When Nuclear Deterrence Is Your Job

It was once my job to help protect the United States from a nuclear attack. From 2009 to 2012, I was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, serving as a flight officer aboard the E-6B Mercury. The plane can act as an airborne command post in case of a nuclear attack, and its crew members can relay orders to launch nuclear weapons. Our mission was nuclear deterrence—preventing a state from attacking America with its nuclear weapons through the implicit threat of America’s own nuclear-weapon capability.

These days, this mission is especially pressing. Tensions between the United States and North Korea have escalated, in part due to the adversarial relationship between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, who, in a New Year’s Day speech, his country’s ability and willingness to strike the United States, and noted that “the nuclear button is always on the desk of [his] office.” Several days later, President Trump responded with an aggressive tweet, saying that he, too, had a nuclear button, and that his was “much bigger and more powerful” than