A couple of days ago I blogged about some problems with the U.S. nuclear missile force. One recent report revealed that thirty four members of the nuclear missile force have been suspended because they were directly or indirectly implicated in a cheating scandal. Today I want to drill down into that particular issue. The officers in the missile force were caught cheating or tolerating the cheating of others on the routine exams that test their knowledge of the highly classified and strict procedures that are required to launch U.S. nuclear missiles under emergency war orders. All of them have had their security clearances suspended and are not allowed to perform launch duties.
Apparently some of the cheaters were transmitting answers to other cheaters via text messaging. This is a blatant violation of security protocols for handling classified information in addition to showing a clear lack of personal integrity. Seventeen officers cheated and another seventeen knew about the cheating but did not report it. A commander at one of the six bases involved in the cheating investigation said that he thought that this was one manifestation of a deeper and broader cultural problem of ignoring problems rather than dealing with them.
In response to the cheating revelations, every available ICBM launch control officer at Malmstrom AFB in Montana, F.E. Warren AFB in Wyoming and Minot AFB in North Dakota were retested by the Air Force. Out of four hundred and seventy two officers, twenty one failed their tests and will receive new training and be retested before they are allowed to resume their duties. An additional twenty seven were not available for the tests.
Adding up the cheaters, the failed and the unavailable, the total number of launch control officers who are not authorized for duty comes to eighty two. This accounts for seventeen percent of the launch control officers. Although the Air Force admitted that this was going to have an “impact” on the missile forces, they stated that it would not affect the 24/7 readiness of the all the U.S. ICBMs. The Air Force assured the public that “the trouble is episodic, correctible and not cause for public worry.”
The new Air Force Secretary said that this was a failure of some of our airmen, not a failure of the nuclear mission. “Just because there are issues with individuals it does not mean that the entirety of the mission is compromised.” She said that she was confident that the check and balances in place and the regular inspections of our ICBM bases were sufficient to insure the security of the nuclear missiles.
The question I have is exactly what the “nuclear mission” is. Is it to assure any potential enemy that we will destroy the world if attacked or is it to actually be ready to finish the task of bringing down human civilization if we are attacked? The goal of the first mission is to never need to launch which means that the missile forces are engaged in an endless and boring job of babysitting nuclear missiles which will never be launched. If the mission is to actually launch the missiles even with the knowledge that no one will win the final war, then every launch control officer in the missile forces must sometime ask themselves if they would actually launch the missiles if commanded. Either mission is a particularly stressful burden and it is not surprising that the some of the launch control officers are succumbing to severe stress.
Malmstrom Air Force Base:
The total volume of Tritium contained in the contaminated water tanks at Fukushima is 875 trillion Bq which is sixty times the legal limit for discharging water into the ocean. fukushima-diary.com
The South African establishment has a pro-nuclear bias that is not supported by the facts. nuclear-news.net
“The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with a mission to strengthen global security by reducing the risk of use and preventing the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and to work to build the trust, transparency, and security that are preconditions to the ultimate fulfillment of the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s goals and ambitions.” The NTI has issued a report on the global distribution and security of nuclear materials that could be used to make nuclear bombs. Countries possessing such nuclear materials have dropped by twenty five percent in the past two years. Mexico, Sweden, Ukraine, Vietnam, Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary have removed most or all of their nuclear materials that could be used to create nuclear weapons.
The report considered such factors as accounting methods, physical security and transportation security in creating a ranking for the twenty five nations with weapons grade nuclear materials. Australia was cited as the most secure country on the list, followed by Canada, Switzerland, Germany and Norway. The United States is ranked at number eleven. Israel, Pakistan, India, Iran and North Korea were ranked as being the worst with respect to nuclear materials security.
It is estimated that there are about fourteen hundred tons of highly enriched (HE) uranium and about five hundred tons of plutonium at hundreds of sites around the globe. Highly enriched uranium and plutonium are the nuclear materials that can be used to construct nuclear weapons. A multi-megaton nuclear bomb can be constructed from about nine pounds of plutonium or about thirty five pounds of uranium.
Reprocessing facilities for plutonium is more difficult to detect than comparable reprocessing facilities for highly enriching uranium. Due to the much smaller quantity of plutonium required for a bomb than uranium, plutonium is the most sought after choice on the black market. About A relatively small amount of HE uranium or plutonium can be used to build a single bomb. Terrorist organizations have expressed the intent to
U.S. President Obama declared in 2009 that he wanted to lock down all the plutonium and HE uranium in the world. World leaders will meet in March to discuss security of weapons grade nuclear materials. Although the U.S. is placed at about the middle of the security ranking, there are still serious security issues in the U.S. In July of 2012, anti-war protesters broke into the Y-12 complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee where the U.S. stockpile of HE uranium is stored. The catalog of U.S. nuclear missile forces problems that I presented in my previous post reinforces the point that the U.S. has some serious work to do on nuclear security.
If terrorists get their hands on weapons grade nuclear materials and manage to acquire the technology and expertise to create a working nuclear bomb, the whole world will pay the price regardless of where the bomb is detonated.
Logo for the Nuclear Threat Initiative:
The Swiss Embassy in Japan issued a statement on contamination of sea water from Fukushima melted cores. stofficetokyo.ch
Namibia’s Rössing uranium mine is gradually resuming operations after one of two leaching modules returned to service. world-nuclear-news.com
First criticality for the second unit at the Indian Kudankulam nuclear plant in India will be delayed until this spring or summer. nuclearsteet.com
It has been said that duty in the military is comprised of long periods of boredom punctuated by short episodes of terror. I guess that this presupposes that the soldier will see battle. There are some postings that do not have any periods of terror but do have continuous boredom with no relief in sight. That sort of situation takes its toll on people and people react to the stress in different ways. This has been illustrated by the bad press that the U.S. nuclear missile forces have been getting lately. I have written about previous problems but since they have been in the news again with new charges, I thought it was time to revisit the subject starting with a recap.
Last April, seventeen officers at the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota were judged to be “temporarily unfit for duty” after the discovery of safety violations. They were given several weeks of remedial training. Other groups in the missile force have failed testing recently.
Major General Michael Cary, the commander of U.S. ballistic missiles, was fired last October by the U.S. Air Force after reports of his behavior at a conference of nuclear missile issues held in Russia. He was late for meetings, made insulting comments, and drank heavily in the evenings and on conference outings.
It has been reported that Air Force officers left blast doors open several times in their underground command posts while they were sleeping. This was a serious breach of security because intruders could have broken in.
Now the news comes that 11 officers in the missile force were just suspended for the use of drugs. Aside from issues of being less than competent while under the influence of drugs, there is the problem of possible blackmail by someone who knew of the drug use.
The drug probe was expanded when evidence of wide spread cheating on certification exams was uncovered. In all, thirty four officers have been implicated in the cheating scandal. Some of the cheaters actually texted during exams to get the answers. These exams are important because they certify that officers are prepared to competently carry out orders to launch nuclear missiles. Some officers have said that there is pressure to cut corners and cheat to get the highest possible scores during the tests in order to increase chances for promotion.
The Air Force asked the Rand Corporation to conduct a study into morale in the missile forces because of recent problems. The unpublished report of the study concludes that many in the missile forces are suffering “burn-out” from stress. There are also reports of sexual assaults and domestic violence among the missile forces. Court-marshals in the missile forces are about twice numerous as in the A.F. in general. Other types of punishments and disciplinary actions are also high.
The U.S. has about four hundred and fifty missiles with multiple warheads aimed and ready to launch at potential enemies within minutes. These members of the Air Force missiles forces are stuck in the middle of North Dakota in a silo underground. They are charged with the handling of the most destructive weapons ever created by the human race. The reports of lax discipline, poor training, cheating on tests, gambling, drug use, heavy drinking, etc. suggest that we need to make some major changes in the staffing of those missile silos. There is also the fact that those officers know that the only relief from boredom that they might have would be carrying out orders to launch missiles that might bring an end to civilization.
U.S. nuclear missile Launch control center:
