Air Force scandal: Nine 'fired' over nuclear missile launch test cheating

Air Force scandal: More than 90 nuclear missile launch officers cheated on a proficiency test that required perfect scores for advancement. Now, nine Air Force officers have been demoted and one has resigned.

The head of the nuclear missile wing at a base in Montana resigned on Thursday and nine officers were removed from their jobs over a test-cheating scandal that involved 91 missile launch officers, the Air Force said.

Lieutenant General Stephen Wilson, head of the Air Force's Global Strike Command, said Colonel Robert Stanley, commander of the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, had resigned on Thursday and would retire from the service.

The nine other officers, mainly colonels and lieutenant colonels, were removed from their positions of command at the Montana base that is home to a third of the nation's nearly 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles. They will be reassigned to staff jobs and face administrative punishment, such as formal reprimands or letters of counseling.

Wilson said the root of the problem was the emphasis on perfection in the nuclear mission at the Montana base and throughout the missile force, which led to cheating on exams in an effort to achieve the sort of perfect scores perceived to be required for advancement and promotion.

The exams were classroom tests to check staff knowledge of how to carry out the nuclear mission and security procedures.

"Leadership's focus on perfection led commanders to micro-manage their people. They sought to ensure that the zero defect standard was met by personally monitoring and directing daily operations, imposing unrelenting testing and inspections with the goal of eliminating all human error," Wilson told a Pentagon news conference.

He and Air Force Secretary Deborah James said the evaluation and assessment of missile launch officers would be radically overhauled in an effort to change the culture and behavior that has developed in the missile wing.

LOW MORALE

Nuclear critics say the problem is deeply rooted and has been going on for years, becoming increasingly acute since the end of the Cold War as the nuclear mission has increasingly come to be seen as a dead-end career that's relevance is in decline.

"Many of these issues come back to the fundamental fact that a lot of these people who sit in the holes out there are in a way demoralized. They are sitting ready for a scenario that is unlikely to ever happen," said Jon Wolfstahl, a former nonproliferation official with the White House's National Security Council who is now with the Monterrey Institute.

"During the Cold War, the ICBM force on high alert was very ... prominent in the nuclear posture," he told reporters this week. "It seems far less relevant in the day we live in ... and in the foreseeable future."

The cheating scandal was discovered earlier this year as officials were investigating several officers for illegal drug activity. Investigators looking at the officers' cell phones found test material, including answers and a photograph of a classified test answer, Wilson said.

The cheating investigation eventually involved 100 officers who were believed to have received test material, sent test material or who were aware the cheating was going on. Allegations against nine were not substantiated and they will be retrained and returned to duty, Wilson said.

Of the 91 remaining cases, nine are still being probed by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, including eight suspected of mishandling classified information and three for alleged illegal drug activity, Wilson said. The remainder have been implicated in the cheating scandal.

The launch officers face a range of punishment, from letters of admonishment to courts martial, depending upon the nature of the offense, Wilson said.

James said the investigation following the cheating incident found "systemic issues in our missile community," including "spotty morale and micro-management issues at all of the bases." She said the Air Force would implement a "holistic plan" to address the problems.

The Air Force will spend $19 million this fiscal year to refurbish the launch control center and repair infrastructure across the missile wing, James said. Another $3 million will go for "quality of life requirements" at the missile bases, which are in remote areas of the country where weather is often harsh.

She said substantially more funding would be devoted to improving the force in 2015 and beyond, but equally important would be the emphasis on the importance of the missile launch job and ensuring young officers in the specialized field have a realistic career path.

James said it was "terribly important that people see a path to rise through the ranks, so that it will be in fact and in perception viewed as a good job."

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and David Alexander; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Sandra Maler and Cynthia Osterman)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Air Force scandal: Nine 'fired' over nuclear missile launch test cheating
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0329/Air-Force-scandal-Nine-fired-over-nuclear-missile-launch-test-cheating
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe