Minot airmen lost control of nuke launch codes

In defense of those sleepy missileers - anyone who has gone through the annual Code Change knows its a very stressful time, and the stress doesn't end when you get topside. Not only do you have to obey certain stipulations on traveling out to the field (sometimes leaving as early as 4:30 am to drive 90 minutes to site), but the code change activities in the launch control center require full attention for over 24 hours straight. Yes, I did my share of code changes (2000 to 2005) at Minot, and it was amazing that we didn't cause a catastrophe every year we did it. The Air Force must like hiding the bad things about the nuclear profession, because stuff like this happens all of the time in the missile field, yet strangely enough, nobody does anything about it...

yes, those missileers should be punished - coffee or Mountain Dew may have kept them awake long enough to get out to the missile support base. But couldn't two well-rested officers from the base driven out to grab the Launch Control Panel, so something like this didn't happen? That's the kind of leadership-driven "SAC-ish" thinking that has screwed so many missileers.

Oh, and on a side note, why doesn't the press report about the two Minot officers accused of stealing classified materials from the Launch Control Center, then taking trips overseas immediately afterwards? One was about to get hired to the National Reconnaissance Office, our nation's stewards of space reconnaissance, while the other got a cushy job at the 20th Air Force Headquarters as a general's aide-de-camp. Yeah, according to the Air Force, nothing like this **ever** happens. America, open your eyes, and demand answers.

reply to post by thecandyman


Ok, being a former underground dweller (322 alerts at Minot AFB, North Dakota), I have to correct some mistakes in assumptions being tossed around here. So put on your thinking caps...

Two types of systems are used to active United States nuclear weapons: Positive Enable System and Permissive Action Link (PES and PAL); those nukes on the B-52 are PAL - because it would really suck to have forgotten some technical part of the nuke that makes it go BANG when you're flying over the poles toward Russia.

The Minuteman ICBMs are PES - a physical piece of hardware must allow the missiles to launch. Those "sleepy-time" codes would have been worthless to the Wayward B-52 crew or the scuba crew off of Guam.

"Old codes" cannot launch missiles on "new codes" - when the entire unit has changed over to "new" codes, "old" codes are worthless to launch with, but have technical value to the enemy (reverse engineering algorithms with "new" math and such)...

The codes are physically represented in a piece of hardware - there are not three Minotian idiots running around with Doomsday codes to launch nukes. They should have been guarding a piece of equipment and they failed... miserably.

The best you'll find out of this incident is piss poor procedures by the Air Force, and lazy 20-somethings who are more interested in playing Xbox and Internet on alert than doing their job properly. Nuff said.

www.adn.com...

The former XO (transferred 5 months before nuke misplacement) for AF C.O.S. was found dead in his home last night of a gunshot wound.

The codes in question were not to initiate luanch, but to authenticate comunications systems between the missiliers and the ICBM.

WHY do so many mistakes happen at minot or involving minot and nuclear weapons and then all the people end up *dead*?
To think this is a coincidence........is getting a little absurd.
I think they cut funding from the wrong places where its more important and needed, and put that funding where they choose to benefit there own company's.
IE:Missile defense shield.....Guess who has the private contract to build all that???