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
What I think this highlights is that weapons systems are built up based on a set of assumptions, and when those assumptions change, trying to keep the weapons system relevant can often be an exercise in absurdity. Right off the top of my head I’m thinking of the desperate measures that the horse cavalry went through to keep themselves relevant right up to the brink of WWII, decades after they had been shown to be obsolete.
The function of an ICBM, quite simply, is to deliver a nuclear weapon to a target thousands of miles away. But the question ought to be asked: Now that we have multiple other ways of delivering that same weapon to that same target, what is the purpose of maintaining the ICBMs? Not only are other systems (SLBMs, SLCMs, ALCMs and RPVs) equally capable of delivering a nuke, they are also more flexible in that most of them (not sure about SLBMS) are also capable of delivering non-nuke ordnance, which, let’s be honest, is more likely to be needed than a nuke. IOW, the non-ICBMs have a flexibile-response capability that ICBMs lack.
I guess what I’m saying here is that the ICBM seems to a weapon in desperate search of a relevant mission (see also: Coastal Artillery post-WWII) and the lack of mission focus that has caused these recent problems seems to be a reflection of that.
The one advantage of the ICBM compared to other weapons systems is that it is so widely dispersed and so hardened that it is impossible for an enemy to knock it completely out in a single blow.
But seeing as how there was only one potential enemy in our history that ever had both the intention and the ability to try and do so (USSR), and that country is no longer in existence, is that “capability” worth the cost of maintaing an otherwise-obsolete weapons system?
Or can we achieve the same deterrent capability with weapons systems that are more flexible and less costly? I’m far from an expert in the field but it’s a question worth asking, IMO.