Can someone remind me about how Minot happened? Not the creation of the base, but the over flight of U.S. soil with nuclear weapons in August 2007. Of course I’m being facetious, but how can we still be totally overlooking the underlying cause of such as serious event, and continue to put band-aids on things that were never at the heart of the matter? I have been a MASO and at Minot accountability was not the issue.
The issue at hand is we failed to develop 21M (and before that, munitions officer) nuclear expertise, and that failure helped bleed off the compliance culture which was founded on specialized technical expertise. Since I came in the Air Force in 2003, I have had the officer career broadening “cool-aid” forced down my throat… but I don’t buy it.
I have so far been able to avoid this, thank goodness. How can one ever think generalization is a good thing? Is it better to be 100 yards wide and 1 inch deep or 1 inch wide and 100 yards deep? The truth I feel is somewhere in the middle, but this concept is definitely at the very heart of what I think went wrong at Minot in August 2007.
Most of the troops at Minot were trying to do a good job, but we as officers are supposed to be ensuring the right things get done the right way. We do this by being there in the WSA, being a part of the convoy to the flightline, being there to watch the loading, be there to verify selected weapons against workorders, 1911s, and 1348s, and above all be there to ask the right questions at the right time. This is how a compliance culture gets established and maintained. I am a Captain, but I know enough to focus all my attention on my current job which is a 21M and not on the all important “career broadening.” I have heard too many times that officers don’t need to know the details that is why we have NCOs…how do you know you have good NCOs…if you don’t know enough about what your NCOs are doing to make that call?
This is all tied to leadership. If your boss hasn’t done your job before you, and has no clue of the daily tasks at hand for those he leads, there is unlikely to be any mentoring going on, and as result a very small chance for a strong compliance culture. In that case, the unit better be extremely lucky. It is strong, specialized leadership with deep nuclear weapons expertise, responsible for accomplishing the mission… with an involved desire to foster a compliance culture that is the answer to the woes of our Air Force “nuclear enterprise.” Josh.trebon@hotmail.com
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