The sighting of a military aide handling the football, closely following President Joe Biden as he exited a meeting with the United Kingdom’s prime minister on July 10, the day before the NATO summit during which the war in Ukraine was discussed, heightened already building tensions between NATO members and Russia.

Russia and the United States respectively lead the nuclear weapons race, both far ahead of the seven other countries that also have nuclear weapons, according to data obtained from the World Population Review.

Out of the nine countries that have nuclear weapons, the U.S., Russia and Pakistan are the only three that have aides following their political leaders with nuclear briefcases. The information that person carries, along with alphanumeric codes the president carries, allows the world’s most powerful political leader to launch Armageddon if needed at any moment.

Despite the contents of the nuclear football remaining somewhat of a mystery for national security concerns, the device itself still conveys a striking message to the U.S. adversaries, reminding them of the massive defense capabilities it can activate amidst heightened nuclear tensions, said Christopher Karns, former 341st Mission Support Group commander.

The nuclear football was not always what is today. Over time, the briefcase has had drastic changes to its contents, causing speculation to arise over its morality.

A history of the nuclear football

Following the creation and use of the atomic bomb in the 1940s, a story that “Oppenheimer” deeply explored, then President Dwight D. Eisenhower feared the U.S. would be helpless against a nuclear assault. In the late 1950s, he directed a military aide to carry a bag containing documents that would allow the president to communicate an action plan with military headquarters across the country whenever he left Washington.

Eisenhower’s initial satchel included emergency action documents which would help the president regain control of United States actions if a nuclear attack was launched by another country.

“In the event of a nuclear attack, the president could basically seize control of the government and suspend habeas corpus and do all sorts of other things that he wouldn’t be allowed to do in peacetime and wouldn’t be constitutional, but would nevertheless, let him run the government on an emergency basis,” Stephen Schwartz, a nonresident senior fellow at the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists, an organization that aims to inform the public about man-made threats to humanity, told Military Times.

Eisenhower transferred the satchel to his successor, President John F. Kennedy, who changed it over time, as he wanted blueprints for an alternative solution to the all-or-nothing nuclear war strategy of the time.

Former President Jimmy Carter trimmed down the football’s contents, knowing that if the situation arose in which he would have to use the football, he’s have just minutes to act.

Legal concerns about the documents within the football drove revisions during the Carter and Reagan Administrations. By the late 1980s, the documents inside the nuclear football had been completely updated for the first time since Kennedy, said former military aide Buzz Patterson, who handled the football during the Clinton Administration.

“It was pretty much the same football when Carter assumed office that JFK had had and it was outdated,” Patterson said in an interview with Military Times. “They did a couple of modernizations. They went back and looked at the war plans [and] the president’s emergency documents and they realized that some of the stuff is pretty old.”

Despite changes and modernizations throughout history, Karns believes the football is still a strong symbolic message to foes of the United States.

“The availability of this capability serves as a valuable deterrent to those considering harm to the United States,” Karns, who led the 341st Mission Support Group in their mission to prepare expeditionary combat support forces to operations around the world, wrote in a text response to Military Times.

Common misconceptions

Russia and Pakistan both have similar nuclear briefcases. Unlike the U.S., which clouds the nuclear football with mystery, Russia unveiled the contents of that country’s nuclear briefcase on television in 2019 .

As Russian television showed in 2019, the briefcase held actual buttons to launch a nuclear attack, a flash card with codes on it and a keypad of sorts to enter numerical instructions. The contents have not been shown since, however, an aide still follows Putin around will it regularly.

Press spotted an aide carrying Putin’s nuclear briefcase, called the “Cheget,” when he arrived at the Red Square Victory Parade in May. Putin then gave a speech, blaming Ukraine for the war and citing Russian casualties, further increasing tensions among nations.

The U.S. actually has three footballs — one for the president, one for the vice president and one for the designated survivor

The vice president is offered a personal squad of military aides to carry a backup football, but can refuse the satchel, as then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson did. Most vice presidents do not reject the football, Schwartz said, as it’s crucial for national security in cases of presidential death or if the commander-in-chief is unable to perform his or her duties.

Patterson said that when Clinton severely injured his knee, there were discussions over whether they needed to make Gore’s backup satchel the main one.

“There was a conversation between myself and one of the VP’s military aides, and my concern was if we put Clinton under [anesthesia], then Gore has to have [control of] the football for however long it takes, but we never ended up having to do that,” Patterson said.

Former Vice President Mike Pence was seen at the January 6 insurrection being followed by a military aide holding the satchel.

The satchel is not all that is required to trigger nuclear weapons in times of crisis. A card with authentication codes, the Sealed Authenticator System, also dubbed the “biscuit” which doesn’t have real launch codes but can verify the president’s identity, is supposed to be always carried by the president.

Ballistic missile submarine crews use the alphanumeric codes on plastic cards to authenticate a nuclear launch order from U.S. Strategic Command, Schwartz said. Those cards were at one point nicknamed SAS cookies because they were in a foil-like wrapper, like cookies. The cookie term later became the “biscuit.”

“The president does not have the launch codes,” Schwartz said. “No president has had launch codes. So, the president can’t physically turn keys or push buttons to do anything, he’s relying on a whole chain of people, hundreds of people down the chain of command to transmit the orders and do all of that.”

The National Security Agency generates identification codes for the president to use to authenticate their identity with the National Military Command Center if they want to activate a nuclear defense, Schwartz said.

The activation process begins with an alphanumeric challenge response code from a National Military Command Center officer to the president. The president would then read their identification code, stored on the biscuit, through a secure communication device in the football. If correct, the president chooses an action plan and attack orders are relayed to all involved in the chosen nuclear defense strategy, including intercontinental ballistic missile operators, submarines and bombers, Schwartz said.

Lost biscuit never found

There have been circumstances throughout history when the president was separated from the biscuit, such as when then President Reagan was shot in 1981 and hospital workers stripped him down to save his life, tossing the biscuit into a hospital bag amid the pandemonium.

“[Clinton] lost them forever,” Patterson said. “We never did find them. I was the guy that was with him when he confessed that he had lost them. When I pressed him on it, and I said ‘Okay, sir, how long’s it been since you’ve seen them? Where’s the last place you saw them?’ Typical stuff you ask when somebody’s lost something. And, he said he couldn’t recall. And at one point, he said it could have been up to three or four months [since he’d seen them].”

Patterson claims that Clinton confessed he lost the codes the same morning the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal hit the press.

“The thing about the military aides is we are right around the president, but we’re not always with the president in terms of being in the same room,” Patterson said.

Ethical ramifications

The job of carrying the nuclear football can be burdensome, and not only because it weighs about 45 pounds. Patterson says that the psychological impact of holding such monumental power influences the handler.

“It’s not an easy job,” Patterson said. “It can result in tremendous casualties and the loss of life, livelihoods, cities, homes and all that kind of stuff. I think we all just knew that we were there to be a tool that [could be used], but we didn’t necessarily have to.”

The White House and Department of Defense collaborate to select nuclear football handler candidates. Patterson said that he was one of six Air Force members flown out to Washington for background checks and interviews. Once selected, Patterson immediately flew back to Northern California, sold his home and moved into the White House.

Patterson served for the usual two years, representing the Air Force’s nuclear football handler, alongside a team of military aide’s from other branches.

No specific mental health test was necessary for the role, Patterson said, instead candidates were appointed to the position after passing a security clearance. Schwartz said everyone who works with the president or vice president must pass a screening called “Yankee White.”

“They’re subjected to the personnel reliability program, just like everybody else who works with or around nuclear weapons,” Schwartz said. “Except, of course, for the president, who isn’t subject to anything.”

Schwartz said that most presidents avoid acknowledging the football due to unease.

“[Their inauguration briefing is] the first and last time most presidents think about this,” Schwartz said. “Most of them find it off putting [and] disturbing, you know, to be reminded that they have this power. So they just generally do not think about it.”

While the president has the power to activate it, the military aide is tasked with ensuring that the president is of sound mind before they were to activate the nuclear football.

Patterson recalled grappling over how he would refuse the president’s command to launch nuclear weapons if he believed they were not of sound mind and body.

“And I told myself internally many times ‘If I think he’s coming across as nuts, I don’t think I can participate in this,’” Patterson said. “And so that’s how I rationalized it to myself, and I think a lot of the other aides thought the same kind of thing.”

When then President Trump was in office, some media outlets questioned his sanity, Schwartz said.

“So even if the president went completely bonkers and wanted to launch a nuclear attack, he can’t physically do anything,” Schwartz said. “If he was mentally deranged, people would have a responsibility not to follow those orders, although legally they’re supposed to. So, there’s this kind of gray area there about what you would do, which was tested during the Trump Administration.”

Federal prosecutors lodged an indictment against Trump, alleging he took boxes of classified documents with him as he was leaving office, including documents with information about nuclear programs, defense and weapons.

President Biden’s mental fitness has been debated, 43% of Americans said they believe Biden and Trump are both too old to be president again, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found.

This leaves the military aides tasked with handling the football in charge of what Karn’s believes is the final defense and symbol to prevent a nuclear attack.

“The nuclear enterprise is the ultimate insurance policy for the nation,” Karns said. “If a situation or scenario ever developed where nuclear capabilities were considered, it would impact all of DoD and [the] whole of government in some capacity.”

C4ISRNET Senior Reporter Colin Demarest contributed to this article.

*CORRECTION: This article has been updated, deleting references to the origin of the term “football,” adding information on the term “biscuit,” accurately reflecting the number of nuclear footballs as three and correctly identifying what the president carries as part of the nuclear order process.

The U.S. lab led the three-hour sortie on July 25 with test units at the Eglin Test and Training Complex in Florida. The flight followed two years of work and a partnership with Skyborg Vanguard, a team made up of personnel from the lab and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center with the intent of creating unmanned fighter aircraft.

“This sortie officially enables the ability to develop [artificial intelligence and machine learning] agents that will execute modern air-to-air and air-to-surface skills that are immediately transferrable to the CCA program,” said Col. Tucker Hamilton, the chief of AI test and operations with the Air Force. The CCA program, or collaborative combat aircraft, was designed to create combat drones that can operate with piloted aircraft.

The lab’s Autonomous Air Combat Operations team created algorithms for the flight that took millions of hours to mature in simulations, during sorties with the X-62 VISTA experimental aircraft, while working with the XQ-58A, and during ground test operations, according to the announcement.

Previous flights of the XQ-58A Valkyrie have supported the Air Force’s effort into loyal wingmen research. Kratos Defense and Security Solutions produces the drone.

The Air Force Research Lab is the service’s primary scientific research and development center responsible for the discovery, development and integration of cost-effective warfighting technologies for the country’s air, space and cyberspace forces.

“AI will be a critical element to future warfighting and the speed at which we’re going to have to understand the operational picture and make decisions,” Brig. Gen. Scott Cain, the lab’s commander, said in the announcement. “AI, Autonomous Operations, and Human-Machine Teaming continue to evolve at an unprecedented pace and we need the coordinated efforts of our government, academia, and industry partners to keep pace.”

The facility is meant to provide technology research, development and manufacturing for the British military and other NATO customers. There are 680 employees working for the Israeli firm’s U.K.-based subsidiaries, and there are plans to hire more than 200 people to work at the new site.

During a ceremony marking the facility’s opening, the company demonstrated several capabilities, including electronic warfare technology. The U.K. awarded a £100 million contract to an industrial team that included Elbit for an electronic warfare system for the Royal Navy. The program, dubbed Maritime Electronic Warfare Systems Integrated Capability, or MEWSIC, Increment 1 is the first phase of a £500 million effort to bolster frigates and aircraft carriers.

Elbit also showed off a virtual combined-arms simulator; its Torch-X command-and-control technology; its E-Lynx radio system; a ground-based surveillance radar; nv33 night vision goggles, which are currently in service with British forces; and several miniature uncrewed systems in service and on trial with the British Armed Forces. The company did not identify the uncrewed platforms to Defense News by press time.

The U.K. awarded Elbit Systems a contract in January to provide the Army with Magni-X micro-drones. The company was to deliver the drones by mid-2023, but would not tell Defense News the status of the order.

“The opening of this facility is a testament to the success of Elbit Systems UK over the last three years and demonstrates the successful implementation of our strategy set out three years ago,” Martin Fausset, CEO of Elbit Systems UK, said in a statement. “Our commitment to providing cutting-edge, sovereign capability to the UK Armed Forces has allowed us to grow our presence, investing in our people and our facilities to support our frontline customers.”

The report, released Monday, details the U.S. federal government’s nearly $200 billion in fiscal 2022 spending on critical technologies — but warns China is still outpacing the United States.

In FY22, biotechnology topped the list of the 12 identified critical technologies the U.S. invested in, at $81.3 billion.

This difference in the pace of technological advancement between the U.S. and China is largely due to accessibility to patents, according to Govini. Over the last five years, the report finds, the number of patents associated with critical technology areas and issued to U.S.-based companies has stagnated, while the number for Chinese companies has steadily increased.

Indeed, Govini finds that in every critical technology subsegment, China has surpassed the U.S. in granted patents as of 2022. Furthermore, since 2018, China’s total number of patents has been steadily increasing and is now at its highest rate. Meanwhile, the U.S.’s patent rate in every critical technology subsegment, except nuclear modernization, has been decreasing in recent years.

“Patents are a leading indicator of technological dominance in the future. [Patents] are the seed for making new discoveries that put you on the top of the competitive food chain,” Bob Work, the former deputy defense secretary who now is a chairman of Govini, said during a call with reporters Monday. “That’s what scares me the most [because] China’s doing far better than us in terms of the overall number of patents.”

Additionally, Govini’s new report finds some U.S. contractors focused on critical technologies are still relying heavily on Chinese suppliers and investors. Tara Murphy Dougherty, Govini’s chief executive, noted Monday all 12 critical technologies in the report are highly dependent on Chinese supplies.

“We have a tremendous reliance as a country for all federal programs and activities that span these 12 technology areas on our greatest geopolitical competitor: China,” she said.

Lawmakers are increasingly raising concerns about the dominance of China when it comes to key technology areas. At the Intelligence and National Security Summit last week, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said national security no longer means “the nation with the most tanks, guns, ships, and planes.”

“With China, this is a technology competition,” he said while speaking on a panel. “If we don’t invest further, from semiconductors, to overhead capabilities, to [artificial intelligence], quantum analytics, to biology, advanced energy, those are domains where if China dominates, that will pose as much of a national security threat, both in terms of their ability to spread their influence, or frankly, to take to take us offline, as anywhere else.”

In the announcement, it was stated that Simmons, who is currently assigned as command senior enlisted leader of the Space Operations Command in Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, will replace Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sgt. Scott H. Stalker as command senior enlisted leader for U.S. Space Command in Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado.

In a moderated discussion on Agile Combat Employment and Enlisted Leadership back in October 2022, Simmons discussed the complexities space brings to missions and the unforeseeable climate space imposes.

“You continue to hear that space is congested, contested, [and] competitive, I’ll add that it’s complex. It is extremely complex in space,” Simmons said. “Space is ubiquitous. It is persistently present. It is involved in every mission, it is involved in every capability and it must be intertwined as such… Space is no longer peaceful, permissive or predictable. That is a new condition we find ourselves in.”

Simmons continued on to highlight the present dangers space holds and the importance of exploring the terrain in informed, updated ways.

“Space is a ballistic battlefield. And what I mean by that is things move in space at 17,000 plus miles per hour and with over 50,000 objects in space or nearly 50,000 objects in space, each of those have the potential of colliding at an instant and creating a cascade of long lived shrapnel,” Simmons said. “That is a battlefield that just doesn’t stop. It doesn’t rest. Space is a technical and a tactical terrain. We have to get after a new set of threats and we have to understand what the new thresholds are.”

Simmons emphasized our responsibility to understand and battle space with new, inventive solutions.

“We have to look at getting after things, not only in an innovative way, but being able to iterate those things and integrate them into the fight faster and further in than what’s ever been asked from space before,” Simmons said.

By giving Simmons a new assignment, hopefully his background and extensive knowledge of space can help the U.S. Space Command advance their journey into space and continue to fight on such an incalculable terrain.

“We have to empower at the edges with the authorities to be able to execute at speed,” Simmons said. “That means we have to be able to trust those leaders at the very front end, the very front edge of the space fight.”

With Simmons as one of those leaders at the front of the space fight, the ever-evolving fight in space continues with a new leader.