Curtis Lemay wept...

Ok, no one I know cares about this except for Herndawg, who's too busy diving elbow-deep into people's innards to comment here, but I'm posting it anyway because it's not everyday you see SecAF and the Air Force Chief of Staff get taken out at the knees.

As previously posted, the unauthorized transport of six nuclear warhead-equipped cruise missiles was a career-limiting maneuver for 70 officers and enlisted associated with the 5BW at Minot. Now life at Minot is one of great agony and torment even during the best of times. It's cold. It's isolated. It's basically the third ring of hell (Barksdale's the fifth). Now imagine being in the third ring of hell and having Cerberus scrutinize every little frikkin' thing you did over and over and over and over and over and over... this is what life was like after that mistake. You would think with this much scrutiny, the 5th would have sailed through its Operational Readiness Inspection. It didn't. I don't think even Dante could imagine the level of hell the troops of the 5th experienced after that. I think today's organizational bloodshed was just as much a reflection of the 5th's failure as it was the mistaken shipment of fuses cited as the straw that broke the camel's back in The Donald Report (am I the only one who thinks of Trump?).

I titled this "Curtis Lemay wept..." because I think ol' Curt would be truly saddened at what his Air Force has become. With no Cold War, we have no incentive to maintain a force capable of responding in [redacted]. Consequently, our pointy tip of the spear no longer has an edge. Here's the scary part to that--the squadron commanders that are in charge of maintaining that edge are younger than I am, and I sat all of one full nuclear alert tour before President Bush had our forces stand down. That means none of the people who actually make all this work have any real experience doing so. It wasn't long after the stand down that the Air Force was reorganized--TAC-imcized, as we used to say. In other words, the Strategic Air Command (the bomber guys) were the subject of a hostile takeover by the Tactical Air Command (the fighter guys). The two cultures don't mix well, and the resultant Air Combat Command never really understood or assumed the kind of mindset needed when it comes to playing with nuclear weapons. And, as evident by recent events, that lack of mindset caught up with the powers that be, who are no more.

I don't think sacking SecAF and the Chief of Staff will fix what ails the Air Force. They didn't create the culture; they inherited it. But, it was an unusual display of accountability on the part of government. I hope they keep that up.