Nuclear Munitions and Missile Maintenance Officer Attraction and Retention

A number of Department of Defense DoD and Air Force AF reports issued since the end of the Cold War, especially those related to two recent events--an unauthorized movement of nuclear weapons from Minot Air Force Base AFB to Barksdale AFB in 2007 and a subsequently discovered inadvertent shipment of nuclear-related material to Taiwan in 2006--have highlighted a deterioration of nuclear expertise in the United States U.S. military. Both of these recent events involved AF personnel, helping to make the new AF Chief of Staffs number one priority the reinvigoration of the nuclear enterprise. Part of that reinvigoration should include reversing the deterioration of and regaining lost nuclear expertise by restoring the value once accorded this expertise. Otherwise, there will be little incentive for the best and brightest to enter this key field. Indeed, personnel issues, such as inadequate training, lack of discipline, and inattention to detail, were at the heart of these incidents. Nuclear personnel no longer had the knowledge required to accomplish the mission in an error-free manner or to understand why the mission had to be accomplished in a standardized way, time after time. The AF instructions that replaced the much more detailed and unequivocally directive AF regulations of the past, as well as a continuous pursuit of efficiency in recent years, contributed to shortcuts that eliminated necessary steps from nuclear procedures. But even before personnel can be properly trained and inculcated with the required discipline for the zero-defects nuclear environment, qualified and motivated personnel must be available. Thus, nuclear career fields must attract and retain sufficient numbers of personnel who have the ability to achieve a standard of perfection.