Greetings from Istanbul.
Several people have sent me stories about the latest kerfuffle involving the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot AFB, which failed a nuclear surety inspection, and the separate decision by SECDEF Gates to fire Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne for the accidental shipment of what we are calling sensitive missile components to Taiwan. (The Salt Lake Tribune — hometown paper for Hill Air Force Base, which mishandled the components — ran a pair of good stories by Matthew LaPlante on June 5 and June 6.)
I will repeat, for the third time, my sense that the Air Force has an organizational problem that is not amenable to remedy by firing people:
Heads are going to roll — officers will lose promising careers, regular guys will get the blame. This process has already started, with the squadron commander in charge of Minot’s munitions crews.
If I have one bit of advice to Secretary Gates, it is this: Call an organizational theorist, like Charles Perrow, or a like-minded political scientist, like Scott Sagan, immediately.
Apportioning blame reassures the public and makes you look tough. But, if this accident represents a broader organizational pathology rather than mere negligence, disciplinary actions won’t solve the problem any more than screaming at someone who is sick.
I should add that the Air Force is considering some organizational remedies. But the real question is “above the paygrade” the Air Force and, even, the Secretary of Defense. The “lack of focus” that SECDEF described reflects the reality that these weapons are largely irrelevant to the day-to-day mission of the Air Force. That we have nuclear weapons we do not need is evident in the day-to-day neglect by those who handle them.
Rationalizing our force structure — standing-down unnecessary nuclear forces to include the possibility of eliminating the air- or land- legs of the triad or both — runs into thorny questions of the localities that depend on nuclear missions to justify keeping force structure at bases that might otherwise be denuded or closed. That Congress created of an additional squadron of B-52s, in response to an Air Force plan to have units to focus on the nuclear mission for six months at a time, is suggestive of this barrier.