Launch Enable

On the morning of January 16th, 1991, the world, poised once again on the brink of nuclear war, witnessed yet another new, terrifying weapon of destruction. Operation Desert Storm began with the unleashing of a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles, their scintillating detonations as they destroyed heavily defended targets in IRAQ appearing on television sets around the world. That was the first glimpse, for many, of the awesome potential of destruction of the cruise missile. The story of the cruise missile however did not begin on that morning. There were other mornings, other chapters not witnessed by the public viewing audience, yet containing the same potentially devastating outcome for civilization. Launch Enable is about one of those chapters! In the mid 1960s, while the world's eye was focused on the military activities in Southeast Asia, little notice was given to a portion of the United State nuclear strike force, which resided just outside the field of view of Indochina. Buried in underground concrete 'coffins' hidden in the volcanic mountains of Okinawa were the MACE cruise missiles. The U.S. strategic missile defenses were going through a transition period where older, less sophisticated missile technologies, developed in the 1950s, existed side-by-side with the emerging technology of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. The old and the new however was not limited just to technology. It was also manifested in a philosophy of control, the individualistic 'scarf-in-the-wind' World War II fighter pilot mentality versus the mechanistic procedures of Positive Control of nuclear weapons. It was this contrast; the existence of a renegade 'battlefield' mentality, still present in pockets of military command, in control of an obsolete missile system still equipped with nuclear capabilities, which is the basis of this story. Launch Enable is a fictional account of an attempt to demonstrate the viability of the aging MACE missile system, a weapon system eclipsed by time and the more imminent concerns with a war that was quickly developing as unwinable by conventional means. A plan was approved to demonstrate the continuing value of the MACE system to the Untied State's Integrated Strategic Defense Plan by test launching one of the MACE missiles from an operational site on Okinawa. Some, however, saw this as more than just an opportunity to gain continued funding of the system. They saw it as a chance to alter the nature of the conflagration engulfing the United States less than 1000 miles south of the launch site and within the radius of destruction of the MACE missile!