35,000 Hours Through the Looking Glass

In its 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year alert against surprise attack, the U.S. depends on a foolproof communications system. To make sure that communications work even in the event of a massive missile attack that could destroy most of the vital command centers of U.S. defense, the Strategic Air Command maintains an emergency headquarters command and communications staff headed by a general in a jet airplane five miles in the sky. That system was initiated four years ago last week and--figuratively speaking--the plane has been circling aloft for more than 35,000 hours.

There are, in fact, several such planes --adapted models of the familiar Boeing 707 commercial airliner--that spell each other in eight-hour, all-weather shifts. No one plane lands until another has become airborne. Dubbed "Looking Glass," the plane is manned by a crew that flies a random pattern within radar distance of SAC's Omaha headquarters. The SAC general aboard, one of 50 who regularly pull Looking Glass duty, is the AEAO (for Airborne Emergency Actions Officer). He is in charge of a group of officers and technicians maintaining instant communications with Omaha, the White House, the Pentagon, and each of the 70 SAC bases all over the world.

Under certain specifically detailed emergency conditions, the Looking Glass plane would become a crucial factor in U.S. strategy by operating as a relay station that would send messages from superior command stations on the ground to SAC bombers and missile-launching sites. If all or most ground commands were wiped out, the AEAO would take over the direction of a U.S. thermonuclear retaliation. Through a multiple-checked series of authentications, he would break open a locked "red box" and issue the "Go" orders to missile sites and bomber bases that would send nuclear warheads toward preselected targets. Says one AEAO officer, Major General Alvan C. Gillem: "If I were the last remaining American, I wouldn't sit there and do nothing."

To make absolutely certain that no one man, from the AEAO on down, can start a Strangelove-style war of his own, every member of the Looking Glass team carries a .38-cal. revolver aboard. Said General Gillem last week: "If I were to reach for the red box without authorization, I would probably find the revolvers of seven or eight men at the back of my head."

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