USAF Strips 17 Officers of Nuclear Launch Authority

Freshly Exhumed writes "In an unprecedented action, a United States Air Force commander has stripped 17 of his officers of their authority to control and launch nuclear missiles. After a string of failings that the group's deputy commander said stemmed from 'rot' within the ranks, the suspensions followed a March inspection of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, that resulted in a 'D' grade for the team tested on its mastery of the Minuteman III missile launch operations system. The 17 are being assigned to intensive retraining courses of 60 to 90 days, according to Lt. Col. John Dorrian, an Air Force spokesman."

Comments

Our civilization is degrading

[DNS-and-BIND]

These are the same standards that previous generations could achieve. Hard standards that do not change according to the whims of political winds, nor the Air Force's racial preferences. The Strategic Air Command (the mooks responsible for all our nukes) attitude was called the "Sundown Policy". In other words, if you screwed up no matter who you were, your ass was gone by sundown. If you so much as got a traffic ticket: "If a man is not responsible enough to drive a car, he has no business around nuclear weapons." The offender would often be kicked out of the Air Force and tossed off the base by the close of the day.

And now, what? Remedial training lessons? Are you joking? Our current generation can't handle the hard standards set by their forefathers. Note that nuclear weapon handling procedures are not what you might call "difficult". They are merely "thorough". If you figure out the underlying idea, it's a piece of cake - as demonstrated repeatedly by the generations of SAC airmen who scored 100% (the only passing score) on test after test after test. However all we see here are people who cannot see the idea, merely dozens and dozens of checklists which must be memorized by heart, none of it makes any sense.

Why should we be surprised when an officer fails to order armed guards to stand watch over a nuclear weapons storage facility? It's just another one of those nitpicking details - "quit your post only when properly relieved"? Who can possibly be bothered to memorize these technical details and meaningless trivia?