Code Name of the Week: Divine Strake

original

William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
Weapons Test or Divine Provocation?


In the tricky world of deterrence, where the United States is pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for a promise of the rule of law and implied security, do we really need divine intervention?

The United States is set conduct its largest ever conventional explosives test in June by detonating a 700 ton mass of fuel oil. The test will gauge the American ability to attack enemy underground facilities associated with weapons of mass destruction. The brilliant minds at the Pentagon call this test "Divine Strake."

The Washington Post's whiz bang story on Friday about the planned detonation has provoked a small firestorm.

Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said in a statement he is concerned that a test of this magnitude will have an adverse effect on his state, particularly after a Defense Department spokesman said that the test at the Nevada Test Site will put a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas for the first time in decades.

Others -- such as the Federation of American Scientists -- have focused on the mock nuclear bunker buster character of the 700 ton explosion (the largest regular conventional bomb in the U.S. arsenal is ONE ton).

And then there's the name.

Divine Strake is a Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)/Department of Energy test in support of the Tunnel Target Defeat advanced concept technology demonstration.

The June 2 planned test is to be an open air, high explosive detonation on top of an existing tunnel complex in Area 16 of the Nevada Test Site. The limestone geological properties of the U16b tunnel accurately simulate the characteristics of a foreign hardened and deeply buried target (HDBT).

Divine Strake will detonate up to 700 tons (635 metric tons) of heavy ammonium nitrate fuel oil-emulsion (known as heavy ANFO), a blasting agent, placed in a charge hole about 32 feet in diameter and 36 feet deep, located above the U16b tunnel. Some 300 pounds of C-4 explosive will be used to initiate the detonation (overall, the test is about 593 tons TNT equivalent).

A stairwell with a hatch installed will be constructed in the tunnel and computer equipment will be placed in the tunnel -- in additional to the diagnostic computers, cameras, etc. -- to gauge the fragility of computer and electronics in such an attack. According to the Department of Energy's "environmental assessment" of the test,

"Potential adversaries of the United States are increasingly using tunnels and underground bunkers, collectively designated hardened and deeply buried targets (HDBTs), as part of their defensive strategies. These types of facilities are used for command and control, storage of munitions (including weapons of mass destruction, and long-range missiles), modern air defenses, a variety of tactical weapons, wartime refuge for national leaders, and a multitude of other offensive and defensive military uses. In order to deny an adversary the ability to use these capabilities against its forces, the U.S. military must have the ability to defeat HDBTs. To defeat these facilities and the assets they protect, the United States must have the capability to find, detect, characterize the potential targets, and then to plan, attack, and assess the results of such attacks."

By the way, a strake in aerodynamics is an object mounted on the fuselage of an airplane to improve airflow.

In the world of the U.S. military, everything has a reason, a regulation, an acronym, a hierarchy.

In 1975, in order to put some regimentation into the use of code words and unclassified nicknames in the military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff introduced the computerized Code Word, Nickname, and Exercise Term System (called NICKA), a system for assigning names to military operations, exercise, tests, weapons, you name it.

NICKA assigns each Defense Department command and agency a series of two-letter alphabetic sequences, requiring each “first word” of a nickname to begin with a letter pair. In the NICKA then, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, formerly the Defense Special Weapons Agency is assigned the "DI" letter block, from which they derive names for their activities: Dial, Diamond, Digger, Dimming, Dipole, Direct, Dingo, Divine and others, hence Divine Strake.

Though the current Joint Chiefs regulation relating to NICKA name assignments is classified, we know that a nickname must consist of two separate words, the first beginning with the two letter block assigned to the entity, the second a random word selected by the command or agency.

A 1997 NICKA regulation lays out the criteria for naming:

(2) Nicknames improperly selected can be counter-productive. A nickname must be chosen with sufficient care to ensure that it does not:

(a) Express a degree of bellicosity inconsistent with traditional American ideals or current foreign policy;

(b) Convey connotations offensive to good taste, or derogatory to a particular group, sect, or creed;

(c) Convey connotations offensive to our allies or other Free World Nations;

(d) Detract from the perceived relevance of the operation."

(3) The following shall not be used as nicknames:

… (b) Combination of words including the words "project,” "exercise,” or "operation;”

(c) Words which may be used correctly either as a single word or as two words, such as moonlight; or

(d) Exotic words, trite expressions, or well-known commercial trademarks.

Does it need to be spelled out any clearer that nicknames shouldn't be political or religious or politically incorrect, that it makes no sense, given the gigantic universe of words available (my Code Names book contained over 3,500 names currently in use), to have an entire test series devoted to weapons of mass destruction testing that uses the "Divine" moniker?

And it is a series: In addition to Divine Strake, the DTRA has conducted or is planning to conduct, I've now learned, tests and experiments called Divine Buffalo, Divine Invader, Divine Helcat, Divine Kingfisher, Divine Umpire, Divine Zorro, Divine Warhawk, Divine Albatross, and my favorite Divine Hates, a test, according to DTRA documents, that will gauge "WMD production and storage tunnel complex functional defeat." That would something like destruction in English.

In September 2001, right after 9/11, when no doubt the highest paid person in the Pentagon named the upcoming operation in Afghanistan "Infinite Justice" -- U.S. Central Command is actually assigned the "IN" two-letter block -- a media uproar ensued when Muslim scholars and clerics objected to the name on the grounds that infinite justice can only by dispense by Allah. The operation nickname was changed to "Enduring Freedom."

Do we really need "Divine" anything to name our military activities? Of course there is a possibility that "Divine Strake" will be abandoned and the brilliant minds will come up with something even worse.