Air Force Officers Asleep At Nuke Switch
By Wyatt Earp | July 24, 2008
Aim high! Well, higher than your pillow, that is.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Three Air Force officers fell asleep while in control of an electronic component that contained old launch codes for nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, a violation of procedure, Air Force officials said Thursday.
The Air Force said the launch codes had been deactivated before the incident, but it was still a violation of protocol, prompting an investigation.
It is the fourth incident in the past year involving problems with secure handling of components of America’s nuclear weapons.
The incident occurred July 12, during the changing out of components used to facilitate secure communications between an underground missile-control facility and missile silos near Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, according to Col. Dewey Ford, a spokesman for the Air Force Space Command in Colorado. (H/T - CNN)
In fairness, you’d be sleepy too if you just finished a three martini lunch. Idiots.
Topics: The Troops |
July 24th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Ummm….coffee?
July 24th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
RT - Mountain Dew??? Anything???!!!
July 25th, 2008 at 3:37 am
This is only getting attention because of those much larger incidents within the AF recently. Something like this is not nearly on the scale of shipping fuses to Taiwan, or loading live nukes on a B-52. It’s not even as bad as sleeping at the trigger of a loaded machine gun… Safety on, of course.
Not that I know ANYONE who has done that.
*ahem*
July 25th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Hilarious. I heard there were jobs like this one in the AF.
July 25th, 2008 at 11:26 am
At least nobody fell asleep then fell over and hit their head on the button.
DOH!
July 25th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Dorkelina - Bawahahahaha!!! Do you have a photo of that?
Admiral - Maybe Mountain Dew will be the required beverage now?
Doghouse - Yeah, that would be a need for some ’splainin’.