Robert Gates, U.S. Secretary of Defense, fired U.S. Air Force's military and civilian chiefs for a series of mishaps related to nuclear weapons in the Air Force's custody. The most serious, of course, was the incident at the Minot Air Force base in August 2007.
This goes a step further that firing of colonel-rank commanders in November 2007, which followed the initial investigation of the incident. It not surprising that that first set of measures failed to change anything. I wrote at the time that
... the incident at Minot is a sign of a deeper process and that short of starting a new Cold War, no amount of organizational change could provide the military with the sense of mission required to handle nuclear weapons with the attention they deserve.
This is more or less what we see today. Hans Kristensen reported that the Air Force did not even properly registered the Minot incident in its database. And just last Sunday, the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Base failed to pass a nuclear inspection.
I doubt that the current change of Air Force's leadership would change anything as well. There is a better choice and it is still available - remove nuclear weapons from the Air Force.
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I have a better solution. Impose a blanket economic blockade on Russia so that it goes bankrupt. Then scrap most nuclear weapons because they will not be necessary any longer.
Pavel, I could not agree more. And while you’re at it, can we get rid of the IRS, too? Now that’s a US Governmental Agency that can do far greater damage than the US Air Force with nuclear weapons. Talk about destruction!
Do you think the US Navy does a better job of maintaining the US nuclear inventory?
Or...
Should the US just “throw in the towel” and give up nuclear arms in total because we’re just not good stewards of the “splitting atom”?
If this was such a “failure of leadership” why did it take the senior Pentagon leadership (read SECDEF) 10 months (TEN MONTHS) to make this call? Do you think politics played a role? Personality conflicts?
I reach two conclusions. The first is that nuclear weapons, at least in the Department of the Air Force, are dinosaurs and represent a role the USAF really doesn’t have a future interest in. And second, isn’t it great to live in a country where the press, in this case “Army Times” broke the story and shared the results with the world. What other country on the planet could such events have occurred without the media being sweep under “Official Secrets Acts” and the news suppressed? Embarrassing for the USAF, yes. The USA, yes. And it should have been. The end of the world, no.
Frank Shuler
USA
> I have a better solution. Impose a blanket economic blockade on Russia so that it goes bankrupt. Then scrap most nuclear weapons because they will not be necessary any longer.
- Silly solution. After so called 'economic blockade of Russia', American Driver will surely pay not $4 but $12 or more for gallon of gas.
Meantime, all the Russian oil not sold to the West, - will surely go to China... ;-)
Buy the way, World Bank ex-president James Wolfenson predicts recently that till 2050, China's economy will be the largest and strongest economy in the World, while the US economy will be on the third place only.
China with it's greatest in the World human potential, will surely be able to consume all the resources Russia able to produce.
Chinese and Indian people want to drive their own cars, too, - why only 'the golden billion' of American and Western people should benefit from consuming the most part of World resources?
> There is a better choice and it is still available - remove nuclear weapons from the Air Force.
- Well, American neocons will not be quite happy with this idea... :-)
>Should the US just “throw in the towel” and give up nuclear arms in total because we’re just not good stewards of the “splitting atom”?
Sounds like a plan to me.
Russian,
Prices for commodities exist only as long as these commodities are traded freely. China, meanwhile, does not need Russia's oil. It has Kazakhstan's.
Sharpen up your English. It is not "on the third place", but "in third place".
> China, meanwhile, does not need Russia's oil. It has Kazakhstan's.
- Funny. You surely need to learn how much oil and gas Kazakhstan and Russia own.
- Also, - are you quite sure that Kazakhstan will not be in a new Union in the nearest decades? On the last CIS summit, very interesting proposal sounds officially...
> Sharpen up your English. It is not "on the third place", but "in third place".
- I don't care. Better you learn Russian... or Chinese.
The last is very actual, Anonymous... ;-)
Let's please be realistic. The Air Force will never relinquish control of the nuclear weapons under its juristiction. Was the command complacent ? Yes. Were the responsible officers reprimanded ? Yes. Were the actions taken justified ? Absolutely.
But let's not throw the bathwater out with the baby. The security of the American nuclear arsenal, two-thirds of which reside with the Air Force, cannot be given over to lackluster practice now that the Soviet threat has dimished. The two-man rule is in place for a reason, and had that directive been adhered to more closely, with the weaponized flight from Minot for example, someone in that chain of command would have realized the flight was not authorized and this would have been a non-event.
Does this episode diminish the faith by the American people about the custodianship of American nuclear weapons ? It should. And the new heads of the United States Air Force should take these lessons to heart. If there is another (expletive)-up of this magnitude, then the new chiefs can just as easily go the way of their predecessors. . .and public confidence diminishes further. Past a critical point and the very aforementioned conditions as the elimination of the two Air Force legs of the "Triad," could very well come to pass. But we are a long way from that point.
And... They 'did it again':
http://news.mail.ru/politics/1829412/print/
What's happening with USAF???
And there is more. Hans Kristensen posted this yesterday:
USAF Report: “Most” Nuclear Weapon Sites In Europe Do Not Meet US Security Requirements