Why nukes keep finding trouble: They’re really old
By Robert Burns, AP, Jul 8, 2014
MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. (AP)--The nuclear missiles hidden in plain view across the prairies of northwest North Dakota reveal one reason why trouble keeps finding the nuclear Air Force. The “Big Sticks,” as some call the 60-foot-tall Minuteman 3 missiles, are just plain old.
The Air Force asserts with pride that the missile system, more than 40 years old and designed during the Cold War to counter the now-defunct Soviet Union, is safe and secure. None has ever been used in combat or launched accidentally.
But it also admits to fraying at the edges: time-worn command posts, corroded launch silos, failing support equipment and an emergency-response helicopter fleet so antiquated that a replacement was deemed “critical” years ago.
The Minuteman is no ordinary weapon. The business end of the missile can deliver mass destruction across the globe as quickly as you could have a pizza delivered to your doorstep.
But even as the Minuteman has been updated over the years and remains ready for launch on short notice, the items that support it have grown old. That partly explains why missile corps morale has sagged and discipline has sometimes faltered, as revealed in a series of Associated Press reports documenting leadership, training, disciplinary and other problems in the ICBM force that has prompted worry at the highest levels of the Pentagon.
The airmen who operate, maintain and guard the Minuteman force at bases in North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming came to recognize a gap between the Air Force’s claim that the nuclear mission is “Job 1” and its willingness to invest in it.
“One of the reasons for the low morale is that the nuclear forces feel unimportant, and they are often treated as such, very openly,” says Michelle Spencer, a defense consultant in Alabama who led a nuclear forces study for the Air Force published in 2012. She said in an interview the airmen--they’re called Missileers--became disillusioned by an obvious but unacknowledged lack of interest in nuclear priorities among the most senior Air Force leaders.
Robert Goldich, a former defense analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said the ICBM force for years got “the short end of the stick” on personnel and resources.
“I honestly don’t think it’s much more complicated than that,” he said.
