I voted FOR the candidate with the experience and temperament to be president. My ballot is never cast Against a candidate.

As I recall, during the final weeks of the Nixon Administration, the military decided to not follow any nuke orders from the president.

At the moment we have to be careful that we wouldn’t be shooting down a test flight, rather than an attack. But at some point we, or the UN, could declare a “no launch zone” over North Korea, and just automatically shoot down anything with a reasonable infrared and trajectory signature, and say eff-em.

Back to the main issue: Relax a little, Robert. The odds of Trump actually burning down the country, or the world, are pretty slim, if not completely zero. But I can live with asymptotic. I have to, considering Kim Jong Un has drawn a bullseye on my head.

While I am sure that under the right circumstances the ABL could shoot down a missile, it never seemed very practical…
You needed to have the ABL in the sky in range with line of sight ready to fire when you enemy launches a surprise nuke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

Secretary of Defense Gates summarized fundamental concerns with the practicality of the program concept:

“I don’t know anybody at the Department of Defense, Mr. Tiahrt, who thinks that this program should, or would, ever be operationally deployed. The reality is that you would need a laser something like 20 to 30 times more powerful than the chemical laser in the plane right now to be able to get any distance from the launch site to fire….So, right now the ABL would have to orbit inside the borders of Iran in order to be able to try and use its laser to shoot down that missile in the boost phase. And if you were to operationalize this you would be looking at 10 to 20 747s, at a billion and a half dollars apiece, and $100 million a year to operate. And there’s nobody in uniform that I know who believes that this is a workable concept.”[19]

The Air Force did not request further funds for the Airborne Laser for 2010; Air Force Chief of Staff Schwartz has said that the system “does not reflect something that is operationally viable”

Sadly, I am sure lasers will find a place on the battlefield- as a weapon – especially at sea…

One possibility is that Trump gets his feelings hurt by a head of state, or fails a trade deal, or something equally existential, and tries to order a first strike in a fit of pique. Odds of success: Asymptotically approaching zero. Too many people will question it and push back, delaying implementation until the 25th Amendment strait jacket can be fitted.

The other branch of the scenario tree is the one you’re hitting on, acting fast in the event of an attack. I’m as sure as you that Trump would blow it if it came down to the scenario of shaky information and little time, but consider that the only even semi-credible source for such an attack is North Korea, probably on my head. So when it comes to recognizing an attack and responding properly, there’s really only one place we need to keep an eye on.

There are little signs that the US military has been building up a west-facing defense for years now, and one thing you can count on, there will be no false alarms from all the radar stations in South Korea keeping the North under intense surveillance, and we won’t miss the launch either.

You’d know this one: How’s it going with the airborne laser? The one that would have a perfect base in South Korea to hit a missile in the North during boost phase. Whenever a weapon system development program drops from the news, I figure it’s operational.

Anyway, I’m not arguing against the absolutely possibility of Trump burning down the country. Or the world. I’m just trying to make a graduated risk assessment.

Odds are much higher that Trump will burn down the economy, civil rights, the environment, and democracy. Stay tuned.

What is more likely to happen IMO is an accidental launch of a tactical nuke on some battlefield or out at sea that suddenly escalates as mid-level commanders start seeing their front-line units winking off the boards. Once nuclear weapons are deployed on the tactical battlefield, it will only be a matter of hours before it escalates to strategic missiles. Remember, it won’t be just two opponents involved, there will be several other countries already at full alert when the first balloon goes up. A lot of fingers will be on the trigger.

In fact the ability of the president to launch nukes is shockingly free of checks and balances… since it can be done in less than 10 minutes with no oversight.

The “nuclear button” is a metaphor for a complex apparatus that has the president’s brain at its apex. The image of a commander in chief simply pressing a button captures none of the machinery, people and procedures designed to inform the president and translate his or her decisions into coherent action. Although it remains shrouded in secrecy, we actually know a great deal about it, beginning with the president’s first task of opening the “nuclear suitcase” in an emergency to review his nuclear attack options. If we shine our light at the tactical and timing considerations of how a first- or second-strike attack would unfold, and at the inner workings of the nuclear decision process from the standpoint of the White House, we gain a much better idea of a presidential candidate’s fitness for this responsibility. And here it is essential to consider a candidate’s temperament and character—especially in situations of extreme stress. Decisiveness is important, but so is prudence.

Let us say the president is awakened in the middle of the night (the proverbial 3 a.m. phone call) by his or her top nuclear adviser and told of an incoming nuclear strike. Since the flight time of missiles fired from launch stations in Russia or China to the White House is 30 minutes, and 12 minutes or less for missiles fired from submarines lurking in the Western Atlantic Ocean (Russian subs historically favor a patrol area to the west of Bermuda), the steadiness and brainpower of the commander in chief in such circumstances are serious questions indeed. The voting public must ask whether a given candidate would remain calm—or panic, become discombobulated and driven to order an immediate nuclear response on the basis of false information.

This call has never happened, but if it ever does, the situation would be as stressful and dangerous as things ever get inside the Oval Office. The closest we came to such a call occurred in 1979, when the consoles at our early warning hub in Colorado lit up with indications of a large-scale Soviet missile attack. President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, received back-to-back calls in the middle of the night informing him of the imminent nuclear destruction of the United States. The second call reported an all-out attack. Brzezinski was seconds away from waking Carter to pass on the dreadful news and convince him of the need to order retaliation without delay (within a six-minute deadline). Brzezinski was sure the end was near.

Just before he picked up the phone to call Carter, Brzezinski received a third call, this time canceling the alarm. It was a mistake caused by human and technical error. A training tape simulating an all-out Soviet attack had inadvertently slipped into the actual real-time attack early warning network. The impending nuclear holocaust was a mirage that confused the duty crew. (They were fired for taking eight minutes instead of the required three minutes to declare their degree of confidence that an attack against North America was underway.)

Timeline for doomsday HERE

Does THIS sound like everyone that should be is in the loop with his decisions:

At the Pentagon, the first of the three tweets raised fears that the president was getting ready to announce strikes on North Korea or some other military action. Many said they were left in suspense for nine minutes, the time between the first and second tweet. Only after the second tweet did military officials receive the news the president was announcing a personnel change on Twitter.
At 9:04am, Trump finally sent out the second part of his thought in another tweet. And while it wasn’t about starting a war, it was about a bigoted and unnecessary new policy that would forbid transgender Americans from serving their country.

Trump is broadcasting his state of mind like some kind of sci-fi telepathy beast, blanketing the Earth in a toxic field of tweets. So when he snaps completely, a lot of people around him will be watching for it, and perhaps be ready. Not for nothing that the 25th Amendment is more than a trivia question these days.

Also, Trump’s not the only junkyard dog in Washington. The teabaggers might get fed up with Trump, and settle for burning down a President now that they can’t burn down health care. They’re another possible check on Trump, not so much out of principle as spite. Whatever works.

I don’t think there’s a need to play Paul Revere with Trump. He’s been rubbing our nerves so raw for so long that the whole world is hypersensitive to his every transgression. Nothing’s gonna just slide.

So yeah, I think that if Trump is cornered, he’d go all Khan, but without the Byron; but I think a bunch of people in strategic positions are already holding fire extinguishers.

I sure hope so.