foundation of nuclear deterrence between major states – often make some startling conclusions about NC3; usually related to the opportunities to integrate NC3 into conventional military C2 streams (like CJADC2), or the opportunities for inserting cutting edge technology into such systems. In reality, any move to cohere military C2 systems together in this way would be detrimental to both national interests and potentially escalatory in a realm that should have very little ambiguity present.

Nuclear weapons policy has two potential ways of thinking about nuclear weapon employment: Counter value and counter target. The former foresees weapons used against targets that nation states truly value – population centres, areas of critical national infrastructure, political leadership etc. Counter target strategies advocate for nuclear weapon employment against the military forces of an opponent rendering that state defenceless. NC3 plays an intricate part of each of these theories. Indeed, the long-established practices from the Cold War held that an attack on any part of the NC3 network could reasonably be determined as an element of a nuclear attack. As such, these two systems (NC3 and conventional C2) have been deliberately separated for a very good reason; this delineation between conventional and nuclear C2 allows for clear signalling and messaging between great powers.

Whilst these were understood protocols between the United States and the USSR during the Cold War, which may still be valid today, it seems as though both India and Pakistan also adhere to such principles. What is less certain is how China – a state building nuclear weapons at a considerable rate and representing a challenge to great power stability – considers these assumptions. It is less important to comprehend how other nuclear weapons states think about NC3 (given the number of weapons they possess, as well the capabilities of their stockpiles, they present a different style of challenge from strategic stability).

Decision making about nuclear weapon employment is no longer simply a two-player set of variables. The arrival of China’s nuclear arsenal, as well as the way that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are supporting each other in military campaigns around the world, mean that additional factors need to be considered in decision-making: increasingly difficult when intelligence agencies and analysts are less certain about the cultural rationality of such actors individually or in concert. This is sometimes referred to in national security circles as a ‘3 body problem’.

This is a core problem for NC3 and strategic stability theories: transposing Cold War presumptions onto contemporary issues is problematic. When such uncertainties are present in a system, making rapid and unpredictable changes to a process that underpins how many of the key actors perceive it would be exceptionally foolhardy.

Current assumptions about NC3 mean that activity and advancements in such systems and processes must be predictable and signalled well in advance. Changes need to be understood on all sides to retain the surety of NC3 decision-making. The systems also need to be resilient and robust in the event they are needed. Given these requirements, there is considerable attraction in maintaining analogue systems over more advanced digital ones that could be susceptible to digital or cyber-attack avenues (whether deliberate or accidental): moving to a digital plane offers an additional attack surface that needs to be defended and protected. Legacy systems, however, are proving complex to maintain when much of associated infrastructure and equipment has not been manufactured or used elsewhere in more than 30 years in the rest of society.

Such reasoning is hard for military leaders to square with their wider hopes and desires for integrating both Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) into everything military as they seek a military ‘edge’. Given the fine balances of human perception included in the final decisions about employing nuclear weapons, the uncertainties about AI and ML make this an area that informed people are unwilling to advocate for. There are useful areas that it can play a role however: in fusing early warning intelligence and data, there is some evidence that AI and ML can provide information in a way that provides decision-makers with more time. And that time is THE key factor in NC3.

The final decision over employment of nuclear weapons is usually to be made by a politician – people who, according to those close to their offices, do not spend much time considering such matters. Human behaviour thus plays an outsized role in NC3. Militaries spend a considerable amount of time preparing their leaders for C2 in conventional roles. One wonders why, given all the complexities associated with the changing aspects of strategic stability today, more time and energy is not expended educating our leaders. Despite their busy diaries, there is little doubt that societies would be far more reassured that their elected leaders understood the implications of their decisions before they were called on to make such decisions. The vital question about NC3 is less about systems and more about time management: How do we persuade political leaders to allocate time to thinking about nuclear weapon employment? Our failure to do so reflects badly on us all.