First it was bad attitudes among young officers in nuclear missile launch centers. Now it's alleged bad behaviour by two of the nuclear arsenal's top commanders.
Together the missteps spell trouble for a nuclear force doubted by some for its relevance, defended by others as vital to national security and now compelled to explain how the firing of key commanders this week should not shake public confidence.
The Air Force yesterday fired Maj. Gen. Michael Carey, who was in charge of its nuclear missiles. Two days earlier the Navy sacked Vice Adm. Tim Giardina, the second-in-command at US Strategic Command, which writes the military's nuclear war plans and would transmit launch orders should the nation ever go to nuclear war.
In an Associated Press interview yesterday, the United States' most senior nuclear commander, Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler, said he told his bosses, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel and the Joint Chiefs chairman, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, that despite the two "unfortunate behavioral incidents," the nuclear force is stable.
"I still have 100 per cent confidence that the nation's nuclear deterrent force is safe, secure and effective," Kehler said from his Strategic Command headquarters in Nebraska.
Together, the Carey and Giardina dismissals add a new dimension to a set of serious problems facing the military's nuclear force.
The ICBM segment in particular has had several recent setbacks, including a failed safety and security inspection at a base in Montana in August, followed by the firing of the colonel there in charge of security forces. In May, The Associated Press revealed that 17 Minuteman 3 missile launch control officers at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, had been taken off duty in a reflection of what one officer there called "rot" inside the ICBM force.
In an inspection that the Air Force publicly termed a "success," the AP disclosed that launch crews at Minot scored the equivalent of a "D" grade on missile operations. In June the officer in charge of training and proficiency of Minot's missile crews was fired.
The sidelined launch officers were "not taking the job seriously enough," causing their bosses to worry that they failed to understand what it takes to "stay up to speed" on nuclear missile operations, the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh, told Congress in May. What it boiled down to, he said, was a lack of "proper attitude.
