Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Cold War Fallout

Air Force strips 17 officers of power to launch intercontinental nuclear missiles | Fox News:
...Bruce Blair, who served as an Air Force ICBM launch control officer in the 1970s and is now a research scholar at Princeton University, said the Folds email points to a broader problem within the nuclear weapons force.

"The nuclear air force is suffering from a deep malaise caused by the declining relevance of their mission since the Cold War's end over 20 years ago," Blair said in an interview. "Minuteman launch crews have long been marginalized and demoralized by the fact that the Air Force's culture and fast-track careers revolve around flying planes, not sitting in underground bunkers baby-sitting nuclear-armed missiles."

Blair is co-founder of Global Zero, an international group that advocates the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

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