Meanwhile, Down In the Silos . . . .
Seems as if things didn’t go that well when a USAF Missile Wing received a periodic inspection.
Turns out in one area they barely passed. What area? “Minuteman III missile launch operations.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d say that’s a rather critical task for a USAF Missile Wing.
The unit CO still has a job – for now, anyway. But 17 launch officers have been pulled from their assignments for at least 60-days and relegated to “bench warmer” status. Presumably that will include some extensive retraining.
The USAF has had some high-profile nuclear incidents over the past decade or so. In 2008, things got so bad that the SECDEF fired some of the USAF’s civilian and military leadership due to a series of incidents, including one in which a bomber armed with live warheads flew cross-country without authority. And a report that same year by a Pentagon advisory group indicated that there had been a “dramatic and unacceptable decline” in the Air Force’s commitment to the nuclear mission.
Looks like some of those same problems might remain 5 years later.
Yeah, using nuclear missiles has always been something no one liked to think about. It’s also probably something that’s extremely unlikely.
But it’s still a critical mission. And IMO, it’s just a bit too important to “back burner” and take less than deadly serious.
Category: Air Force, Military issues
Riding the Pine….in basketball, baseball or football…no big deal.
Missile Launch Officer….Oh F$UCK.
/My Poor Air Force Recently….WTF Why You No Have Your SH*T Together??!?!?!/
Worked for Global Strike for a short while. Nice people. They didn’t need to be around nukes. The command philosophy was ‘Don’t worry, it’ll all work out.’
#1: ChipNASA: missileers are 3rd class citizens in the USAF. After fighters, and uh, fighters who are in training billets. Same problem in all of the services. We’ll never see an NBC officer become CSA.
They’re suffering from being forgotten. During the Cold War, missiles and their handlers were in the top tier. Since the end of the Cold War….who really stops to think about nukes? When’s the last time you heard, read or saw anything to do with our nuclear missile system? Even when the Norks were buckin’ and snortin,’ the only thing we heard about were the strategic bombers that flew to SK and back. And so it goes.
I’m sure that B. Hussein Øbama will think about it, but first, a game of golf!!
Re the picture: why do the chairs need seat belts? Hot coffee spills?
Meh. Land based nukes are so yesterday. Navy been carrying the deterrent load for the last 20 years. If you were to read about this happening on an SSBN, then be afraid.
Mad love to ya flyboys, really! I’ve got kids in the Chairforce, great place to work.
If some of what is reported is accurate the missile launch folks know they are the Air Force equivalent of red headed step children……if the culture that is prevalent in any command structure denigrates or minimizes the value of the contribution to the mission by those whose primary function is an indirect role in a combat situation it’s naive to think those serving in the indirect capacity won’t consider themselves to be wasting their time as well. If you and your job don’t matter to the guys in charge, and they show preference for those who do matter it’s not exactly a recipe for high morale and dedication to mission.
When people (whether military or civilian) are constantly told they are of little value and their jobs are not as important as other jobs they become part of a self fulfilling prophecy of mediocrity. Sacking some officers seems appropriate because leaders need to f$cking lead not just be there to pal around with the “cool” guys. Everybody here knows a sh1t officer who couldn’t lead a mouse to a piece of cheese but was tolerated in all their mediocre glory because they were part of the club. Sh1t officers need to go just as much as sh1t enlisted, as Hondo states it’s just a bit too important to “back burner” and take less than deadly serious. get these leaders squared away or get rid of them.
Do not misunderstand these comments – there is no justification for having this, of all things, anything other than absolutely correct and squared away. None.
On the other hand, having survived many USAF inspections, I can tell you that they often seemed more driven by what had happened during the past inspection than the reality on the day of the current inspection. And other things equally unrelated to the current inspection.
The inspectors seemed to have some sort of template with limits to how many consecutive inspections could be exemplary and how many units within the system could be exemplary. Inspection results appeared to be driven more from these other factors rather than what the unit being inspected was doing. An utterly crazy system, one which in some regards became somewhat meaningless.
Is it good that the inspection results of this installation were barely passing? Well, no, but I would need a bunch of additional information before condemning them. If they were really, really bad, my guess would be that they would not have passed at all. Assuming that it is a legitimate ding, it is also a good thing that some retraining has been ordered.
I dunno. It doesn’t look very good. Perhaps even worse than this report indicates.
Meh, I’m Army, and we consider the Air Farce as a civilian job with haircut and uniform requirements.
@6 Prevents unscheduled dismounts at inconvenient moments.
Glad to hear that part of our nuclear deterrence triad is fucked up as a football bat. Good thing we are not focused on diversity and equality at the expense of combat readiness and we can get right to work fixing this problem…..what? well fuck me runnin’……never mind……
I’ll get back on my soap box here and say, once again, that it’s past time to dissolve the Air Force, and return it’s component parts to the Army and Navy.
Let the Navy take over the missile systems, and the Space Command stuff. Give Army it’s heavy bombers and fighters and the ground support it’s been eying.
Just my 2-cent’s, but I’ve always thought the Key West Accord was a mistake on many levels.
While I’m dreaming, we also need to drop the whole “Department of Defense” crap and go back to the “War Department”.
Shades of “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”!
It’s all good, the DOD will be installing the War Operations Plan Response system next week. Taking the men out of the loop in the best solution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOPR
A friend of mine (Pete) runs this website, and it’s a good source of info — and entertainment:
Titan I – Epitaph ++ Main ++
Yeah, you probably knew the inspection wasn’t going to end well when LT Schmuckatelli went, “Hey, what’s that button do?”
I always imagined that the only things to do in a silo job were wax the floor and run launch drills. Those better be some awesome floors.
David Thul: as Gen Beringer put it: “Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!”
Shades of “Fail Safe”. http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=movie+failsafe&view=detail&mid=50CE43C103913905120A50CE43C103913905120A&first=0&FORM=NVPFVR
Ex-PH2: IMO, maybe this went down more like the opening scenes of “War Games”. Except without the unannounced drill.
Curtis F$cking LeMay is *spinning* in his grave.
ChipNASA: actually, LeMay is probably grinning from ear to ear and saying “I told ya so, dammit!” while puffing on his trademark cigar.
LeMay was a huge bomber proponent. He wasn’t a particularly big fan of ICBMs.
#10: Your jealousy is showing again!
@16: Old missile silos are a hobby of mine. There are 11 old missile bases in CO, I’ve been up to the perimeter of 9 of them (and on the premises of 4) but the other two are located too far down locked/gated roads for me to get to. The Titans were built at the Martin Aerospace plant (now Lockheed-Martin) Southwest of Denver, which may be why we got 6 bases while no other state got more than 3. As for the topic here, I would imagine that what has been happening is that as the strategic missile forces got pushed to the back burner, they also attracted the least qualified and motivated officers. I mean, think about an academy or ROTC class nearing graduation and picking out their career fields. You think the hard-chargers are going to be raising their hands and saying “ooh! ooh! Pick ME for the dead-end career field that’s destined to go nowhere!” Of course not, that’s probably going to be the choice for those officers who either plan to do a stint in the Dakotas or Montana or Wyoming while working on their MBA and then set themselves up for a nice job on the outside, or else the career officers who know they can’t compete with the rest of the herd so they go to a career field that has no competition. @13: Maybe it’s time to reevaluate the neccessity of ICBMs altogether. It used to be that ICBMs had longer range and were more accurate than SLBMs but my (unclassified) understanding is that’s no longer the case. At one time, we had 1,058 ICBMs on alert, now the number is 450 (and that’s 450 “active silos” – that’s not to say that at any given time several of them are out of service undergoing maintenance or repair.) As much as I understand the neccessity of having a nuclear “trump card”, is the ICBM really the best way to go about it? True, they are probably cheaper to keep on-station per-megaton than SLBMs (simply because a submarine is a moving thing with lots… Read more »
@15: I heard there was a company called “SkyNet” that was bidding for the WOPR contract. 😉
AW1 Tim: one can make an equally good argument for taking fixed-wing aviation assets away from the Navy and USMC and putting them under USAF control, with sub-specialties denoting past/future sea and Marine qualification and duty assignments. And one can make an equally good argument for taking the USMC out of DoN, redesignating it Marine Infantry, and making it a part of the Army with amphibious missions and shipboard assignments. Or for removing SSBNs from the Navy and making them all assets reporting directly to STRATCOM. Ditto for USAF missile and strategic (nuke) bomber wings.
Hell, there are many things we could do to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of DoD. Actually becoming Joint and integrated vice staying 4 separate services (plus a bunch of independent agencies) each paying the concept of being Joint lip service while instead actually looking out for their narrow, parochial interests would be a good start.
None of these will happen in any of our lifetimes, of course. Too much tradition, and too many “rice bowls”. And forget iron – those rice bowls are heavy gauge stainless. You ain’t gonna break any of them.
But such proposals make for some interesting – and often heated – discussions. (smile)
I was a Missileer early in my career. Got an Achievement Medal and best compliment of my life when I left that AFSC. “When you were in the field, I knew there would be no errors and a key turn if needed.”
But, even then, it was a dying career field. I think key leaders realized the importance of what we did, but others were just going through the motions for their job. There were some who would speak of how much we were appreciated and doing the hardest job in the Air Force. Perfection was the standard. The actions didn’t match the rhetoric was my impression.
Yes, we didn’t do it for the medals; but, when you see a damn good Crew Commander (O-3 Captain) do four years and get an Achievement Medal, you have to question what am I really contributing here.
They’d say we were “operators, like the pilots.” Pilots get flight pay.
Many of my Squadron mates ended up divorced, worked virtually 6 days a week, had to juggle the schedule to try and get leave, and what’s the “reward.”
The system is “broke” and needs a fix from leadership. They need to recognize the Missileers they rely on, they need to lead by example, they need to show the Missileers how important they are. That’s the start.
@28: I think there are a lot of jobs within the military that fall into that category. Unpleasant but neccessary jobs that people don’t like doing but have to be done anyway.
I wonder if it would be feasible to put in a rotation system so that even the superstar jet jockeys have to put in their silo time if they want to get promoted.
Sure, they’ll fight tooth-and-nail, they’ll say that every day they spend underground is a day they’re not training to fly, but the silos are either important, or they’re not. If they’re important, then they can’t become the career destination for those with no ambition, and if they’re so unimportant that they can be, then why keep them?
Another option might be to incentivize silo duty with the likes of flight pay.
Either one of the above options could also be implemented alongside a reduction in force size. Do we need 3 separate bases? Do we need 450 silos? Or can our strategic needs be met with one base worth (150 missiles?) And could the money saved by closing two bases and deactivating 300 holes in the ground then be put back into recruiting better talent into the one remaining missile wing?
As a retired Army NCO I don’t really know the answer to any of those questions, but I’m pretty sure that “because we’ve always done it this way” is not the right one. 😉
#25 – With 450 MIRV’ed missiles, that would mean several thousand actual warheads. Along with the other two legs, that seems like more that enough, makes a good case for trimming the number of land-based missles on both sides.
Joe, you assume 3 things: that we have as many as 450 missiles, that they work, and that each contains MIRVs that are in fact programmed to strike different targets. You haven’t been following Obama’s maneuvers in this regard. Again.
Joe: “thousands” of warheads on the 450 US Minuteman missiles? That’s a laugh.
Each Minuteman missile has a maximum of 3 warheads, all MIRVs. Last time I checked, 3 x 450 comes to 1,350. That’s hardly “thousands”.
The now-retired Peacekeeper missile (AKA the MX) had 10 warheads each, also all MIRVs. However, the last Peacekeeper was deactivated in Sep 2005. No Peacekeeper missiles remain in service.
IMO, that level seems perhaps somewhat higher than we really need today. However, China may change that over the next decade. I think we’d be better off retaining what we have for a while – at least until we see what China’s like about 10-12 years from now.
Hondo–put it another way–you take out the 1000 largest cities in China, and you’d still be dealing with over 600 million Chinese.
@30,31 and 32: I believe MIRVs were outlawed by one of the treaties we signed. That’s why the Peacekeeper was deactivated. The PK’s primary advantage was that it could have 10 MIRVs. With MIRVs no longer legal, there was no point in keeping it around.
EDIT: Here’s what I read on Wikipedia entry on the Minuteman III:
“Single Reentry Vehicle (SRV)The Single Reentry Vehicle (SRV) modification enabled the United States ICBM force to abide by the now-vacated START II treaty requirements by reconfiguring Minuteman-III missiles from three reentry vehicles down to one. Though it was eventually ratified by both parties, START II never entered into force and was essentially superseded by follow-on agreements such as SORT and New START, which do not limit MIRV capability.”
So while MIRVs are “legal” it does not appear that we currently have them on our warheads. Potentially, we could put them on there, though.
Back in the day, those guys were considered “Tip of the Spear” when SAC was around, and so were the B-52 crews that were on alert. Not so much anymore, since fighters and drones have taken the front seat.
martinjmpr: according to the Congressional Research Service, the SRV program was never fully implemented. We appear to have 1200 warheads deployed on those 450 Minuteman III missiles today.
http://cpc.au.af.mil/PDF/CRS%20Report%20-%20US%20Strategic%20Nuclear%20Forces,%20Jul%2009.pdf
That works out to 375 with 3 MIRV warheads each (3 x 375 = 1,125) plus 75 that had been converted to single warhead missiles before START II became defunct.
The current missiles on the Ohio-class SSBNs (D5s) are also MIRV missles.
I stand corrected Hondo. I thought it was “thousands”.
@35 – USMCE8Ret
“Back in the day, those guys were considered “Tip of the Spear”
I spent almost 7 years in a joint Army-USAF unit. My boss most of the time was an Air Force LtCol. We were talking one day and I mentioned the Missileers. I mentioned that I thought taht would be a cool job. He pretty much told me that is where the Air Force sticks the dregs of the Officer Corps.
Just like the Army puts its Officer dregs in BCT (Boot Camp) Units? That assignment is pretty much a death sentence for an Officer’s career, they use top-notch NCO’s and slug Officers!
The unit CO still has a job? Weird Air Force Culture.
We had a vehicle accident in the Marines (3D LAR BN). Platoon commander was cross-training scouts (0311s) to be backup drivers (0313) in case a crew lost their driver in combat. I thought it was a good idea. Anyways, vehicle took an embankment wrong and rolled, killing the gunner. Platoon Commnader was relieved.
But so was the Company Commander. And he had zero involvement in the decision to cross-train. Didn’t even know about it.
So how do 17 launch officers get canned but not the CO? 17 unsat officers tells me there’s a leadership issue too, and that falls on the CO.
BTW, would it be correct to say that the Russian missiles of the Cold War era are still aimed at the same targets?
Well, Fen, the programmed targets are probably still the same, but the numbers are SUPPOSED to have been reduced.
However, as nervous as Vlad Putin appears to be getting recently, it’s possible that some of those targets could be reprogrammed — toward the south.
Fen: sometimes it seems to take a while for star-level leadership to decide whether or not to can an O5 or O6 commander. I’d not be surprised if he got the boot reasonably soon. If he’s relatively new in command he might survive. If not . . . I don’t like his chances.
A relative of mine is in the Navy. His ship recently had some severe problems (won’t go into the details here, but they were pretty bad). The ship’s CO at the time is still in charge – but he was/is very new (I seem to recall he’d been there less than 60 days when the problems manifested). I’m guessing if he’d been there 6 mo or more he’d be working on his resume now.
Joe: we get past 2,000 if you count warheads on SLBMs – according to published accounts, that would add somewhere around 1,344 to 1,680 warheads.
Published accounts say we currently have 14 SSBNs, each carrying 24 Trident II/D5 missiles. SORT reduced the D5 warhead allowance from the 12 the missile can carry to either 4 or 5 per missile (haven’t been able to pin that down). But even then, the total warheads we have today on ICBMs/SLBMs is well under 3,000. And none of them are the 5 to 10 MT massive warheads used in the past – though at between 100kT and 500kT each they still pack one helluva punch.
It’s a far cry from the height of the Cold War.
We probably could reduce both classes of missile some, but how much of a reduction would be “safe” is a damn good question. Until we get a better “read” on China and other potential threats, I think we’d be best advised to stay about where we are today.
Can anyone tell me how long it takes to train and qualify a Missile launch officer? I never thought you really needed officers in that billet. How hard is it to read and follow a check list? How smart do you have to be to set some thumb switches and turn a key?
Are 22 year old second lieutenants more responsible than E-5’s or 6’s when given a big job? Were they worried about enlisted men screwing around with the launch controls? If you can teach an Airman to maintain, trouble shoot, and repair a Ballistic missile, don’t you think you could train one to fire the thing. As a matter of fact I’d bet that the Missile crew chief is more knowledgeable on the missile system than the O-3 launch officer would ever be. If JO’s don’t want the job, give it to mid level enlisted tech’s and promote the hell out of them. Besides, the AF was awful slow to promote in my day. E-6 in 20 was pretty good.
@38 – Perhaps your definition of “back in the day” is different than mine. I’m referring to early Cold War era, so not so recently.
Dregs of the officer corps, huh? Must be pretty bad then.
A lot of interesting comments; but there seems to be some misconceptions about Missileers. I hope I can clear some of that up. I am a retired Air Force O-5. I started out as a Missileer when they were still under SAC and by the time I finished my tour, we were in Space Command. I also spent time at Strategic Command (formerly SAC HQ) and witnessed changes there. Under SAC, we were a separate AFSC (or MOS for you Army folks), 1821L. Under Space Command, we were merged with the pure space folks as a 13S. In SAC, we followed the Curtis LeMey philosophy of “train like you fight.” Every little thing was treated as critically important. Missing a step on a checklist for changing a light bulb (yes, we had a C/L for that) was seen as an unforgivable error. Yes, we were fourth-class citizens in the AF (after pilots, aircrew, and aircraft maintainers), but it didn’t matter. We knew our job was important and our espirit-de-corps was high. When we merged with Space Command, our philosophy began to change. When we merged in October 1993, space operations was officer heavy and engineer-centric. A spacecraft was not considered a weapon system and the operators were not expected to know the intimate details of the vehicle they commanded. If a problem arose, they called in the engineers (often contractors) to fix it. Back in SAC, we knew our weapon system (LGM-30) down to every nut and bolt. We knew how to fix every problem and every maintainer wore a uniform and was responsible to us. We were the masters of the missile field and no one stepped foot upon it without our permission. As part of the merger, officers were encouraged to get ops tours in both space and missile ops. This facilitated the introduction of these “softer” ideas into missile ops. Today, the commander of 20th Air Force – arguably the “top missileer” – has more space time than missile time. In 1998, he took command of a missile squadron without ever spending a day in the hole.… Read more »
@47- Great comments sir!! Thanks for the insight.
Old SAC Guy: thanks for the insights. Dad was in SAC during the Cuban Missile Crisis; Power was CINCSAC at the time, and LeMay was CSAF.
One theme in your comments above I find ironic as hell. During SAC’s rise under LeMay, much of the rest of the Air Force felt it was being ignored and left to wither because of SAC, and that actual warfighting skills had deteriorated as a result. (There’s some evidence to support that POV when you look at initial performance in Korea and Vietnam.) They referred to that as the rest of the Air Force having been “SAC-um-cised”.
In your above, I hear a distinct echo of that same claim – but coming from a former SAC officer, concerning SAC’s successor organization after it was absorbed into Space Command and lost its combat focus in the process.
Not trying to offend, and again: thanks for the info and insights. But I had to comment on the irony. (smile)
Hondo: No offense taken. I think your observation is accurate. It seems the AF always has a favored mission to the detriment of the others. Before there was the fighter mafia, we had the bomber mafia. As CSAF, LeMay made sure all his bomber buddies held the top posisitions, ensuring domination of the AF for a generation. By the 1980s however, the fighters were in control.
If you remember, one of the underlying causes of the problems with the bomber community identifed in 2008 was that the crews were spending all their time dropping JDAMs in Afghanistan and not training in their core mission.
Some may argue that nukes are not the core mission of bombers, but remember that the B-1 couldn’t even drop conventional munitions until it was upgraded in the 1990s.
UAVs – or Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPAs) as pilots are quick to point out – seem to be challenging the dominance of the fighter mafia. The rise of the Cyber warrior is also a threat to pilots. I watched with interest as former comm guys, who were once given no respect, have now become the elite warfighters of the 21st Century.
Interestingly, Space Command was given the Cyber mission and stood up a new Numbered Air Force (24AF) to run it. Now, every space guy wants cyber experience on his resume. In another bit of irony, the first commander of 24AF was a missileer…