The Doomsday Planes
The US and Russian presidents each have aeroplanes that are designed to provide shelter from a nuclear attack; these cold war curiosities say a lot about risk and its perception.
Putin’s “doomsday” plane
Amongst the flurry of horror stories emanating from Russia recently, was news that Vladimir Putin’s “doomsday plane” had taken to the skies over Moscow. The plane - a highly bespoked Ilyushin's II-86 aircraft - is designed to give Putin and his selected government entourage sanctuary in the event of an all out nuclear war. As Russia wallows in its growing status as a pariah nation, it has clearly decided that it may as well stoop as low as escalating the threat of mutually assured destruction.
Originally flown in 1985, the ‘doomsday plane’ has been through multiple technical upgrades in the years since. It has a range of features to prevent exposure to nuclear fall-out, such as the absense of any cabin windows, and a specially designed air filtration system. A large nuclear explosion would, of course, cause an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP): a transient burst of electromagnetic energy that would massively disrupt communications and damage electronic equipment. Therefore there is also electromagnetic shielding and a preference for analogue and hard wired electrical systems. Mid air refuelling capability allows it to stay airborne for long periods of time.
Nightwatch
Just as my momentary fascination with Putin’s ‘doomsday plane’ was receding I saw that Joe Biden’s own version had been spotted circling the skies of Southern California. It was testing its aerial refueling capabilty. The US ‘Nightwatch’ - developed from a Boeing 747 aircraft way back in the 1970s - needs two fully loaded KC-135 tankers to refuel completely. It can, in theory, stay in the air for as long as two weeks and has remained airborne for up to thirty five hours. The aircraft is equipped with a trailing wire antenna that can carry 13 communication links. Like its Russian counterpart, it is also protected from EMP by shielding of its equipment and wiring. The core controls of the aircraft, that are necessary to maintain it in the air, have again not been overcomplicated or digitalised.
Risk perception and reality
These two lumbering curiosities say something interesting about both risk management and perception. Fundamentally they exist to support nuclear sabre rattling and deterrence. If the aging leaders of the US and Russia are ever required to clamber aboard their respective cold war relics it will most likely be to make a psychological point. In a game of potentially world ending brinksmanship each side believes that it has to signal to the other that it is prepared to engage in a nuclear war to avert it.
The appearances are in many ways more important than the reality here: They are intended to create fear and caution. Given this, it was perhaps a disappointment to Putin that his ’doomsday’ plane failed to undertake a planned flyover at Russia’s slimmed down WW2 victory parade in May. Perhaps unhinged nuclear threats from Putin and his foreign minister Sergey Lavrov are desperate attempts to counter perceptions of Russia’s growing military impotence?
Pondering these issues makes for some grim thought experiments. Say the US or Russian governments can take to the air, and fly for two weeks? Great. What then? In the event of an all out nuclear war there would not be likely to be any hospitable places to land, and no working political system in place for the leaders to oversee.
Solar storms
Regardless of the mirages and illusions surrounding these ‘heath robinson’ contraptions, some very clever people have clearly thought very hard about the risks they are intended to mitigate. Extreme circumstances create a high bar for success and really challenge design. So is there anything to learn here?
One interesting area is the focus on the potentially catastrophic impact of electrical interference. Electomagnetic pulses can, of course, be caused by extreme solar weather, as well as nuclear explosions. The most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history is known as the ‘Carrington Event’ - after the British astronomer who recorded it. It peaked on the 1st and 2nd of September 1859, causing Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America to spark into failure, giving telegraph operators electric shocks.
A ‘Carrington level’ event would have catastrophic, widespread effects on the modern digitally and electrically connected world from widespread electrical disruptions and outages, to vast electromagnetic interference and damage to digital systems. This is recognised on most corporate and government risk registers (much like global pandemics were acknowledged as an abstract possibility before COVID hit in 2020) but are we ready for the consequences should such a solar event occur? We need to be: on 23 July 2012 a "Carrington-class" solar event was observed, but fortunately its trajectory narrowly missed us.
Regardless of the EMP shielding in place, both of the doomsday planes use analog cockpit controls. Low voltage electronics are ultimately seen as just too flaky, unpredictable and complicated when the stakes are so high. This is a subject I’ve returned to in many posts. Once again, I’m reminded that we really need to be disciplined when deciding where, and where not, to make systems more technically complex. We need to draw a very clear line around safety critical systems and ensure they remain sufficiently robust, transparent and dependable if we are to take future transport safety challenges seriously.
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Slightly grim reading today in retrospect, but unfortunately that is the world we are living in at present. Please do feed back your thoughts in the comments, on linkedin or on Twitter. Posts are now biweekly: To make sure you don’t miss any of them please subscribe below:
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Thanks for reading
All views are my own. I have no fixed affiliations and if I consider myself to be ‘radical’ in any way, it is only in my belief that I must be open to changing my mind. Please do feel free to drop me an e-mail on george.bearfield@ntlworld.com: My particular area of professional and research interest is practical risk management and assurance of new technology. I’m always keen to engage on interesting projects in this area.
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