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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."
and replace them all with electronics.
The weak link is always humans. The USAF had the best of intentions, was well funded and had oversight. Even so this was allowed to happen. At least they caught it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Hardly. This happened more than once during the cold war under SAC. Hell, entire wings have been decertified before. You don't have to go back farther than 2007 to find something similar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident).
There was an article in Air Force Magazine a couple months back about SAC history that touched on this a bit:
http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2013/March%202013/0313SAC.aspx
About time that the results of an inspection actually spurred the brass to do something about it.
So often, stuff just gets swept under the rug. I'm actually concerned over this, not because "oh look, we found 17 folks out of compliance", but more because "if this is what they are publisicing, what isn't being said?".
As much as I love seeing Officers getting called out, it really makes me worry about the Chair Farce's ability to get stuff right.
There were already a lot of people that were kicked out or forced into retirement after that. There were also some pretty significant structure reorganizations that followed.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Isn't '60-90 days of retraining' about the same as what you get for failing a class in high school and getting forced to take summer classes if you want to graduate?
I think these are the same units who allowed a nuclear bomb to be shipped accidentally from ND to ??Mississippi?? a few years ago.
I, for one, shudder to think of Mississippi as a nuclear power...
Yes but do they still have mine shaft access, that is what I want to know?! How else are we going to keep the commies from infiltrating our precious fluids? Grain alcohol for me I tell you what!
Seriously however, scoring a "D" in Minuteman Mastery should get your keys revoked. Somehow 60-90 days training doesn't make me feel any better if that is all it takes to get their access back....
When I was in ROTC our squad officer said basically everyone up the chain of command was written up (permanent records) because one security guard with a shotgun was out of position in a nuke facility.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
. . . in scenic North Korea. Wacky delusional dictator Kim Jong Un has promised them an exciting life in his missile silos, highlighted by Shirts & Skins hoops with Dennis Rodman.
. . . on Roller Skates . . . !
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Kate Pierson and Fred Schneider were fairly pissed about that, too.
Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, not Mississippi.
I don't think it was the same military units involved in both incidents. The 2007 incident was the 5th Bomb Wing, and this incident is the 91st Missile Wing. Technically, the 5th Bomb Wing is the host unit and the 91st is an independent tenant unit, since most of its weapons are off base.
But it's awkward and somewhat telling that both incidents, as well as some serious inspection failures in 2008 are on the same base. Or maybe that's just the base that's had the most serious scrutiny so far because it's established a reputation of needing scrutiny.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
...and you get to be trained in Photoshop too.
Doesn't this concern anyone? I mean, failing an inspection once, sure. But repeatedly failing seems to suggest that "intensive training" might not be the solution someone sold it to be. Because it sure smells like someone sold someone else a truckload of bullshit and 17 guys took the fall for it.
... whatever
I hope USAF Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper has been stripped of his nuclear authority too!
Lawyers are the only thing likely to out-survive cockroaches. Lifting off and nuking them from orbit won't be enough.
Another similarity with roaches: hitting them with a hammer results in a satisfying crunching sound....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Organizational rot sets in when there is nothing really "new" or interesting for employees to do, little opportunity for promotion, all spread over a number of years. How could it not?
An easy and secure job sounds like an attractive thing on its face, but really, it's not, and often eventually turns into a "club." And it's boring.
Quote FTA, by a former launch-control officer, "Minuteman launch crews have long been marginalized and demoralized by the fact that the Air Force's culture and fast-track careers revolve around flying planes, not sitting in underground bunkers baby-sitting nuclear-armed missiles."
Except the problem being that some of the standards of the previous generations were so hard and difficult to achieve the way they wanted that cheating started happening. Policies have changed because we have better ones. PRP (Personal Reliability Program) is the program we follow now. It is designed to be a program where you keep track of yourself and others, and any issues that arrise you channel up the chain of command. If you get a traffic ticket, and you tell your commander, "No, I'm good. Simple mistake." or whatever it might be, then alright. You go pay it and everything is fine and done. If a family member dies, you tell someone, and you are "down" on PRP and are not allowed to work with nuclear weapons. If anything else is bothering you, you can tell someone you need to be "down". So on and so forth. And this was put into place, because people in the past were told to "suck it up and get to work" and then these sad, depressed, or angry people are working on nukes. Pretty sure we can agree that's bad.
Granted, maybe there are many more problems going on within Minot AFB that is creating this problem. At F.E. Warren, we aren't having these issues and scored exceedingly high in every area of the inspections this year.
Looks like somebody got put on his Super High Intensity Training list.
Absoutely, this is not unprecedented. I'm a bit puzzled lately by this obsession with AF bashing by the press.
First off, it's extremely simple to fail -anything- involving nuclear weapons. Failing to dot an i type stuff... so when it takes about 'potential to compromise codes', it's relative.
Second, these young officers didn't "have the authority to launch weapons". Only the president does. Better phrased as "authority to be near nuclear weapons and follow launch procedures when authorized and provided necessary codes".
Third, this authority is often stripped temporarily on a routine basis for lots of reasons. Look up Personnel Reliability Program (PRP). Have a bitter divorce going on? PRP gets yanked. Foreclosed on? PRP yanked. Temporarily, not a career-ender, but better safe then sorry.
Finally, why the heck are Senators involved?? A group of young officers needed their attention grabbed... a mid-level officer (Lieutenant Colonel) grabbed them by the horns and shwacked then with a blunt email about what the expectations are. And this is bad how? Hire thousands of young employees into a job, and some of them will fail to meet your expectations, no matter how high/low they are. So a good leader tries to fix the employees. Looks like that's what this guy is trying to do in an email that was never meant to go public.
I'd be much more concerned about this is every single nuclear inspection in the military never reported any issues.
Dunno.... but the AF used to give out 'Missile Commander' scholarships like water.
Sign up, get money for college, and then spend two years buried in a hole.
I met a few of these guys in grad school, and being a grunt in a silo sucked pond water or worse.
Always understaffed and had low morale, and the usual chain-of-command abuses
of the peons. And it's not like there's much to do in Minot, SD, so the officers figured
everyone should be available 80 hours a week. Good luck getting a degree with
the nearest university far (90 miles?) away and random, capricious time demands.
Good luck finding anything interesting to do, or getting or keeping a life.
Unsurprisingly, it affects/affected a lot of people very badly.
This isn't that big of a deal. I know someone that had this job for a while. According to him (and of course this is just something a friend of mine told me over beers so take it for what it's worth) it's a miserable job. You're just stuck, bored to death for very very long periods of time. You have no sunlight. Everyone in the room has sworn and oath and passed psychological tests that prove they will kill you if you threaten a launch or are in any other way ordered to kill you. So it's not like you can really be friends with any of them in any real way. Even when you do get to come out after a tour, you're in the middle of no-where. It's just a vast empty plane. And the entire purpose of you being there is to destroy all of humanity. As bored as you are you have plenty of time to dwell on the nature of your job... your life... why you're th.... BWAP BWAP BWAP!!!!! ALERT ALERT!!! oooo... missed it by 2.3 seconds. Fuck it all to hell.
Your hurtful stereotypes wound me deeply. As a smirking east coast liberal elitist, I am only able to wear my Birkenstocks a few months out of the year, lest the cruel winter winds chill my delicate toes. Also, please keep in mind that (while liberals are required by union regulations to despise all practical knowledge except evilutionism), our culture has long prided itself on spending as many years as possible at expensive private universities and liberal arts colleges accruing detailed knowledge of the useless arts and humanities and indulging in depraved promiscuity. We work very hard to know as much as possible without crossing the lines into being capable of actual productivity.
As for Mississippi, it isn't the 'southern' that's the problem, it's the "scraping the bottom of the barrel among US states on an alarming number of measures" that's the problem.
"intensive training" is a euphemism "A euphemism is a generally innocuous word or expression used in place of one that may be found offensive or suggest something unpleasant." and unpleasant is a euphemism for "A living hell designed to make magots like you 17 wish you were ever born"
For example, remember that some fell asleep on watch, so obviously they need intensive training on staying awake, so I for see many 20 hour training days over the 60 day training cycle. Imagine 4 days with only 16 hours total sleep, then sitting through a 4 hour lecture on nuclear security protocols and a hour long written exam on the same after lunch. Don't pass, don't worry, you can repeat the week twice, or you can resign.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
And don't forget the detail of having to take care of the civilization-ending weapons of mass destruction while bored out of your mind.
The problem is the same one you get after a few thousand years of preparing for the End of the World in the biblical sense. Eventually, people figure out that smacking yourself in the face with a board every time the Plague breaks out does not result in you being ushered into heaven while the Earth is overrun by the Armies of Satan. You just get a really bad headache and permanent double vision.
Our forefathers thought that the end of the world would come at the hands of the Red Commies if they were not ready to turn that key to scare the Asian Hordes into thoughtful peacefulness with our stern resolution. Today, no one is sure who we're actually aiming the missiles at. It's slack because no one thinks anyone is going to shoot at anyone any more. At least not with ICBMs.
Of course, neither case proves that the End of the World is not nigh, it just means that it's not obvious anymore how it would happen. Which, if you think about it, is the perfect time for someone to screw up and end the world. After all, when everyone is most ready to fight is when they are most aware of what the danger really is and what needs to be done to prevent it.
You obviously missed the point so I'll spoon feed it to you just this once.
Sending 17 guys on "intensive training" is not a solution if this sort of thing has happened before. If it was a solution the "intensive training" would have helped the last time and this time would not exist. Doing this sort of thing publicly is called a FUCKING COVER UP. Someone is covering their ASS and THROWING 17 guys UNDER THE BUS for it.
For the point to work it doesn't fucking matter what "intensive training" is, or if it is even a physical thing. It could be a very abstract conecpt. All that matters is that it is being used (again) as a tool to try and calm YOU down, not fix THEIR problem.
... whatever