The Men Guarding Our Nuclear Arsenal Are High and Dumb as F**k

[JaneyVee]

The Air Force announced this afternoon that 37 nuclear missile officers have been implicated in academic cheating scandals and drug rings, and the ongoing investigation may turn up more misdeeds soon.

So far, 11 Air Force on six different bases have been implicated in the drug ring. Three of them are missile launch officers at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, according to the Washington Post. Those are two of the three U.S. bases that house America's 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles.

In addition, nearly 20 percent of all the launch officers in charge of ICBMs at Malmstrom cheated or allowed cheating on a job-related certification test, the investigation showed. An estimated 200 officers have had their certifications yanked and will be forced to retake the exam, though it isn't clear how many officers might lose their jobs.

The Air Force insists that the integrity of its nuclear arsenal has not been compromised, though the service's chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh III, told reporters that Malmstrom had failed an August nuclear readiness test, according to Military.com editor Michael Hoffman. (The base later passed another nuke test in October.)

The rest: http://gawker.com/the-men-guarding-our-nuclear-arsenal-are-high-and-dumb-1502128337

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. What could possibly go wrong?

[Stargazer09]

2. The Cold War has ended

And because of that, nobody cares about deterrence, despite the fact that we are vulnerable as fuck right now. Russia and China are not letting their weapons rust in the ground.

Every one of those officers knows that being in the nuke field means getting passed over for promotion and kicked out before retirement. Add the isolated, and boring, bases at which to live, and it becomes obvious why morale is very low. There's no incentive to do well on inspections, either, so why should they bother?

Putin is laughing his ass off tonight.