USAF Missile Launch Officer Facing Court-Martial for Drugs, Obstruction
Jonn and I have written before about the troubles in DoD’s Nuclear Kingdom. Well, looks like there’s a bit more fallout (intentional pun) from those investigations.
Besides cheating on annual proficiency exams and poor leadership, the investigation turned up leads indicating possible illegal drug use. Those leads were turned over to AFOSI, who investigated the matter.
It looks like the leads were worth following. One 2d Lt is now facing court-martial for drug and obstruction of justice charges; the court-martial will start 21 Jan 2015. Three others were also investigated, but to date charges have not been preferred against them.
The UK newspaper The Independent has a short article giving more details; ditto Fox News and several local Montana media outlets. All appear to contain about the same information.
Looks like fixing the Nuclear Kingdom’s problems may take a while. That should be no surprise, though. Changing an organization’s culture always does.
There has been local ‘talk’ about Malmstrom AFB for years. I’m sorry to see that the truth goes far beyond any rumors I ever heard.
Shame he is just a 2ndLouie. If he had been at least a Cpt/Maj or higher I’m sure they would have given him the chance to resign for the good of the service. I’ve heard/read that a lot of officers in the Air Farce view going to Missile Command of being sent down the drone pipeline as dead end or simply unappreciated career paths. If I was told I would have to spend most of my service commitment sitting in a concrete tube I don’t really know how I would handle that.
Andy11M: she, actually.
Question for those in the USAF during the Cold War: What was the ‘status’ of missileers during that period? I know that Strategic Air Command (SAC) was the most exalted command in the Air Force during this period while TAC (Tactical) and MAC (Military Airlift) were playing second fiddle but within SAC, were missileers regarded as highly as pilots?
Put another way, during the CW, was being a missile officer seen as a career path that would lead to glory or was it seen as a dead end even then? I know that at one time there were 1,058 ICBMs on station at 8 different bases scattered across the West, but I’m curious about the “pecking order” between missile officers and pilots.
I was in between 92-96, so I’m not really cold war. My dad was SAC from 71-92 so I did get a feel for what the AF was like at the time. As far as I’ve been able to tell nobody else in the AF has ever been exalted as highly as pilots. No way, never. Especially Academy pilots.
I knew a couple of missileers who crosstrained into Transportation, where I was. Neither was very high quality. One of them, Capt. Stanton, insisted that I call him Stan outside of the shop. I was an E-3 under his command and being told to just call him Stan. He used to tell stories about rampant debauchery in the tubes. In fact, his license plate said BEER. I shit you not. My conclusion is that it is the worthless officers that get sent to missiles. The guys that get the brass are the pilots.
Missileers were considered as below all flyers, and the career was often thought to be a way to persuade officers to get out after 4 years. I found that not to be true. It didn’t lead to glory, but I did know 3 who made General, and a number who made full Colonel.
There were 9 operational missile bases: 6 Minuteman, 1000 missiles; 3 Titan II, 54 missiles. Also Vandenberg for missile training, Sheppard for initial Titan training, and Chanute for MM maintenance training.
Pretty much what I thought, then. IOW, if you aren’t a pilot, you’re 2nd class.
Which seems to me to be yet another argument for bringing the Air Force back under the control of the Army as it was in WWII. Then the missileers can be made a sub-branch of the artillery, which is basically what they are. Artillery may not be as exalted as infantry but they’re not the red-legged stepchildren, either (see what I did there?)
Oh, except for air-defense artillery. Those guys ARE the red-headed stepchildren! 😛
Yup, I was Titan II at DMAFB 77-85. One of my Deputy Crew Commanders was 1Lt C. Donald Alston. Real good guy. He retired a few years back as a 2-Star.
I’m curious as to what kind of award will make this go away? What, too soon?
just an o-1, who cares. they were lucky if the guy even knew his name half the time.
SHE – it’s worth actually reading the article:
“Nicole Dalmazzi, a second lieutenant of the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, is the first officer known to be charged since the probe was made public in January.
She is accused of illegal drug use and obstructing the Air Force Office of Special Investigations probe by dyeing her hair to “alter the results of potential hair-follicle drug tests,” according to an Air Force spokesperson.”
Maybe she “had to use dope to cope with the stress of being Stateside like the Airman that was on here a few weeks ago from TACC?
What’s this button dew man?
Well, since you asked:
Scroll ahead to approx 4:05 and watch from there. (smile)
Nice.
In the Air Force, ’72 to ’77 I served in the SAC Titan II Missile Wing in Arkansas, the 308th. During my time I saw some lax behavior underground on graveyard shift (wearing skivvies while sitting at the Command Console and such, all males then) but never inappropriate behavior any other time. It was during the Cold War and procedures, regulations, protocols and so forth were tight and stringent. No matter their appearance in the wee hours they were always professional to a fault. Never unaware of all things under their command. Most left after four years and Captain. Never saw a Commander or Co-Commander with pilot’s wings. Never, ever saw or even heard of drugs and the protocols for testing, without computers, personal cell phones and such made cheating almost impossible at test time. Though they may have shared test information amongst themselves, it was never spoken of. From the article it cites, “A report by the non-profit RAND Corporation last year found that missile officers and others in the corps were stressed and suffering “burnout.” It also found an abnormal rate of behavioural issues, including domestic violence.” I don’t know what has changed since my time but I guarantee there was FAR more performance stress than now. Burnout? I don’t think so unless it is from boredom. It was boring then most of the time. Most brought backpacks of books and other things to occupy their time. Domestic violence? Living in base housing, all be it the enlisted side, I never heard of any more domestic violence than any other group of personnel on base and we were just a tenant command. TAC owned the base for C-130 training. If there was domestic violence amongst enlisted or officers in the missile program and the SPs or local police were involved, it was an immediate suspension of silo clearance, duty privileges until the person was reassessed, beyond the annual assessments, through the Human Reliability Program. Failure to make it past the HRP annually and especially if brought in for misconduct was almost a sure pulling of TS clearance and… Read more »
“I don’t know what has changed since my time but I guarantee there was FAR more performance stress than now. Burnout? I don’t think so unless it is from boredom. It was boring then most of the time.”
I suspect that during the 70’s there was a far higher likelihood of an actual launch than there is now. Even if it wasn’t actually likely, it almost certainly seemed that way. I doubt anybody believes that a missile launch is even remotely possible in this day and age. Being stuffed in an underground tube for 24-48 hours at a time running drills that must seem pointless is probably very dispiriting for those officers. Never mind the insane monotony of it all. While their OTS or ROTC classmates are out there acting as OIC at the flight level and learning how squadron command works – in other words, building careers – the missiles officer is running daily circle jerks underground. Never mind that most missile bases are remote and unappealing regardless of career field.
I’m not trying to belittle the career field. I have as much respect for missiles officers as I would any other officer. I can just see why a lot of them would lose sight of their commitment to professionalism.
(FWIW, even as far back as ’96, when I got out, most of the company grade officers that I knew regularly blurred the line between professionalism and having a good time. As an E-4 I was on a first name basis with two O-2s with whom I worked. After all, we were about the same age. Plus, we’re talking about the Air Force. We’re pretty well known for our relaxed bearing. I can’t imagine things have improved in the 18 years since I got out.)
Sparks: ” It is too important a position to have any kinds of shenanigans going on at all.”
I agree but the question is, does the USAF agree? They may say they do but actions speak louder than words.
An important job with a critical responsibility ought to be treated like one by the higher ups.
From what the article implies, though, just the opposite is true. The career field is considered a dead end and lacking in prestige, which means it’s not going to attract quality people. Lack of quality people = the kind of problems they’re having here.
As I said above, this seems to illustrate the problem with having an armed service that is more or less completely devoted to only a single type of warfare, i.e. aerial fighting. That means that anything that is NOT aerial fighting is relegated to a lesser priority for equipment, personnel, training, etc.
As I said above, maybe we should move the missileers into the Army. Or, do what the Soviets did and create a completely separate force (Soviet missileers were not part of the Air Force, they were their own Strategic Rocket Forces.) But the current status of having the most powerful and deadly weapons that have ever existed put under the control of a service that appears to regard them as a chore or a nuisance doesn’t strike me as being very smart.
Back in the ole’ days it WAS the job!
Back in days of ole’ when “we could neither confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons” we Sailors and Marines who cared for such important tools of peace, took the responsibilty very seriously. We did so because we were packing a hard punch and that is helped us win the Cold War.
As the new Cold War rages, I can only hope that there is a young a serious generation, like the one I held a billet in, that will perform these duties with same level of responsibilty we did.
At the age of 20, I was read in and a A&I On Scene Leader … Put that in your pipe 2nd Butter Bar Dumbfuchtshi and smoke it.
Have fun at CM!
When I read that she is suspected of using hair dye to defeat a follicle drug test, I said, Huh?” So, I googled ‘hair dye to defeat drug test’ and the hits just kept coming. Evidently, there is a great deal of interest in beating drug tests. That’s nice. I wonder why…
She was probably still high from college.
Aim high!
Not long ago I was driving around with my wife and saw a sign in front of a house that said, “Our son is Army strong!” I commented to my wife, “I wish my parents had had a sign that said, “Our son is Air Force high!”
Some may recall a few years back there was a serious article in some national magazine that called for doing away with the USAF entirely, and one of the proposals was that the ICBM force be turned over to the Navy. Given that the Navy has plenty of experience with various sub-launched MRBMs and given that the Navy is the “power projection force” that kind of makes sense, now that I think about it.
Of course, it would be a bit of a “hard sell” to try and get the Navy to take over bases in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota, though given the nature of Navy service in general, it might not be that bad (I can understand why people might enlist in the Navy, but after seeing how enlisted sailors live aboard ships, what I can’t understand is why they would RE-enlist! 😀 )