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The Disgruntled Guys Who Babysit Our Aging Nuclear Missiles
Lasrick writes This is a rather disturbing read about the troops who guard our nuclear weapons."'The Air Force has not kept its ICBMs manned or maintained properly,' says Bruce Blair, a former missileer and cofounder of the anti-nuclear group Global Zero. Nuclear bases that were once the military's crown jewels are now 'little orphanages that get scraps for dinner,' he says. And morale is abysmal. Blair's organization wants to eliminate nukes, but he argues that while we still have them, it's imperative that we invest in maintenance, training, and personnel to avoid catastrophe: An accident resulting from human error, he says, may be actually more likely today because the weapons are so unlikely to be used. Without the urgent sense of purpose the Cold War provided, the young men (and a handful of women) who work with the world's most dangerous weapons are left logging their 24-hour shifts under subpar conditions—with all the dangers that follow."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I remember an old story in which someone at one of those bases would periodically stand between the two launch keys, which are intentionally placed far apart so that it takes two people to turn them simultaneously, and try to stretch his arms far enough so that he could launch the missile. Anybody remember what that story was?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
...be a real shame if sumthin' happened to it.
The obvious solution is to automate this stuff! What could go wrang?
Letter To Iran
Start with a screwed up promotion system that punishes risk taking and rewards backstabbing, mix in a cult of perfection that leads to a single wrong answer on a multiple choice test being career terminating, and the perception of senior government officials continually insulting the military, and wonder why people are disgruntled.
Shift their responsibilities to the bomber and submarine forces. Land based missiles don't offer any benefit over the other two legs of the triad. Bombers can be recalled and submarines are much more likely to survive to deliver a counter strike. Both bombers and submarines lessen the need for launch on warning. The missile forces as constituted are an artifact from a very different technological era.
This same thing gets reported every single year. We all know nuclear weapons will never get used, but we can't get rid of them because it would then make us seem weak. Like it or not, this is the only thing standing between us and another large scale war.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Part of the reason that morale is so low is that not only is the work long and tedious, but it's also horrible in terms of career path. The most desirable/promotable career path in the Air Force is that of a pilot, and (at least as I understand) the missile officers are about as far from that as it gets.
I was a Minuteman Missile Combat Crew Member back in the 70s, and I want to alert you that there are factual errors in the story about alert shifts and the like. I should also point out that Bruce Blair, as it says in the article, is anti-nuclear missile. I've read comments by him for a long time, and he has his opinion, but I don't agree with him much of the time. I would suggest finding additional articles and commentary by additional people to get a more nearly rounded view of the situation for Missile Combat Crews.
Perhaps the more tractable question is whether single-purpose nuclear delivery systems can be eliminated.
Unlike, say, submarines and bombers, which have other purposes to keep the crew busy; but can deliver nuclear payloads; or nuclear weapon research and maintenance, which is single-purpose but involves a lot of potentially interesting work in physics, materials engineering, etc. watching over the ICBMs is pure grind.
It's hard to imagine how you could keep morale up when the job is 'nothing but drills, in a hole, until doomsday'; but ICBMs are too expensive(and far too likely to cause itchy trigger fingers) to have a conventional role, and it's not exactly in anyone's interest to edge closer to a situation where missile crews have reason to feel that they are preparing for a job they'll be called upon to perform.
You should read a short story called "The Big Flash" by Norman Spinrad.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Ned: Homer, do not press the core destruct button.
transmits to the booth as: Press -static- destruct button!
Ned: Don't do it, don't do it, you'll kill everyone!
transmits to the booth as: Do it -static- do it -static- kill everyone!
Our troops are making standard military pay for doing a fairly stress free job (compared to other military jobs).
Given that Russia is essentially a kleptocracy, I have to wonder how safe their nukes are.
https://www.goodreads.com/book...
A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them?
I'd be pretty seriously disgruntled if I was stationed in North Dakota. Being in a deep hole in the ground might be the best part of it.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
transmits to the booth as: Do it -static- do it -static- kill everyone!
Something vaguely similar actually happened, killing 500+ people. In 1977, two 747s collided on the runway in part due to miscommunication.
ICAO phraseology has since been changed to use separate terminology for positive and negative communications. For example, when an ATC controller asks whether or not your capable your aircraft is capable of maintaining straight and level flight at a speed of 80 knots, the pilot will not say "I don't think we can do that" or "we can not do that". He or she will say "Affirmative" or "negative".
Takeoff clearings are even more different. When ready to take off, a pilot will advice "ready for departure" and will only use the word takeoff when reading back a clearance (i.e. Delta 19 cleared for expedited takeoff rwy 19).
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
//We all know nuclear weapons will never get used//
Historically that is not true.
The 1st nukes developed were developed by the US, the 1st thing they did with them was use them on Japan. Perhaps you meant it as a statement of hope about the future... I hope you are right, but there is a whole lot of future. The smart money is on them being used again at some point. Can't possibly imagine a scenario when someone might use them again? Let me help out the lack of imagination: say someone is stupid enough to pick a big fight with a country that has them thinking that they'll never use them.. or a country that has them finds itself in a war with a powerful military that doesn't have them- or a civil war breaks out and one faction has control of the nukes and fill in the blank. Nukes probably will be used again and it probably won't be the end of the world as we know it, but it could.
http://www.debate.org/opinions...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
For the love of God, just do not take their staplers.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
When my 16-year-old mother ran away from home to have my older half-brother and marry the 21-year-old father from the Air Force base in Idaho, my grandfather tracked them down and told the base commander that the marriage was illegal without parental consent. A major scandal back in the 1950's. The base commander told the guy that he could go to prison and get a dishonorable discharge, or get a divorce and finish his enlistment babysitting a missile silo in the Midwest.
My mother was newly divorced and a single mother at 17. Her first husband got a honorable discharge at the end of his enlistment, moved to Los Angeles, and didn't see her or my brother until 30 years later at a family reunion. My grandfather worked in construction and brought my father home to meet my mother the proper way. A year later they were married. I came along a decade later. When my father was in the Army, he babysat tanks in W. Germany.
of what some would call the pussification of America. The conditions are no worse, and in fact a heck of a lot less stressful than they were. Yet now for whatever reason we need to make it all a big deal.... because they're bored.
If you read the article you'll see that the senators from states with missile silos don't want any of them closed. That's why the airforce will be manning all 454 ICBM silos, even though 54 of them will be empty.
It's basically welfare for Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming. It would make more sense to cut 2.4 million checks for $819 and send them to every man, woman and child in those three states every year for perpetuity, rather than spendin that same 2 billion dollars on a half-assed job of maintaining these dangerous "assets".
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Which is why it was changed to "Affirm" and "Negative" 20 years ago.
Spent a few years (several years ago) doing this job in Wyoming. And yes, it was definitely considered better than doing it in North Dakota or Montana. Civilization (i.e. Denver, CO) is only 2 hours away. I always describe the time as spending 24 hours in a 5'x15' room 100' underground praying you don't do your job. It's rather boring and you really, really don't want it to get exciting. That said, you can read books and watch movies for a lot of the shift. There's only a few hours where you're actually doing any work. It could be much worse, but there aren't a lot of ways to make it better. Bottom line: it's an important job, and the men and women doing it are professional officers. If we treat them as such and provide them with the support they need, it'll be fine. Regardless of what Blair has to say.
Smile, it makes people wonder what you're up to.
I flew both cargo and carrier based aircraft in the 90s, in the US and abroad.
You are aware that in aviation things are continue to improve, right? One of those things is phraseology.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
...are to be spent on updating the nuclear weapons arsenal until 2025. Really? Are you f***ing kidding me? Are they serious??? What the *bleep* do we even need nuclear weapons for and especially that many? Yes, I understand that it is supposedly a deterrent, but with the trillions of Dollars that it will take to modernize the quadruple destruction power of earth we better fix the issues for other people so that they don't have to sit in mud huts and get bored leading to ideas like attacking the US. Just junk the nukes and do something that has a true and long lasting impact on mankind.
I've been following the news about the strategic services for decades - and this story is, as I said, consistent with what has been coming out for years from a wide variety of sources.
If you have evidence to the contrary, give it to us. Or shut the fuck up.