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Nuclear Missile Command Drops Grades From Tests To Discourage Cheating
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this year, just over half of the military officers put in charge of U.S. nuclear launch facilities were implicated in an exam cheating scandal. The Air Force conducted regular exams to keep officers current on the protocols and skills required to operate some of the world's most dangerous weapons. But the way they graded the test caused problems. Anything below a 90% score was a fail, but the remaining 10% often dictated how a launch officer's career progressed. There might not be much functional difference between a 93% and a 95%, but the person scoring higher will get promoted disproportionately quicker. This inspired a ring of officers to cheat in order to meet the unrealistic expectations of the Air Force. Now, in an effort to clean up that Missile Wing, the Air Force is making the exams pass/fail. The officers still need to score 90% or higher (since it's important work with severe consequences for failure), but scores won't be recorded and used to compete for promotions anymore. The Air Force is also making an effort to replace or refurbish the aging equipment that runs these facilities.
You still need a 90% to pass. At least you no longer have folks clamoring for the top score.
WOPR
... or refurbish the aging equipment that runs these facilities.
Which equipment? The testing equipment, the launchers, missiles, terminators?
Q: What is the launch code for all U.S. Minuteman missiles?
A. 00000000
<sarcasm>Is it a good thing or a bad thing when the burglary of a computer museum is likely to set off alarm bells at Langley and 935 Pennsylvania Avenue about somebody hijacking an ICBM silo and executing an unauthorized launch?</sarcasm>
In this case, probably the computer systems. They've been using the same stuff since the missile sites were first built, to the point where they're still using 5-inch floppies to transfer data.
"There might not be much functional difference between a 93% and a 95%, but the person scoring higher will get promoted disproportionately quicker."
This weasel language implies that it's not fair that someone that scores higher on the test gets promoted faster, and also implies that any promotion due to higher grades is "disproportionate," which is media-speak for "unfair."
"This inspired a ring of officers to cheat in order to meet the unrealistic expectations of the Air Force."
Why is it unrealistic that those in charge of launching missiles that will end life on this planet as we know it pass a very high bar of excellence?
Unrealistic expectations?
Not for the best of the Best of the BEST, SIR!
bickerdyke
To push a red button when odered by Washington?? No wonder our DoD is sucking the taxpayers' money dry.
take the men out of the loop
If the story 60 Minutes did on this is anywhere accurate it doesn't surprise me the cheating is a huge problem. The state of repair of the facilities and systems was so bad, it showed to me that no one in the Command is paying attention. I don't want to say no one cares, but it looks pretty bad. The state of repair of their systems is probably the same as their staff.
I'm glad the men in charge of ending the world have such unflinching ethical standards.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
To remember the launch code? :)
You never see your grade. It's sealed. Use it for training and placement, but you never see it.
Sadly, like every other bureacracy, the military is ripe for abuse. And ultimately, those who DO have access to the scores, most likely can be bought.
Are you kidding me? 90% competency in protocol is unrealistic?
When it comes to a nation's nuclear weapons, I don't want a B or less, I want the person with the A managing the switch.
Has this country become so lazy and apologetic towards 'bad grades hurt feelings' pansies that they will pass everyone?
If I recall from ye olde school days:
A = 94-100%
B = 84-93%
C = 74-83%
D = 64-73%
F = 64%
C shouldn't even be a passing grade. It was never acceptable in my house. C's wait tables. D's are garbage collectors, F's live in government housing and vote for the people that continue to favor teacher's unions over children's educations and to take money from those the paid attention and succeeded to support them.
Everyone should be striving to be top in their desired field, whatever that be, from software dev to mechanic to entertainer. And if one isn't in their desired field, then they should be spending their free time to improve themselves to get into their desired fields.
90% is not unrealistic, it's a MINIMUM requirement for success.
Everyone loves it.
"The Air Force is also making an effort to replace or refurbish the aging equipment that runs these facilities."
"George, you've been a good janitor for this silo for decades, but we're going to have to let you go."
I hate to be nitpicking but I'd like to point out that they were not using 5 1/4" but 8" floppies!
More tests need to based on practical skills and non test cramming.
Whats the point if people who are good at test cramming are rated better then the people who know what they doing and can be good at the practical skills parts.
Quite frankly this is what should give you nightmares.
I can almost guarantee whatever replaces it will not be as secure.
I was a Missile Launch Officer in an earlier life and it was without a doubt the worst job that I ever had. Boredom with massive micromanagement. Drive 2-3 hours to get to site, sit in an underground control center about the size of an RV for 24 hours, drive back 2-3 hours to base. Seven times a month, then a few days per month for training. Would never recommend that job to anyone that has an once of creativity.
dial up or fixed analog phone lines?
...the officers...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
If you have people that are even remotely tempted to cheat that have their fingers on The Big Red Button, you have a serious threat to civilization.
Having an incentive to cheat is a great way to elicit this potential. The proper national security response is not to remove the incentive to cheat but to increase the detection sensitivity and then hire the guys who cheated to compete with others who cheated to design test regimes that are more likely to elicit cheating while also being more sensitive to detecting cheating.
Seastead this.
Xenu will never defeat the loyal officers.
It reads as if they were delivering test results via missile launch. I sit here very disappointed.
Regulational and technical fixes for a leadership problem?
It won't have much effect on the root cause problem. The faulty leadership will simply use another faulty KPI for promotion instead of their leadership capabilities (which all leaders should possess, or they shouldn't be leaders in the first place!).
if it is an airgapped locked down unix, who cares? crypto signed usb that won't mount with locked and signed bootloaders.
relying on security through obsolescence is foolhardy.
Everyone gets a trophy!
Derp derp!!!
Even if the existing system was only a few years old, that's years of testing that the new system doesn't have. If these floppies can still kill everyone as well as a USB can, then they aren't really obsolete.
Even if the existing system was only a few years old, that's years of testing that the new system doesn't have.
The ICBMs themselves date from 1970.
If the tests were the sole basis for who gets promoted in a particular group of officers, I can see why the cheating occurred. Since promotion is tied to pay increases, and the job doesn't really change that much (other than you might be the "lead" launch officer or whatever...) people would be tempted to cheat to make sure they get the highest score. If I had a job that was that boring, I sure would want to get paid the most I possibly could for doing it.
This is a common problem with high stakes testing. Standardized tests like the SAT, GRE, MCAT, LSAT etc. have entire industries built around getting the maximum score possible on the test, since it largely determines your future prospects. For example, if you're planning on law school, due to offshoring and the Bar Association not protecting the barriers to entry, the profession is completely dead to anyone who doesn't graduate from Harvard, Yale or Stanford (in the top 10% of their class.) As in, no one should waste their money on law school if they can't get into one of these schools. Guess what a key factor for admission is? Yup, LSAT scores!
Closer to home, our county's police force is well-known as an extremely stable, very well paid job opportunity...yes, it means you're a cop and you get all the crap that goes along with that, but it's in a reasonably safe part of the country, you can retire in 20 years with a fully vested pension, health care is completely free, and they're not offshoring cops. As a result, thousands and thousands of people take the police civil service exam every year and they're competing for maybe 50 or 60 spots. When several hundred people get 100% on the exam (and some get more than that due to bonus "status" points,) I'm sure there's extreme pressure to perform. I imagine cheating is dealt with swiftly, and for people who have their heart set on getting the job, not ever being able to compete for it again might be enough of a deterrent. But for these missile launch officers, it might have been different. I can't imagine anything more boring than doing a 24 hour shift waiting for an order that has a 99.9999999% chance of never arriving. The temptation to get ahead and move on with one's career must be huge.
Nuclear missile command operators who can't prove that they can locate Russia on a map. If one of them drops nukes on Canada by mistake, I'm sure the Canadians will be pissed at us. Then we won't have any decent maple syrup after the apocalypse.
just over half of the Air Force military officers put in charge of U.S. Air Force nuclear launch facilities
The Navy maintains a reasonably large fleet of FBMs that are not manned by the Air Force.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
That begs the question. Why do you assume they are currently secure?
That said, these system are typically engineered, that alone will make them have a high level of security.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I was USN SSBN missile systems and have talked with many SAC (Minuteman) launch crews over the years, and it's the dead simple truth. Your systems are much simpler than ours (even without figuring that we had sixteen tubes that we operated individually while you mostly just watched lights) and you didn't (couldn't) operate them or intervene in their operations to the level we did.
The examples of the complexities that you didn't have to deal with are legion (off the top of my head and in no particular order):
Etc... etc...
So yeah, the jobs of the prairie dogs waiting in their holes (which is the subject of this discussion) were (are) pretty dammed simple. You punch buttons and swap drawers. If a tube goes down, and it's not at your end, you're screwed because there's f all you can do about it except to wait for a repair crew to be dispatched. (The liquid fuel guys? Yeah, I'll agree they were the real deal. But they're long gone.)
Umm, nuclear missile command, 90% to pass? I'd expect 100%
In what reality is it ok for someone dealing with nuclear missiles not to know what they're doing 10% of the time?
I remember the end of the Cold War. I thought we would eventually start dismantling most of the nuclear arsenal that's cost trillions of dollars to build and maintain. (I'm not even going to mention the cost of cleanup at this point.) So why do we still have the massive stockpiles? I understand that Russian nukes are a problem. I understand that Putin is not the nicest guy in the world, to say the least, and may not be that amenable to reducing his stockpile. But god knows the Russians will need to save money. As do we. Our roads and bridges are crumbling, but we still maintain these ICBMs... for what exactly? It's up to Congress to change this. I say it's time.
-- haaz.
You do realize that, in this case, the practical skills test would involve launching the missiles that bring about Armageddon.
They have a fence around the site and the hatch system is secure. The electronic code system would have only been been seen by a few people to give the right code to the right site at the right time (one time pad).
The older staff would have worked out every control panel and lockout device due to boring mission hours and skills.
So you need the code sent in, a few people to send the code, more than 1 person to turn the key/get launch site ready.
The main issue is if the entire command falls under the influence of a faith based cult.
Lets hope the contractors who run the medical tests on the staff look for changes in the basic personality types used at the sites.
Other people would have the mission to track all staff off base 24/7 - phones, reading material, net use, new friends.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Older computers have the distinct advantage of being far less susceptible to EMP.
a worrying story, completely ignoing the fact that acdemic results equate to a highly moral sense in these people, er, in fact, doesn't cheating actually suggest (at the very least) of moral bankrupcy ? - i personally think anyone in such a 'job' must already have no morals whatsoever anyway..
Do we really need a full arsenal of nuclear weapons that can destroy the entire earth fivefold? Rather than throwing more money at this stuff the entire sites and the nuclear rockets should be dismantled. That will save a lot of money, make the world a safer place, and lower the need of staff.