Study: Nuclear force feeling 'burnout' from work

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By ROBERT BURNS

WASHINGTON (AP) - Key members of the Air Force's nuclear missile force are feeling "burnout" from what they see as exhausting, unrewarding and stressful work, according to an unpublished study obtained by The Associated Press.

The finding by researchers for RAND Corp. adds to indications that trouble inside the nuclear missile force runs deeper and wider than officials have acknowledged.

The study, provided to the AP in draft form, also cites heightened levels of misconduct like spousal abuse and says court-martial rates in the nuclear missile force in 2011 and 2012 were more than twice as high as in the overall Air Force.

These indicators add a new dimension to an emerging picture of malaise and worse inside the intercontinental ballistic missile force, an arm of the Air Force with a proud heritage but an uncertain future.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20131121/DAA6S67G1.html

---

This April 15, 1997 file photo shows an Air Force missile crew commander standing at the door of his launch capsule 100-feet under ground where he and his partner are responsible for 10 nuclear-armed ICBM's, in north-central Colorado. Trouble inside the Air Force’s nuclear missile force runs deeper and wider than officials have let on. An unpublished study for the Air Force obtained by The Associated Press cites “burnout” among launch officers with their finger on the trigger of 450 weapons of mass destruction. And this: evidence of broader behavioral issues across the intercontinental ballistic missile force, including sexual assault and domestic violence. (AP Photo/Eric Draper, File)

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

1. I'd go nuts with that job

Go to work, sit at the console, watch the red phone. Do nothing else. All day. Every day.

I hope there's more to it than that, but it seems like the basic job.

Mind-numbing. Groundhog Day.

[DeSwiss]

2. No nukes.....

...no stress.

- I don't know why they hadn't ask me how to solve this problem before now.

[Crowman1979]

3. $50+ billion in taxpayer money saved as well.

Of course if you mention this to the Teabaggers, they start labeling you as a traitor.

[jakeXT]

4. Just use a computer

[JVS]

5. Just imagine the MS Word paperclip jumping out and saying "I see you're trying to blow up the world"

[jakeXT]

7. Someone made a jpg

[ConcernedCanuk]

9. LOL! - luv the .jpg

.
.
.

Gotta be a disappointed WORD user to appreciate that -

That .jpg indicates how much "HELP" I think it's worth.

So I turned off the help feature . . .

I'm happier now.



CC

[Diclotican]

11. jakeXT

jakeXT

I miss paper clip - for some reason I found that fellow to be a nice add-on to word - sadly he disappeared and have never been seen again... Sometimes he was a pain in the ass - but for the most part, just a gentle fellow who tried his best to help...

Diclotican

[Blue_Tires]

12. +1

[jakeXT]

13. I miss the sniffing dog from XP /nt

[Diclotican]

17. jakeXT

jakeXT

Who could have forgotten that dog - he was great- even though he for the most part never found what I was looking for - a bad tracing dog at best But hey he was allot of fun too

Diclotican

[NickB79]

6. Bored they haven't gotten to unleash Armageddon yet?

Really, what did they expect when they took these jobs that made them think it would anything other than boring, unrewarding work?

Your entire fucking job is to KILL BILLIONS OF PEOPLE AND DESTROY CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT! What reward can any non-sociopath take from that profession?

[madrchsod]

8. i think it`s time to get rid of 1950`s ideas of protection

nuke war is a concept of the past. today it`s economic war.

[Lurks Often]

10. If you aren't a pilot, you are at best a second class citizen in the Air Force

and are treated as such. Increasingly I believe it was a mistake to allow the Air Force to become an independent branch of service. The institutional arrogance of the Air Force becomes worse every year.

[MicaelS]

14. I have always thought the US Air Force was ..

The single biggest group of warhawks, if not flat out warmongers in this country. After all, their raison d'etre is that anyone who threatens the US will be bombed out of existence.

When I hear stories of how General Curtis LeMay wanted 10,000 ICBMs, General Thomas S. Power wanted 20,000 ICBMs, and Operation Northwoods, I can't conclude anything else.

Thomas S. Power

When RAND proposed a counterforce strategy, which would require SAC to restrain itself from striking Soviet cities in the beginning of a war, Power countered with:

Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!

Like his mentor General LeMay, Power believed that the only effective form of war strategy against enemy nations run by dictators in possession of nuclear weapons was Mutually Assured Destruction. Power continued supervision of this strategy, both in the development and deployment of the necessary weaponry, and the willingness to use these weapons in case of impending threat. Like LeMay, Power emphasized the value of bomber aircraft, which (unlike missiles) can be recalled in the event of an error in technical threat detection, and offer a strategic recourse short of total war.

[happyslug]

15. It goes back further then that, it goes back to Mitchell after WWI.

And Mitchell knew how to play up for the press. After WWI, the US received a German Battleship as reparations. The US Navy wanted to see how a modern (we are talking 1920) battleship would take to aerial bombardment. The Battleship was unmanned and the flood controls doors were LEFT OPEN (in actual combat these would be shut and sealed).

The Navy's plan was to sent planes to attack the battleship and then look at the damage. The Flood doors were left OPEN to see how the flooding would occur. To make this work, the planes were ORDERED to use small bombs. The bombs were INTENDED to do minimal damage, so the ship would survive and the Navy could see HOW the bomb interacted with the armor and construction of the Ship.

Billy Mitchell decided he was going to sink that Battleship, so in violation of ORDERS, he installed on his planes large bombs, bombs design NOT to damage the ship but to sink it. Remember the Flood doors were STILL WIDE OPEN, the ship was standing STILL thus not a valid test of air attacks on battleships.

20 years later at Pearl Harbor, that Billy Mitchell's method of sinking ships was ineffective was shown to be ineffective. At Pearl the ships were standing still, but had time to close their flood doors, the dive bombers are given limited credit for sinking the US Fleet, most of the credit for sinking the ships went to the torpedo planes. In May 1941 when the Battleship Bismark hit the North Atlantic, British bombers were again ineffective on a moving ship with Anti Aircraft guns, it was the torpedo planes that hit the Bismark's rudder and jammed it, permitting the British Battleship to close in and sink the Bismark.

To make a long story short, the US Navy hated Billy Mitchel for that grand standing sinking. It made all the papers and the US Navy's objections were dismissed as bureaucrats protecting themselves from the "Truth" that Air Power was supreme.

Billy Mitchell's grand standing did not stop with the Navy, he even had bombers sent to West Virginia to bomb striking miners on the march. i.e. to show Air Power can even be used to put down riots (Mitchell seems to have adopted the idea after reading that the Sheriff of Logan county had had a private plane drop small bombs by hand onto the miners).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell

I do love Wikipedia, it starts saying he was Court Martial-ed for supporting Carriers over Battleship in 1925 (in the actual part dealing with the Court martial that concept is NOT mentioned, only in the over view section of the Wikipedia article). Mitchell may have attacked the Navy for preferring Battleships to Carriers, but that was doing the Battleship moratorium in the Washington Treaty of 1921. A treaty banning the building of ALL new Battleships till 1936 and permitted the US to finish two large cruisers as Air Craft carriers. Thus two Carriers were being built and NO battleships, Old pre 1900 Battleships were being scrapped under the Treaty, but Mitchel as being Court Martial-ed for accusing the Navy of Building Battleships instead of Carriers.

Wikipedia says Mitchell did NOT drop any bombs during the West Virginia Coal War, but the miners said he did, in addition to the bombs dropped by orders of the Sheriff (Supporters of Mitchel just say the Miners confused Mitchell Planes with the Sheriff's plane).


I bring up Mitchel, for he is the Father of that Air Force concept of more bombs, more bombs more bombs, all delivered by Air Power that rules the US Air force through WWII till Today (The Navy and Marine Corps, each with their own "air force" were more into supporting troops on the ground then the Air Force ever was).

The US Air Force was noted for lack of Air Support for US forces during WWII compared to the German Air Force, the Russian Air Force AND the US Navy and Marines. Unlike the Navy the Air Force only produced one good ground support plane (the A-26) and that is only in 1944 when it had become obvious that the Air Force was lacking in that capacity. Now, the US Air Force did provide air support with its fighters, but when it joined with the Navy to design a dive Bombers, when that dive bombers reached the fleet pilots, they all complained it was an inferior dive bomber to its US Navy only designed predecessor, especially in the ground support role.

The US Air Force was so against supporting the troops, that it turned almost all of the P-39 Airacorbras over to the Russians, and then belittle the Russians use of the P-39 as ground attack plane, when in fact the Russians used it as a fighter, for air cover over ground forces. It was the best US pane UNDER 12,000 feet, which is where you have to operate if you support the ground forces, but the US Air Force wanted to operate as 20,000 feet or higher, thus hated the P-39 and the fact the Russians were using it to good effect.

That is the problem with the US Air Force, from the 1920s to this day, they want to bomb bomb bomb but NOT in support of the Troops. For Example I see the US Air Force has decided (once again, it does this every so many years) to phase out the lowest cost combat plane it flies, that the ground forces depend on more then the rest of the Combat planes of the Air Force combined (the A-10). Why, it is a lowe level combat plane like the P-39 and thus used to provide air support for ground forces, something the US Air Force does not want to do:

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/09/26/senator-blocks-secafs-nomination-over-a10-cuts.html

Now, the Air Force may be playing budget games again, or it may want to get rid of the A-10. What I mean by Budget games, is when Congress asks a department of the executive to cut expenses, it tends to look to cut ones it knows other will fight for. The A-10 was that in the 1980s. It was a plane the ARMY wanted, so the Air Force would offer to cut it knowing the Army would ask congress to put it back into the budget. My favorite budge game involves the Azores. In the Azores, the Navy flies the Plane, the Air Force provides the security for the base and the Army runs the harbor and the boats used to take supplies from ships to the base. In budget battles the Army and Air Force always includes cutting out these services on that island, knowing the Navy will fight to get them restored.

Thus the Air Force "Plans" to get rid of the A-10 may be part of the Air Force's budget game. On the other hand the Air Force may want to get rid of the A-10 fearing it it was kept, it would beat out the F-35 in most missions such planes would be sent out on (ground support NOT interceptor missions). I suspect a budge ploy but we will see.

[MicaelS]

16. I would kill the F-35 in a second..

And keep the A-10.

[happyslug]

19. So would I, thus the A=10 must go

Good drives out bad, thus bad must kill the good. We can see that in the action to kill the A-10. Most of the missions (except fighter interceptors missions, and air superiorly missions) planned for the F-35 can be done by the A-10, thus the A-10 is the biggest threat to the F-35 and must die.

[Crowman1979]

18. According to Teabag logic, the USAF is unconstitutional.

[MicaelS]

21. Never heard that one. How so? n/t

[Crowman1979]

23. Because it's not mentioned in the Constitution.

Which is the same reasoning they apply to Medicare, Social Security, etc. Yet they leave the USAF out, probably because some of them are Dominionist who need to keep the nukes in order to bring Jesus back, or some crazy s*** like that.

[KamaAina]

20. And it's controlled by fundies

http://www.alternet.org/story/67385/the_evangelical_christian_takeover_of_the_military

My son and I then made our way to the modernist aluminum chapel, where I expected to hear a welcome from one or two Air Force chaplains offering counsel, support and an open-door policy for any spiritual or pastoral needs of these future cadets. In 1966, the academy had six gray-haired chaplains: three mainline Protestants, two priests and one rabbi. Any cadet, regardless of religious affiliation, was welcome to see any one of these chaplains, who were reminiscent of Father Francis Mulcahy of "MASH" fame.

Instead, my son's orientation became an opportunity for the academy to aggressively proselytize this next crop of cadets. Maj. Warren Watties led a group of 10 young, exclusively evangelical chaplains who stood shoulder to shoulder. He proudly stated that half of the cadets attended Bible studies on Monday nights in the dormitories and he hoped to increase this number from those in his audience who were about to join their ranks. This "invitation" was followed with hallelujahs and amens by the evangelical clergy. I later learned from Air Force Academy chaplain MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran who was forced to observe from the choir loft, that no priest, rabbi or mainline Protestant had been permitted to participate.

I no longer recognize the Air Force Academy as the institution I attended almost four decades earlier. At that point, I had no idea how invasive this extreme evangelical "cancer" had become throughout the entire military, that what I had witnessed was far from an isolated case of a few religious zealots.

In order to better understand this shift to a religious ideology at this once secular institution, I called the Academy Association of Graduates (AOG). Its response: "We don't get involved in policy." What I didn't know was that the AOG, like the academy, had affiliations with James Dobson's and Ted Haggard's powerful mega-churches. When Dobson's Focus on the Family "campus" was completed, the academy skydiving team, with great ceremony, delivered the "keys from heaven" to Dobson. During some alumni reunions, the AOG arranged bus tours of Focus on the Family facilities in nearby Colorado Springs, Colo. I also learned that the same Monday night Bible studies discussed at orientation were taught by bused-in members of these evangelical mega-churches and that some spouses of senior academy staff members were employed by these same religious institutions. It seemed that my beloved United States Air Force Academy had morphed into the Rocky Mountain Bible College.

That's who has their fingers on The Button.

[wordpix]

22. I'm burned out just knowing this deadly technology is around

and my tax dollars are paying for it, including the waste that's toxic for thousands of years.

What a heritage to leave behind