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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?...
The obvious solution is to automate this stuff! What could go wrang?
Letter To Iran
One thing not well documented (but it is covered if you take the tour at the Minuteman National Historic Site):
A missle will not launch until at least two capsules "vote" for launch. For a capsule to "vote" - both operators must engage the key within N seconds of each other.
So a person would need to, in addition to stretching their arms, twist two additional keys in a separate capsule using some sort of portal technology. Someone with such techology likely does not need nukes.
Also, as I understand it, in addition to the key turn, there is additional validation of launch codes by computer nowadays.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Reminds me of Silo, a neat little short film about a caretaker of an ICBM (who does a very poor job) and is forced to fix up the place... and well, any more and I'd be spoiling. You're best watching it...
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.
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.
We might now be able to get rid of all of them, but we could get rid of MOST of them
We have already done that. America's nukes peaked in the 1960s at over 30,000 warheads. Today we have less than 5,000. Here is a nice graph. The average yield per warhead has declined as well. Our current policy is to continue to decommission warheads until we reduce our stockpile to 1550 by 2021.
I was a Titan launch officer. There were two keys, one at the commanders console and a second one at the deputies console. In order to launch a message would come down with a series of letters that would have to match a sealed packet, kept in a safe with two locks on it. The keys were also kept in there. Additionally, we would receive a series of numbers to unlock a valve to allow fuel flow in the first stage.