Investigative Journalist Finds America's Nuclear Missiles In Need Of TLC
By John Ostapkovich
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The US military still acknowledges having about 4,800 nuclear weapons, but a journalist finds need for improvement in the people, systems and equipment that maintain them.
The book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, is the distillation of six years work by Eric Schlosser and focuses a lot on the way good intentions aren't enough.
"In the last few years, there have been some remarkable scandals in the Air Force with launch officers being caught using illegal drugs, cheating on exams."60 Minutes" did a very powerful segment on the aging equipment in our Minuteman silos, computers using 9-inch floppy discs, doors that won't close, and this is a recipe for disaster."
The Damascus, Arkansas Accident started with a dropped tool that begin a leak in a silo and eventually an explosion that destroyed the missile and killed an airman, but did not trigger the warhead. Good thing, too, because it contained three times the explosive force of all the bombs used by all the armies in World War II.
"There was an accident at Minuteman silo where the burglar alarm went off, someone used a screwdriver instead of a fuse puller on the fuse box and created a short circuit and blew the warhead off the missile."
Although Schlosser would like to see the end of nuclear weapons, he says better training and upgraded equipment are imperative to keep a terrible accident from happening.
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