An important yet discreet part of the inauguration of a new president is the transfer of command and control authority over the U.S. nuclear arsenal, but President Donald Trump does not plan on attending President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. This could complicate matters.
Trump said on Friday that he “will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” He did not say where he will be instead.
So what happens to the “nuclear football” that accompanies the president if Trump doesn’t show? How does it get to Biden?
“That’s a good question,” Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), told Insider. “It is an unprecedented situation.” In the nuclear age, no president has skipped their successor’s inauguration.
The president has the sole authority to conduct a nuclear strike. Wherever he goes, he is accompanied by a military aide carrying a briefcase called the “president’s emergency satchel,” more commonly known as the nuclear football.
Every president since John F. Kennedy has been accompanied by the aide carrying the hefty briefcase, which gives the commander in chief the ability to command U.S. nuclear forces while away from physical command and control centers.
The briefcase does not contain a button that can instantly unleash hundreds of nuclear warheads deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers. Instead, the briefcase contains communication tools, codes, and options for nuclear war.
Separate from the football, presidents carry a card, sometimes called the “biscuit,” containing authentication codes. In a nuclear conflict, the president would use the codes in coordination with the tools in the briefcase to identify himself to the military and order a nuclear strike.
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