In the new Kathryn Bigelow film, A House of Dynamite, a US president has 18 minutes to decide whether a missile heading towards the United States is a nuclear threat, and what he should authorise as retaliation. But the scenario can no longer be dismissed as unlikely. With near-nightly Russian ballistic missile attacks on Ukraine, as well as missiles being fired from Iran and Yemen against Israel, attacks are no longer unthinkable – they are the new normal.
A whole range of doctrine and behaviour which was developed during the Cold War, and subsequently forgotten after 1990, has had to be rediscovered by governments all over Europe – but especially in those nuclear-armed capitals of London and Paris. If you are the Netherlands and a nuclear missile is heading your way, there is little you can do, and nothing in retaliation – a British prime minister or a French president has a momentous decision to make, just like the fictional US president in the film.
When thinking about what the events depicted in A House of Dynamite might mean for the UK, one thing is different – the PM at the time will not have 18 minutes or so, but a fraction of that. A (nuclear-armed) ballistic missile fired from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad would reach London in about six minutes – maybe 10 minutes-plus if fired from Russia proper. Time will not be on any PM’s side. The clock is ticking for a decision…
If a ballistic missile were to be fired against the UK, the first warnings would come from either US space-based missile launch satellites, the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS), or more likely from the US Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radar network at RAF Fylingdales in Yorkshire. The RAF Fylingdales radars operate 24/7, and can cover out to western Russia.
Within seconds, notice would be passed to the RAF HQ at High Wycombe, as well as the MoD, and then onward to No 10. As long as any such missile launch came from obvious territory (Kaliningrad), then provenance could be proved – but intent and warhead would still be unknown. But the tracking radars would be able to state rapidly that a ballistic missile’s course would, or would not, hit a target in Britain.
Radars such as those at RAF Fylingdales can undertake quite accurate identification of a missile, and will likely be in a position to say whether the missile’s signature is that of a weapon normally used for nuclear delivery.
But there are some new uncertainties: if an Oreshnik ballistic missile were to be launched from what looked like Russia, can it be guaranteed that the payload is “only” conventional, or do you have to assume that its lethal package is nuclear? In reverse, if a Russian radar detected a Trident missile launch, it would know that this was a nuclear weapon and would react accordingly.
It might surprise people, but when the USA, Russia, China and France fire their nuclear missiles for test purposes, they always notify their counterparts that they are doing so – no one wants any misunderstandings!
Part of this prior notification involves publishing Notices to Airmen (Notams) “advising” pilots/aircraft to stay away from certain areas where the test missiles will splash down. But North Korea often does not, hence understandable concerns in Japan and South Korea when Pyongyang fires missiles – is a missile launch a test, or “the real thing”?
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In a scene from ‘A House of Dynamite’, Anthony Ramos plays Major Daniel Gonzalez, who sees an unidentified intercontinental ballistic missile heading for the US (Netflix)
Could the UK intercept any missile heading its way? Unless a Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer happened to be in the perfect position to attempt an intercept, all the UK military could do would be to watch the incoming missile. Unlike in A House of Dynamite, the UK has no 24/7 defence network to tackle such a threat.
In statements about missile threats to the UK, a variety of defence ministers have said, blithely, that such a threat would be tackled collectively by Nato. But in talks with Nato members with ground-based systems that could intercept ballistic missiles, I have been told that countries such as Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands have not concluded cast iron agreements that they would intercept ballistic missiles for the UK – and the software in such anti-missile systems tends to highlight that if such a weapon will not hit home soil, there would be no engagement. This is how Israel’s David’s Sling system works – if a Houthi missile won’t hit Israel, but will land in the Mediterranean, no weapon is launched against the incoming target.
A House of Dynamite scenario today goes against the sort of government style that has been the norm for the past decades. 9/11 aside, there have been no crises that have required immediate decision-making – time has always been available for PMs and presidents to talk, debate, ask for advice, mull things over before making a decision, maybe even use hotlines to talk to opponents.
It is easy to see any national leader when faced with the hypothetical raised in A House of Dynamite questioning whether it is realistic to have to make a decision in 15 minutes, but that is what would be available. In the USA, the president will be whisked away in Marine One (helicopter) to Andrews AFB, to get on board Air Force One (Boeing 747), thereby getting airborne and out of immediate danger. The same is not true for a UK prime minister; he/she will at best be taken down to the bunker under the MoD Main Building.
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A Ukrainian villager stands next to a crater left by a Russian missile in 2022 (AFP/Getty)
The problem for a Keir Starmer, or whoever might be PM in the event of such a crisis, is that the chances of such an event are now far more likely than they have been even during the Cold War. Look at events in the Baltic in late September and early October, when unidentified drones were seen over and around airports and military airbases – drones this time, missiles next time?
Assumed, probably correctly, to have been Russian or Russian-contracted, this type of “sub-threshold warfare” where things are difficult to prove, and are easy to deny, brings appalling levels of uncertainty. It might sound strange that firing a ballistic missile could be “sub-threshold”, but the certainties of the Cold War have gone.
By contrast, in the Cold War, if a US radar spotted a missile coming from a certain direction, then you knew that it was coming from the Soviet Union, or a Russian ballistic missile submarine – this is not the case today. Could a “shadow fleet” ship fire missiles or a swarm of drones against UK targets from somewhere offshore? The chances of this have gone from infinitesimally small to high – and it would be extremely difficult to prove who had fired them. So against whom would you retaliate?
And can you guarantee that a Shaheed-type attack drone “only” carries a high explosive warhead? Might it have a chemical or biological warhead (both meaning that it is a weapon of mass destruction, in the same class as an atomic/nuclear weapon)? Doctrine used to say that mass use of chemical weapons would be treated as if a nuclear weapon had been used, and retaliation would come in the form of nuclear weapons. What is the doctrine today?
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A rescuer takes a break at the site of a missile attack in Sumy, northeastern Ukraine, in April this year. Two ballistic missiles hit the centre of the city, killing at least 34 people (AFP/Getty)
In 1983, there was an incident that mirrors very closely the scenario in A House of Dynamite. A Soviet air defence officer monitoring the radars and satellites looking for American missile launches saw what looked like five ballistic missiles heading towards the Soviet Union. At the time, tensions were high, following the Soviet shooting down of a Korean airliner. A decision about whether this was an actual US missile launch against Moscow had to be made in minutes, and there was not a missile defence system as advanced as the one that the USA has today at Fort Greely, Alaska. Luckily, the Colonel decided that the “missiles” on radar were actually a false alarm – and this turned out to be the case. But had he decided otherwise…
However, for the UK, with no dedicated missile defence system, the only active option open to a PM is to retaliate, firing Trident nuclear missiles from one of the submarines that are deployed at sea 24/7 for deterrence. It is possible to communicate with submerged ballistic missile submarines using very low frequency radio systems, but depending on the depth at which the submarine is sailing, it is not guaranteed or rapid. But if a PM decides that the missile threat is a nuclear one, and is satisfied that it is one fired by, say, Russia, messages can be sent to whichever Vanguard-class SSBN is on the deterrence patrol to launch whatever retaliation.
But if communications are not established, then the on-station RN commander will resort to the “letter of last resort” that will be in a safe on board his boat. Written by the PM of the day, this will give that commander instructions about what actions to take if there is no link back to the UK chain of command. It might say that a certain nuclear launch should be enacted immediately against a specified target list – but no one knows what each PM has written in those four letters (one for each submarine). The process requires daily monitoring of various communications networks (it did include listening to Radio 4’s Today programme every morning, and if that was not available, there was a predisposition to believe that there had been an attack on the UK!), and only if a long list of checks was met would the commander authorise nuclear release.
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Idris Elba plays a president faced with agonising decisions in ‘A House of Dynamite’ (Netflix)
Or a PM might decide that he/she will not retaliate, that the evidence of who has fired and with what intent did not meet the level that would require UK retaliation. In A House of Dynamite, we don’t get to know what is decided, but one option, when it is decided that Chicago is the target, is for the city to take the hit. In his techno-thriller from 1978, The Third World War, General Sir John Hackett played out a scenario where, in a war between the Soviet Union and Nato, Moscow launches a nuclear strike on Birmingham, killing many tens of thousands. In the story, the UK retaliates against Minsk in a like-for-like strike. There can be few PMs who would relish having to make such a decision as nuclear retaliation – but doctrine of deterrence is based upon an enemy having enough suspicion that the UK (or the USA, or France…) will retaliate.
There have been 35 years during which the threats that were commonplace in the 1950s to the 1980s simply ceased to exist. But especially since 2022, what was once unthinkable can no longer be said to be such – ballistic missile attacks are a fact, and attacks against Nato countries from a range of weapons cannot just be disregarded any more.
Which means that especially for Europe’s nuclear-armed powers, France and the UK, the leaders have to re-learn what was the stock-in-trade of their Cold War predecessors as regards attacks on their countries, and options for retaliation. Even before an actual attack on our countries, the clock is already ticking…
