The last time we were at DEFCON 2 was (reportedly) in October 1962 during what was then dubbed the Cuban Missile Crisis where the then USSR was attempting to park missiles on the Castro communist regime’s island of Cuba, a situation that the United States and one President John F. Everybody shake a leg because it’s about to go down. There are no significant threats to the United States.Īt DEFCON 4, while we’re still at peace something looks to be a little threatening so out of an abundance of caution we’re going to step up security and intelligence procedures - but no worries, everything’s okay.Īt DEFCON 3, okay there’s a threat looming on the horizon and while everything’s fine (for now) we’re going to put our bomber forces on alert and get them scrambled and in the air in 15 minutes.Īt DECON 2, yup - something’s up and now we want all active duty personnel to mobilize and deploy in six hours or less. The DEFON system was implemented in November of 1959 after the construction of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command, the people in charge of monitoring and intercepting external threats to the United States) with five (5) levels of Defense Ready Condition that goes a little something like this:Īt DEFCON 5, we are at peace. In fact, I praise this move as it was a sensible, prudent thing to do.įor those of you - mostly my readers in the United Kingdom - who don’t understand our defense levels, a little history is in order.ĭEFCON is an acronym for Defense Ready Condition, DEFCON is what the Pentagon uses to indicate the level of threats the country faces from other nations, which then determines readiness for any potential response and I’ve been told you lot on the other side of pond don’t actually have something like this. I don’t begrudge my President or my Pentagon going to DEFCON 2 after Vladimir Putin decided he was going to put his nuclear forces on alert. Well, I noticed because it’s something of a hobby of mine to keep track of our military (being a former Navy man) and it’s readiness levels.īasically, it lets me know what kind of day I’m going to have.īut, again, hardly anybody noticed this monumental event with the exception of a political website in New Zealand. In fact, we were exactly one DEFCON level away from World War III.

What defcon level are we at now