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. [...]

In an upcoming post, I will address the relationship between the Divine Strake test, other weapons research, and the reports regarding U.S. planning for possible nuclear weapons use against Iran.

A post regarding the relationship between the Divine Strake test, other weapons research, and the reports regarding U.S. planning for possible nuclear weapons use against Iran now is up at Disamrament Activist.org

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Despite all of this, debate over U.S. nuclear weapons programs and policies inside the Beltway and in the mainstream media has largely been limited to a narrow spectrum of questions, focusing mainly on bombs and warheads, how they are produced and maintained, and on stopping this or that particular proposal for a modified bomb or warhead. The fact that planning and technology development for a new generation of strategic delivery systems is ramping up remains largely invisible, even though the way those programs develop likely will determine the nature of the future nuclear arsenal as much or more than debates over how warheads should be produced or maintained. Changes in the way that nuclear strikes are planned and executed, from new software for strike planners to new communications systems, are well underway, supported by the kind of testing of which “Divine Strake” is only one part.

And if half of what Seymour Hersh reports this week in the New Yorker, we now are faced with a serious debate within the government over whether to use nuclear weapons in a war of aggression, against a country that has not attacked us or its neighbors. What mainstream discussion there has been in recent years about nuclear weapons has focused largely on technical issues and an abstract, backward-looking emphasis on the “uselessness” of new nuclear weapons capabilities for a vision of deterrence which, if it ever really existed, those in power have decisively left behind. Uninformed by any sustained debate in the mainstream about the fundamental moral and legal legitimacy of the uses actually envisioned for nuclear weapons, the public is poorly prepared for the crisis we now face. Americans may wake up some day in the coming years responsible for an unprovoked nuclear attack, and have no idea how they got there.