{"id":35500,"date":"2013-05-08T10:30:04","date_gmt":"2013-05-08T14:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=35500"},"modified":"2013-05-08T10:53:25","modified_gmt":"2013-05-08T14:53:25","slug":"meanwhile-down-in-the-silos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=35500","title":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, Down In the Silos . . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Seems as if things didn\u2019t go that well when a USAF Missile Wing received a periodic inspection.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out in one area they barely passed.\u00a0 What area?\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2013\/05\/08\/air-force-reportedly-strips-17-officers-power-to-launch-intercontinental\/\">\u201cMinuteman III missile launch operations.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Maybe it\u2019s just me, but \u00a0I\u2019d say that\u2019s a rather critical task for a USAF Missile Wing.<\/p>\n<p>The unit CO still has a job \u2013 for now, anyway.\u00a0 But 17 launch officers have been pulled from their assignments for at least 60-days and relegated to \u201cbench warmer\u201d status.\u00a0 Presumably that will include some extensive retraining.<\/p>\n<p>The USAF has had some high-profile nuclear incidents over the past decade or so.\u00a0 In 2008, things got so bad that the SECDEF fired some of the USAF\u2019s civilian and military leadership due to a series of incidents, including one in which a bomber armed with live warheads flew cross-country without authority.\u00a0 \u00a0And a report that same year by a Pentagon advisory group indicated that there had been a &#8220;dramatic and unacceptable decline&#8221; in the Air Force&#8217;s commitment to the nuclear mission.<\/p>\n<p>Looks like some of those same problems might remain 5 years later.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, using nuclear missiles has always been something no one liked to think about.\u00a0 It\u2019s also probably something that\u2019s extremely unlikely.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s still a critical mission.\u00a0 And IMO, it\u2019s just a bit too important to &#8220;back burner&#8221; and take less than deadly serious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seems as if things didn\u2019t go that well when a USAF Missile Wing received a periodic &hellip; <a title=\"Meanwhile, Down In the Silos . . . .\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=35500\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Meanwhile, Down In the Silos . . . .<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-force","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}