May 082013
 

The tip-off to trouble was a March inspection of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., which earned the equivalent of a “D” grade when tested on its mastery of Minuteman III missile launch operations. In other areas, the officers tested much better, but the group’s overall fitness was deemed so tenuous that senior officers at Minot decided, after probing further, that an immediate crackdown was called for.

The Air Force publicly called the inspection a “success.”

But in April it quietly removed 17 officers at Minot from the highly sensitive duty of standing 24-hour watch over the Air Force’s most powerful nuclear missiles, the intercontinental ballistic missiles that can strike targets across the globe. Inside each underground launch control capsule, two officers stand “alert” at all times, ready to launch an ICBM upon presidential order.

via Air Force Stripped 17 Officers Of Ability To Launch Nuclear Missiles Due To Internal ‘Rot’.

  5 Responses to “Er, Which Button Again?”

  1. You would think, wouldn’t you, that the procedure for launching those missiles would be practiced daily. Hourly, maybe. That they would be required to show competence blindfolded, hog-tied, hungry, and scared. That there would be pop-quizzes. That there would be consequences to failure. You would think. Sigh.

    • Robin, I’m glad you like my little thingies here. 🙂

      You would think.

      • LIke them? More like, Wow, someone else is also ripping out his hair while reading the news, lamenting the ongoing idiocy. Commiserating, maybe. Yeah. That’s it.

        • One tries to see the comical side of the human pathology, too. I have very little hair left to pull out.

          • Yes, comical, but this hits on my one fear about dying: that I would die because someone somewhere did something stupid.

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