According submissions to UK Parliamentary select committees, UK Trident missiles are not targetted at anything. I assume this means there are no mission trajectory data on a missile/warhead. What is the Russian equivalent of this? This is what the submission says paragraph 4.78 We will continue to build trust and confidence between Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Weapon States, and to take tangible steps towards a safer and more stable world, where countries with nuclear weapons feel able to relinquish them. We have reduced our own nuclear forces by over half from their Cold War peak in the late 1970s. Of the recognised Nuclear Weapons States, we possess only approximately 1% of the total global stockpile of nuclear weapons. Our submarines on patrol are at several days’ notice to fire and, since 1994, we do not target our missiles at any state.
I had not realised the'several days notice' to fire!

Russia has a non-targeting agreement with the United States and, I believe, China. Maybe with the UK too.

Thank you, now seen a 13 paragraph agreement 1994 between Yeltsin and Clinton. 1 paragraph on the de-targeting. Minuteman III pointed at sea! Brits and French followed suit as they had too but need to find official reference.

Question, why no protocol on a re-targeting process? Entering the Mission trajectories for London, Moscow, Washington or planning too would be a breech of jus as bellum, jus in bello.

I can see a military person following an order, but difficult to see how a political decision would get approved as it would have to pass legal tests.

I think it is generally understood that it's a symbolic measure. It's probably not entirely useless, but it's not really verifiable either.

Forgive me for pestering on this point.
For something symbolic, and it reads that way, both parties have fulfilled on what reads like two Presidential commands. At any level, both parties reversed the doomsday clock and should be encouraged and applauded.
If the process of re-targeting (population centres) was now re-considered or subject to the Laws of War by both parties, there ought to be a way (process) of putting the mutual deterrents further out of reach, creating the impetus to reduce further the stockpiles in due course.

I agree - this is something that should not be underestimated. But nobody is thinking about re-targeting in the sense that you describe it. If it ever happens it will happen as part of a normal launch preparation procedure.

Ok, that's interesting. If the notion of 'normal' excluded targeting population centres, or required a protocol not too different from the notifications on military exercises the folk involved could work it up and force answers to questions so difficult that prevents them being answered.

What was previously accepted as 'normal' could be challenged. It is really weird to use NUKEMAP, pick a city, pick a nuclear bomb and see its impact. Right there I have started over stepping 'normal'. The number of people doing this for real must be tiny, so they must have written such a protocol many times.

Where in the US/Russia hierarchy could a question be most constructively pointed?

I think there are two different questions here. One is, what would happen during the "normal" launch sequence, when a missile (which is normally targeted to somewhere in the ocean) would be re-targeted to its actual target, which might well be a population center. I don't think that this process itself raises any issues - this is just a "mechanical" transfer of information to the missile and whoever does it has no way of knowing what the targets are.

Your question about population centers should be asked earlier - at the time those targets are selected. This is done well in advance and presumably at that point people are supposed to ask questions about what it is that they are doing. As I understand, that community has a way of insulating itself from this kind of questions. Lynn Eden covered some of it in her "Whole World on Fire."

Thanks for the reference. The whole Chilcott report on Iraq 2003, pinpointed a 24 hour period where Tony Blair was on his own, and could by virtue of his Premiership decide on the legality of his actions, which on the evidence available to him, no reasonable person could reach .. no imminent threat etc. UK Institutions of Government have not yet really recovered from such a complete failure. The re-targeting question would be an interesting test of their resolve.