Harold Hering - Wikipedia

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2024-11-07 07:00:03

Harold L. Hering (born 1936)[ 2] is a former officer of the United States Air Force, who was discharged in 1975 for requesting basic information about checks and balances to prevent an unauthorized order to launch nuclear missiles.[ 3] Hering was subsequently presented the 2017 Courage of Conscience Award at the Peace Abbey, Boston, Massachusetts.

Hering served six tours of duty in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Hering received the Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal[citation needed ], and Air Medal with eight Oak leaf clusters[citation needed ] for his work in Vietnam flying helicopters.[ 1]

Hering served in the Vietnam War as part of the Air Rescue Service.[ 3] Twenty-one years into his Air Force career[failed verification ], while serving as a Minuteman missile crewman and expecting a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel,[ 3] he posed the following question during training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in late 1973, at a time when Richard Nixon was president:[ 4]

The Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) specifies that, when the National Command Authority (NCA) issues an order to use nuclear weapons, the order will filter down the chain of command. Per the SIOP, decision-making is the responsibility of the NCA, not of officers lower in the chain of command, who are responsible for executing NCA decisions. To ensure no opportunity for execution by a rogue operator, the two-man rule requires that at each stage, two operators independently verify and agree that the order is valid. In the case of the Minuteman missile, this is done by comparing the authorization code in the launch order against the code in the Sealed Authenticator, a special sealed envelope which holds the code; if both operators agree that the code matches, the launch must be executed.

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