Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic revealed yesterday that about 50 Minuteman III ICBMs controlled out of F.E. Warren AFB in Wyoming were sidelined on Saturday despite recent infusions of millions of dollars worth of upgrades to refurbish the four-decade old missile fleet and its support facilities. All of this comes just as the service appeared to have put its nuclear-related woes behind it. Here’s an excerpt from Ambinder’s report:
On Saturday morning, according to people briefed on what happened, a squadron of ICBMs suddenly dropped down into what’s known as “LF Down” status, meaning that the missileers in their bunkers could no longer communicate with the missiles themselves. LF Down status also means that various security protocols built into the missile delivery system, like intrusion alarms and warhead separation alarms, were offline. In LF Down status, the missiles are still technically launch-able, but they can only be controlled by an airborne command and control platform like the Boeing E-6 NAOC “Kneecap” aircraft, or perhaps the TACAMO fleet, which is primarily used to communicate with nuclear submarines. Had the country been placed on a higher state of nuclear alert, those platforms would be operating automatically.
Just last month at the Air Force Association’s annual conference near Washington, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz and his top nuclear officer Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz were saying how the service’s nuclear forces were finally on solid footing to restore the rigor and zero-defect performance in the nuclear arena. In 2009, the service created Global Strike Command, led by Klotz, to bring back the sense of mission and discipline to the “nuclear enterprise” lost after the disbandment of the legendary Strategic Air Command in 1992.
The events that lead to the establishment of Global Strike Command were largely based on human error, with nukes accidentally being flown cross country on a B-52, ICBM launch facility officers falling asleep while on watch and nuclear triggers being flown to Taiwan by mistake. This latest episode looks like a technical failure. Still scary because, well, you have the word “failure” appearing in the same sentence as the word “nuclear.” (Generally not a good thing.)
And better yet, this kind of thing has happened before, Ambinder writes:
According to the official, engineers discovered that similar hardware failures had triggered a similar cascading failure 12 years ago at Minot AFB in North Dakota and Malmstrom AFB in Montana. That piece of hardware is the prime suspect.
Still:
“We’ve never had something as big as this happen,” a military officer who was briefed on the incident said. Occasionally, one or two might blink out, the officer said, and several warheads are routinely out of service for maintenance. At an extreme, “[w]e can deal with maybe 5, 6, or 7 at a time, but we’ve never lost complete command and control and functionality of 50 ICBMs.”
Ambinder’s piece goes on to say that the Pentagon believes the failure was caused by faulty cabling. Again, troubling since we’ve known about this for years and we’re currently investing millions to upgrade the Minuteman III fleet and its facilities in an effort to keep them in service for several more decades.
– John Reed
{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
It's a good thing we had 400 or so more.
And when the rest of the missiles pack up and stop working…?
You switch to a rifle, numb-nuts. That's what.
Not the ideal weapon for an intercontinental nuclear war.
Also true.
Look out, we might only be able to blow up the world *two times over* when the Emergency Action Message comes through..
Could this site be any more negatively USAF biased?
The editorializing is getting pretty silly.
Not really no, it's about as biased as you'll find.
I too notice we rarely see stories about other countries and thier numerous issues and problems, often far greater issues and problems then America faces I might add.
Oh come on now. You think you get picked on what about us "Candy Stripe'ers". Man sure is nice to point the light towards someone else. At least you don't have Deep Water issues….USCG
Well Mike in my opinion, at least, I don't care about how Uganda is having trouble figuring out how to weld Browning M2's to shitty old land rovers or something.
Why do I get the feeling Russian nukes have 10 times more issues… I'm going to sleep better knowing that only 85% of the worlds cities will be gone before Domino's brings me my philly cheesesteak pizza. Now ill have time to eat while i wait for the submarines to clean up whatever messy civilization is still left.
Godbless the boomers.
Minuteman III is counterforce; not a city killer.
Perhaps the way to look at this is to view the Air Force as not being in the air force business.
It certainly appears that it is not competitive in the market segments in which it competes.
I remember thinking that keeping the Minuteman- sitting in moldy holes in the ground for my 40 year life- might not be a great idea?
We retired the MX- which would only be 20-25 years old now-
Indeed, retiring the LGM-118 Peacekeeper whch was also a more capable missile certainly seems like a waste. Certainly the age of our 40+ year old LGM-30G Minuteman III missiles doesn't help.
Even more important this happening as we continue to draw down forces. ICBM's may reduce to 420 from today's 450 (from a Cold War high of 1054).
Despite my pro nuclear militaristic attitude I don't fundamentally oppose reducing nukes but the remaining ones better darn well work. This calls for a crash replacement program to replace all Minuteman III missiles with a new advanced, hyper-accurate missile housed in hard rock based superhardened silos making them close to impervious to a first strike.
True about the Peacekeeper being newer, but more reliable ?. Maybe not. For one thing, about every Minuteman they yank out of active service to test at Vandenberg has gone up without fail, so possibly no real worries about the actual missile.
Plus the Peacekeepers were placed in existing Minuteman silos, and since the recent problem is in the cabling between launch command facility and the actual silo's, the actual missile in the silo is not the issue.
That said, the millions spent on upgrades has been in the electronics in the missiles themselves, or in the communications systems in the actual LF's, but not much attention has been paid to the actual cables that link the LF's to the weapon silo's, cables that were laid down 50 years ago in some cases and that possibly might not be having issues ?. Maybe another couple of million now to be spent there.
SB
MX is a more advanced system and was SALT deal-breaker. It carried many more warheads than the Minuteman III; therefore to meet warhead limitations, there would have to me much fewer MX to carry the same number of warheads as the agreed-to limit, making them more vulnerable since geographic dispersion is the easiest way to make ICBMs more survivable
Let the Navy handle the nucs they do an excellent job of it, the Air Force can't seem to maintain them or keep track of them.
Better question still: why do we even have land based or bomber based nucs-they are simply sitting ducks.
They do an excellent job with nukes, huh? The Navy has lost its fair share of nuclear weapons too. USS Scorpion, missing A4 from 1965, etc.
The Air Force has at least been able to gain accountability over most of its nuclear weapons at the very least, the Navy on the other hand still has no clue where many of them are (such as the aforementioned A4, to this day it has not been found to my knowledge).
Scorpion's location is known, but I imagine they didn't recover the nuclear material because it's a gravesite.
[deleted text]
Post Script:
CDI has better info.
http://www.cdi.org/issues/nukeaccidents/accidents…
Much more Air Force incidents when it comes to nuclear weapons. Most of those "accountabilities" come in the form of the weapon being damaged and spreading radiation (or conventional explosives detonate without a nuclear reaction).
The Navy's score stands at two weapons aboard the Scorpion, and the Air Force's numbers, at a minimum two (Goldsboro and Tybee Island)
If a potential enemy finds a way to find the missile subs, the subs become very vulnerable since they travel alone and would be as hard to protect as an aircraft carrier. With Attack subs patrolling our shores keeping an enemy's missile subs away, there is far more than enough time to launch land-based missiles and bombers before they can be struck. The bombers can be recalled after launch, if appropriate. The missiles, once launched, can neither be recalled nor self-destructed. Taking everything into account, having the three types of systems enhances deterrence without increasing the overall number of warheads – more survivable bang for the buck.
I can't help but wonder with all this Cyber Warfare jibber jabber that this could be one of those senario's that seems more likely to happen.
What did you try to say?
+1 haha!
Do we even need the land based ones anymore? We have so many boomers in the water at any one time, they can more than cover the entire planet in deterrence.
Not really. Subs are there for second strike capability, on their own? sure they could probably do it, but the true deterrence is a two-step process: the land based system which provides fear of the initial strike, and the sub based system which provides fear of the retaliatory strike. If you eliminate one of the two systems, the other one will still be available. Thats why MAD works. If you eliminate the land based system, there is always the (minute) chance that the enemy could gain enough control over the seas to minimize the risk of the sub based system, or worse still, that they will be able to eliminate the communications systems needed to authorize the use of sub based nuclear weapons.
I was to said the same that Hans Solo but your answer sound logic and realistic.
If I was the bad guys the first thing I would target would be the land based missile and boomers. I think you tend to forget that these land based asses are fixed known targets, they will be taken out in the first strike then the only thing we would have left is the boomers.
Our land base missiles are not on hair trigger alert and our bombers our not loaded and in the air constantly-these nuclear deterrent will be the first to go. Our first strike or retaliatory as your say will only come from the boomers. The bad guys would have to have a 1,000 attack subs constantly searching to have even a slim chance of finding a boomer. If the bad guys even got in the same general area they would first be sunk by our attack subs. The boomers are our only 100% certain deterrent.
Maybe Ive seen to many movies but….something seems fishy about all of them going down…hacker attemp…jus sayin'
Missiles are fine, it's the hundreds of miles of wiring that connect them that's failing. The wiring is not connected, even indirectly, to the Internet. You gotta be there to attempt a computer breakin. Features in the design are supposed to detect breakin attempts.
Hacking (as many above posts speculate) saborage, aged wiring, systems?
Must remedy alone or modify Systems for Launch??
Overhaul ICBMs?
Missiles are fine, it's the hundreds of miles of wiring that connect them that's failing. The wiring is not connected, even indirectly, to the Internet. You gotta be there to attempt a computer breakin. Features in the design are supposed to detect breakin attempts.
The E-6B Mercury is called TACAMO not NEACAP. The E-4B does the NEACAP mission (which has been changed yet again to some other name).
"Inventing" Global Strike Command is NOT the solution. The solution was already in existence. It was called SAC. I was in SAC and AFCS at different times, but in both commands EVERY CRITICAL COMM SYSTEM HAD TOTAL REDUNDANCY. The fact that a cable got effed up and lost comm with not a handful or a dozen missiles but 50??? That was unthinkable during the days of SAC. SAC had some screwups too. Like the 3-level who was working unsupervised dropped his wrench and broke the fuel line in the silo near Damascus, Arkansas, and the warhead got blown THROUGH the ten foot thick concrete top of the silo in the late 1970s. That was a mess and everyone up to and including the Wing Commander were fired.
There still is redundancy. It was the buried cable system that linked the squadron to GSC that failed. The redundancy portion is and always has been the Looking Glass (old) or the E6 (current).
As well, if you were still in the service, you might well be spending a LOT of time currently servicing 50 year old buried cable systems. Anybody wonder if SAC actually expected these systems to still be working ? after being buried underground all that time, water seepage and what not ?.
SB
"SAC" was the Heart & Soul of the Air Force. I spent more than 3/4 of my 24 years in SAC. The disbandment of SAC is the reason the Air Force is in such a state. Were not at the bottom of the barrel………But were slowly sinking.
SACWARLORD
Did you all know that the head of AF Acquisition declined to buy new helicopters last week that are necessary to keeping those missiles secure because he's not convinced that their is a critical need. . . . oh, yeah, that and the fact that his nomination is still in work and all civilian bureaucrats know that it is safer to make no decisions so that you have no record to be reviewed by Congress. See this month's Rotor and Wing magazine – it's unbelievable. If these are the kinds of folks running the AF, let's just end the misery now and hand it all to the Army.
Maybe it has nothing to do with usaf, but as the laws of nature. Can’t expect to build anything and have it last with out some TLC. Shit breaks. Ill be worried when we lose control and one takes off. People know their jobs and if they’re doing them we are gopd.