Commanders fired in nuke missile cheating scandal

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Air Force took the extraordinary step Thursday of firing nine midlevel nuclear commanders and announcing it will discipline dozens of junior officers at a nuclear missile base, responding firmly to an exam-cheating scandal that spanned a far longer period than originally reported.

A 10th commander, the senior officer at the base, resigned and will retire from the Air Force.

Air Force officials called the discipline unprecedented in the history of America's intercontinental ballistic missile force. The Associated Press last year revealed a series of security and other problems in the ICBM force, including a failed safety and security inspection at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., where the cheating occurred.

In an emotion-charged resignation letter titled "A Lesson to Remember," Col. Robert Stanley, who commanded the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom, lamented that the reputation of the ICBM mission was now "tarnished because of the extraordinarily selfish actions of officers entrusted with the most powerful weapon system ever devised by man."

Remember. . .it’s not a ‘one mistake’ Air Force, but it sure isn’t a ‘two mistake” Air Force.

That attitude causes more angst and promotion: I’ll-be-safe-and-not-make-a-decision-at-all-cost approach to leadership that is the root cause of many of the problems.

Back in my day, we finished RTU and arrived on the base. The wing commander wanted to meet everyone before they flew his jets.

We (all five of us) were ushered in to his office and he sat there, hands clasped and on his desk, not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in his flight suite. Stoic face.

Emotionless he went around the room with the disinterested questions “where you from, have you a family, what are your career plans.”

Hardly would listen any of the answers.

Then when done with that, he looked at each of us, eye to eye, observed we all have Senior Pilot wings and he said, “I see by your wings you are experienced, so, I won’t bother with the ‘crime vs mistake speech,’ but let me tell you this, you go out there and drop one of my jets and I think you are wrong, I don’t give a damn what the mishap and accident boards say, I will f*ck you.”

Well. . .”welcome to the F-15E, be prepared to die saving a jet to save MY career, otherwise your career is over.”

Happy Hal: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2006/05/air_force_chief/. . .what goes arounf comes around. .

There are back stories that many of you may not be aware of, and why Major Command is bigtime “gun shy.” It explains why it came down like a ton of bricks:

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A few years ago in 2007, the wing at Minot AFB lost accountability of 6 AGM-129 cruise missiles with nuclear warheads that a B-52 flew to Barksdale, Louisiana. As I recall, these AGM-129s were processed to be de-mil’d or have their nuclear warheads dissociated in accordance with Strategic Nuclear Disarmament Agreement.

I don’t think the public ever found out the details on how or why Minot screwed up, but I’ll give you guys a plausible scenario.

Minot failed to write and publish local Air Force Instructions (AFI) or Air Force Regulations (AFR) to deal with the partially or fully demilling and/or dissociating the W80s from the cruise missiles, or the local instructions were flawed instructions, or someone failed to correctly follow them.

Any who or somehow the nuclear tipped AGM129s got up loaded on the Buff where they were flown undetected as nuclear capable missiles to Barksdale. The air crew did not detect the nuclear AGMs as there was no nuclear weapons custody transfer document to sign? The munitions loaders failed to detect that these AGMs which still had warheads? The munitions line delivery crew that transported them out of storage failed to detect that W80s that were still in place and installed? There were no (or was there?) security forces that escorted the weapons out of the WSA to the flightline? Or did the security forces inexplicably drop there security cordon around the A/C because they believe these were non-warhead cruise missiles?

I think the simplest answer is that these trailerized AGM 129s were schedule to have their nuclear warheads removed. Some how the nuke-tipped cruise missiles with their W80s were mixed up with cruise missiles that were without nukes or something thereof. The loaded trailer and these AGMs were incorrectly documented as demil’d as without warheads. From the very beginning of the transport process, they never thought these missiles were nuclear weapons. I remember a particular AF colonel at Minot who curiously retired about a month earlier before ‘the Minot lost nukes story’ hit the presses. ... Yes, you know who (rhetorical).

And there is more... mess ups that ended general officer careers.

The Air Force in the same year lost or misplaced Nuclear Ordinance Commodity Materials as seen here:

“Audit finds U.S. nuclear weapons parts misplaced”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1889019/posts

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And a few may recall that the AF Chief of Staff and the Sec AF were ultimately relieved.

“Air Force Leaders Fired Over Nuke Handling”

“Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fired Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne on June 5 after a report by Navy Adm. Kirkland Donald highlighted significant oversights in the Air Force’s nuclear security practices.

The ousting of Moseley and Wynne followed several incidents in the past year that have heightened concerns over the Air Force’s ability to properly maintain and secure its arsenal of land-based ICBMs and nuclear-armed bombers.

Last August, a B-52 bomber flew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barskdale Air Force Base in Louisiana wrongly and unknowingly armed with nuclear cruise missiles. (See ACT, October 2007.) In March of this year, it was reported that the Air Force had accidentally shipped four nosecone fuses for nuclear missiles to Taiwan in 2006, drawing complaints from China. (See ACT, May 2008.)

Gates’ action came after another such incident in late May when the 5th Bomb Wing, which is stationed at Minot, received a grade of “unsatisfactory” in nuclear security during a weeklong, highly anticipated inspection by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). “ -end snip-

http://www.armscontrol.org/print/3106

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There it is - as to some of this story.

Toot my horn one last time. ;-) Actually, my concluding conjecture was dead on except for the "demil'd" part and replace that with dummy or training warheads.

From my post above.
"I think the simplest answer is that these trailerized AGM 129s were schedule to have their nuclear warheads removed. Some how the nuke-tipped cruise missiles with their W80s were mixed up with cruise missiles that were without nukes or something thereof. The loaded trailer and these AGMs were incorrectly documented as demil’d as without warheads. From the very beginning of the transport process, they never thought these missiles were nuclear weapons. "

And from Wiki:

"Although the breakout crew in the weapons storage began to inspect the missiles, an early-arriving transport crew hooked up the pylons and towed them away without inspecting or ensuring that the missiles had been inspected or cleared for removal. The munitions control center failed to verify that the pylon had received proper clearance and inspection and approved the pylon for loading on the B-52 at 0925. After taking eight hours to attach the pylons to the aircraft, the aircraft with the missiles loaded then remained parked overnight at Minot for 15 hours without special guard as required for nuclear weapons.[10]

On the morning of 30 August, one of the transport aircraft's flight officers, a Barksdale-assigned B-52 instructor radar navigator closely inspected the six missiles on the right wing only, which were all properly loaded with training warheads, before signing the manifest listing the cargo as a dozen unarmed AGM-129 missiles. The B-52 command pilot did not do a final verification check before preparing to depart Minot.[11]

The B-52 departed Minot at 0840 and landed at Barksdale at 1123 (local times) on 30 August. The aircraft remained parked and without special guard until 2030, when a munitions team arrived to remove the missiles. After a member of the munitions crew noticed something unusual about some of the missiles, at 2200 a "skeptical" supervisor determined that nuclear warheads were present and ordered them secured and the incident reported, 36 hours after the missiles were removed from the bunker at Minot.[12]"

What you are referring to is what we called “bold print”. Everyone in the AF who was certified in Emergency Action procedures involving control and execution of nuclear assets used to have to memorize certain phrases and be able to quote them verbatim if asked. I had the pleasure of being a certified EA controller for about 15 years, and eventually wrote and trained dozens of other controllers. Although I had to memorize the bold print items and train others to do so I never thought that rote memory was a good method of training someone. Eventually the practice was ended. As far as testing goes, the Nuc Surety test we were required to take was a nightmare for us all. Even though it was usually on a few questions you really had to get all the answers correct or risk being decertified and even cause the entire unit to fail inspection. I enter inherited a SAC Command Post who had a controller miss 3 questions during an ORI (operational readiness inspection) and as Superintendent of the CP it fell on me to make sure it did not happen again. It did not and we got an “Excellent” on the next ORI. I am glad I was not the one who failed the test because they were stigmatized by it. However, at least they failed the test honestly and did not cheat in order to pass it. While I understand why they cheated I just can’t condone cheating instead of putting in the time and effort to pass honestly. However, when I look at today’s leadership, especially the party in the White House, I can understand the corruption of the culture that was inherent in our armed forces, but now sorely lacking.

Oh, and yes, I was probably “anal” then like all SAC trained killers.

We have permitted our American “leadership” to steal what was our national culture of accountability.

We allow the political elites to look for reasons to give their peers a pass instead of holding them wholly accountable and an appointment at Leavenworth.

I’m for over-prosecuting political graft and corruption to set examples and deterrent. Instead we do the opposite and give them a pass because they are cronies of elites.

This cultural change started long before 9-11, but I still question why US government heads did not roll from the top down as a result. It changed our lives and it should have changed the lives of those who failed to do their job.

It also should have happened after the 2008-9 Wall street debacle. Instead we bailed out and gave trillions away to bankers and others who are buying up our public assets on the cheap.

Most Americans that have been doing the right thing as in having low debt and saving are rewarded with zero interest, while the money changers are rewarded with free money.

We need to see govt resources used for investigating and prosecuting crooks in government. The corruption and fraud is killing us.

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