Successful hostage rescue carried out by SEAL Team Six in Nigeria:
U.S. forces have rescued an American hostage in northern Nigeria. Philip Walton, who was abducted by a criminal gang, was rescued by SEAL Team 6, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports. Officials had feared the gang would sell him to terrorists operating in the region.
“U.S. forces conducted a hostage rescue operation during the early hours of 31 October in Northern Nigeria to recover an American citizen held hostage by a group of armed men,” Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement Saturday. “This American citizen is safe and is now in the care of the U.S. Department of State.”
The statement said no U.S military personnel were injured in the operation.
pyrhic
1575
So i thought of something chilling just now, figured this would be the place to ask. Does anyone know anything about how our tactical nukes are stored and secured? I assume in the event they were ever needed, they would be deployed from one of several secure facilities on authorization from the president, and once authorization was released the local unit commander would be able to use them in a tactical situation as deemed significantly important.
So i guess what i’m getting at is, if some idiot calls for total war, and a national guard deploys against a real or imagined insurrection, could it find itself with nukes?
I mean, “does the military sign out tactical nukes to Sergeant Derpsalot for exercises with his squad of Freedom Warriors” is a question I hope to fuck has a real dismissive answer.
ShivaX
1577
The Guard does not have access to nukes in any way, shape or form.
Carrier groups and Strategic Command do, but nukes are controlled exclusively by the Navy and Airforce to the best of my knowledge. Army doesn’t have any that I’m aware of, but they might have a few tacticals. Most tactical nukes have been phased out anyway, so any nuclear artillery shells or the like have probably been decommissioned.
Basically the Triad that Trump still doesn’t know about. Airforce, Navy, Ballistic Missiles.
We don’t let individual States keep track of/control nuclear weapons for obvious reasons.
Edit:
These are still around and near as I can tell are the only tactical nukes left in our arsenal?
vyshka
1578
Local commander in a case like that is most likely talking about divisional level, and they wouldn’t be handing them out to NG units. I’m not sure they are even in a state where they could do that in CONUS. It was a contingency in Europe during the Cold War.
Timex
1579
While i was driving today, i heard that Esper prepared his resignation letter.
So that’s kind of a thing, huh?
antlers
1580
The talk was that is a standard thing for cabinet-level officials during an election where the president is running for a new term, so not as much news value as you might think. The details of Trump’s housecleaning might be amusing.
pyrhic
1581
Thanks, this was the answer i was hoping for, as i was thinking primarily about artillery nukes.
During the Cold War, overseas, tactical weapons were I think more widely distributed. Of course, that was a time when, depending on the decade, you had everything from the ridiculous Davy Crocket and (IIRC never fielded?) 152mm Shillelagh nuke for the M60A2 Starship/M551 Sheridan, to the more ubiquitous nuclear arty shells, as well as the host of tactical bombs and Lance missile warheads and atomic demolition charges. In Germany, given the expected war scenarios, it was necessary to have weapons dispersed for a variety of reasons. And that was of course just the American weapons. I have no clue about the British or French nukes, to the extent they had tactical systems.
When the Air Force decided to base F-35s here in Vermont (and yes, those suckers are LOUD), there were worries that they would also base nukes at the ANG base in Burlington. While naturally the AF does not comment on such things (duh), it was widely regarded by knowledgeable people to be extremely unlikely that the Air Force would do any such thing. Almost certainly, whatever weapons like that that might be necessary would be mated up with the aircraft somewhere else, as it again would be rather unlikely they’d be mounting strikes straight out of Vermont. Like, they bombin’ Canada or what?
pyrhic
1585
so, if you fire the leader of the agency that oversees the nuclear weapons…
Trump orders the military to seize the ballots in Pennsylvania, film at eleven.
At which point the military says “Nope. That’s not how it works.”
Well, yes, I was being facetious of course. But in the mind of the Great Leader, I’m sure that’s exactly how it works!
Timex
1589
I think it’d be more likely that they’d literally just tell him they are doing it, and it’d be complete in 2 weeks.
Or by January 21st, at the latest.
So, he’s slowed down the churn?
