The following interview with retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Donald Alston was conducted by Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor Editor Todd Jacobson.
NS&D Monitor
2/28/2014
In 2007, you were tasked with repairing the Air Force’s nuclear mission after a series of miscues, including the unauthorized transport of nuclear weapons on the wing of a bomber, and the mis-shipment of nuclear fuses to Taiwan. Now, the Air Force is facing another nuclear crisis with a cheating scandal at Malmstrom Air Force Base the latest issue to pop up. Are the issues that you had to address then the same as the Air Force is encountering now?
Obviously there’s an on-going investigation, but it’s not apparent to me that there are any direct connections to the environment we found in 2007, 2008. This is an integrity thing. These are choices that young men and women made. There are processes that will see this through and adjudicate the situation appropriately. But at the same time, what I’m not seeing enough of in the media is that there was a nuclear surety inspection that ended at Minot recently. This is the wing that last spring the Associated Press ran with the story about the ‘rot in the crew force.’ But I’m not seeing the news article that says, ‘through dedicated leadership, committed young airmen rose to the challenge and performed in a great fashion here’ to sort of complete that journalism circle to a certain extent. I think that that’s an indication of a very solid performance and a good indicator of the health of the wing at Minot.
So I hope this is an unfortunate problem in an environment confined to the one wing and not pervasive across the force. We’ll see. I appreciate the Secretary’s comments about reemphasizing Air Force core values, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense talking about emphasizing ethics. I certainly appreciate that.
The most significant challenge since the publication of the roadmap has been improving the depth of experience across the force. It’s not the junior guys; it’s the folks that watch over the junior guys where we have uneven experience levels. If a less experienced major or lieutenant colonel is putting his arm around a young man and saying, ‘I need perfection all the time and if you don’t ace every test, you’ll be held back,’ that’s a problem. If there was an environment where these guys were overvaluing written tests and creating this artificial bonus pressure on these young men and women, well that would be a problem. Seasoned leaders have enough savvy to understand that there are a number of elements that are involved to determine how well that young man or that young woman is doing. You give them training packages in advance, they review the material, they attend classes, can take practice tests, then they take the real tests for score. There is training in the simulator. These are monthly recurring requirements.
From an outsider’s point of view, there seems to be a pervasive problem in the nuclear ranks, with an admiral getting in trouble for a gambling-related incident at StratCom and the commander of the 20th Air Force getting in trouble for conduct in Russia. That’s on top of the cheating and drug issues at Malmstrom that involve folks in the nuclear ranks. The Air Force made a big deal of installing a new road map after the mis-shipment of nuclear fuses and unauthorized shipment of warheads on a bomber in 2007 and 2008. Are there parallels at all with cultural issues that need to be corrected?
I don’t know if I could connect all those dots you mention, but the comprehensive reviews directed by the SecDef, to include the reviews by the AF and the Navy, may find some common elements to fix as they evaluate root cause. Back in 2008 each Schlesinger report gave homework assignments to the Office of the SecDef, the Navy and the Air Force. Arguably all those recommendations can be associated with efforts to fortify the virtues of cultures that safeguard nuclear weapons.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James has said that she sees systemic, cultural issues. Was that what you saw several years ago as well?
A vital component of the roadmap we put together was devoted to what needed to be done to re-establish a culture of accountability and rigorous self-assessment. Over the past five years there have been numerous adjustments to nuclear inspection frequency and focus to try to get the tempo right so the units can do their deterrence jobs and not just prepare for the next inspection. The legacy of the nuclear business has been frequent evaluation. Sounds like there will be additional examination of those evaluations at the unit level to assess whether or not the proficiency requirements are right.
How damaging is the push for perfection that appears to have been revealed?
In a training environment, you want to push folks so that they actually can make mistakes, learn from those mistakes and then fold that back in and become a better technician,if you will. I started getting concerned about this when we began the roadmap journey because there were folks that have responsibility for the mission, but not depth of knowledge and understanding of the mission, and the word ‘perfection’ would roll off their lips so easily, and it was sort of discordant with the forces hearing them because we know we’re not perfect. That’s why nuclear weapons have two-man teams and lots of other control processes.
It’s a team effort when you work with nuclear weapons. When you’re in the field, you must have perfect outcomes. It’s not to say that anyone carries the burden for perfection by themselves because there is a team to depend on. But we’re not perfect. And that’s why we have built all these safeguards with procedures and with training and conditioning and the personnel reliability program in order to decrease the odds that the mistake you will make because you are a human will have severe consequences.
There’s a place and a time to be perfect. But it’s not all the time. If you have to be perfect in everything, ultimately everything gets diminished in its value to this common level. If that’s the kind of stress on the force, the air has to be let out of that so that those places where it truly is vital is preserved, and those places where you almost cheapen the word ‘perfection’ when you apply it equally to everything.
We’re so far removed from the Cold War. Do airmen understand the mission and is the mission part of the problems? Is that part of the cultural problem, and what advice would you have to fix it?
The Cold War they read about in books, but they didn’t live it. Far more than 90 percent of the force was not on active duty in the Cold War. A large percentage of today’s force wasn’t even born during the Cold War. But nuclear deterrence is not a Cold War mission, despite what the force may hear often. And when you are in the military and your job is about preserving stability on a global scale and not launching the weapons you are trained to launch, the mission can have an abstract quality to it. This is a leadership challenge and I think mission performance benefits from constantly nurturing a deeper understanding of deterrence by all. Unlike most Air Force missions, the ICBM fielded forces are under operational control of their combatant commander, performing active deterrence operations by keeping the force on the ground, on alert and ready to go. Not always seen as sexy and dynamic from the outside. And the downside to screwing up this job can damage the credibility of the force, damage the amount of deterrence we created today and potentially damaged the confidence the American people or your allies. It is vital that everyone understands the stakes are that high on any given day.
There’s now talk of reconsidering whether incentives, higher pay, or bonuses should be used to help mitigate some of the problems that are occurring. Was that something that was previously proposed? Why was that not implemented, and is now the right time?
Traditionally, if you have a problem manning the force, then you look at monetary incentives. If you are involved in hazardous duty or combat zones, there are pay incentives. Aviators get flight pay. Up until now, ICBM duty was not seen as fitting into any of those criteria. The ICBM mission area has a number of non-volunteers, and yet, at the end of the initial tour of duty, there are more people who want to remain in this mission area than there are job opportunities.
So incentives aren’t the answer?
I know they’re looking at it, and I think it requires a fresh look. I think it is more about special recognition of the unique challenges associated with this type of duty such as northern tier assignments, many days deployed in the missile field, especially security forces who are away from their families more than 170 days a year, even if it’s in Montana or North Dakota. Examining the incentive structure from fleshing out career paths to pay to getting advanced academic degrees may all be examined.
There have been descriptions of the type of aging equipment that missileers have to use, and there is an ongoing discussion about modernizing the nuclear triad. What does that say about the importance of the mission, is that affecting morale and is that something that needs to be addressed?
This is the main issue, isn’t it? There’s a program for an Ohio class follow-on, a program for a bomber but currently there is no program for the future of the ICBM other than the Congressional mandate to sustain the Minuteman through 2030. I understand the on-going analysis of alternatives may be done this summer and then we’ll see where that goes. Nothing will signal more clearly to a force holding its breath than the certainty of a follow-on ICBM or indefinite sustainment of the current system or neither, if that is the national decision that follows. But confidence in a way forward will go a long way with the force. I think the national narrative has been influenced in an unbalanced way by the Global Zero report, or talk of eliminating the ICBM leg or going down to 1,000 deployed weapons. And the basis of these reductions doesn’t include objective assessments of risks to US national security and that of our allies let alone the implications for regional and global stability.
There have been suggestions that cheating has been going on since at least the ‘70s, that it’s always been there. Did you ever see evidence of cheating?
Thirty years ago when I was responsible for teaching, writing and grading tests, I don’t remember ever having to deal with this beyond the normal academic precautions of multiple versions of the same test, a proctor in the room, et cetera. But I’m not naive enough to suggest that it might not have been going on. I’m concerned about the connection between an environment that may have incentivized cheating or at least it created conditions where people were worried that the downside risk of not achieving 100 percent exceeded the benefits of honesty. The minimum score for passing a test has not been 100 percent, not that you want folks shooting for the minimum, of course, even with very high standards.
You also were tasked in the wake of the Y-12 security breach in 2012 to examine security across the Department of Energy. DOE is now moving forward with an approach that is trying to react to one of the key things you and others found: strengthening and clarifying the chain of command. Is that the right approach?
When we looked up the chain to try to find the guy whose chest you could put a finger in, it was diffused. That’s not a good thing. It sounds so negative, but there’s a part of me that has always found clarity when you evaluate failure. When you say if this thing gets screwed up completely today, who is responsible? Being able to answer that question quickly and accurately, there’s clarity in that. You’re not trying to put the zing on them, but you need to know that and they need to know that. The boss needs to say if this stuff goes bad over here, you and I are accountable, and you are the person on point.. Do you understand? But that didn’t exist. At least we couldn’t find it.
Was that the most significant thing you noticed, the biggest thing that needed to be fixed?
I don’t think there was anything more important than a clear chain of command. Secretary Chu asked us: I’ve got a federal model for moving weapons. I’ve got contractors for certain other security operations, and I’ve got a variety of different ways that I secure the Department of Energy. Can you help inform me as to whether or not there’s a singular way that would put me in an advantageous position across the Department? I recommended the federal model.
It improved the chain of command, which was paramount. Where it actually split the chain of command and created a seam was when the O&M contractor had normal ops that drove security priorities. That would drive coordination and exercises and practices in two different chains of command, all manageable. I didn’t think I would go for something that wasn’t a pure, single chain of command, but in the end, I did.
The other part was that if you had to apply deadly force at any of these locations, it seemed better to me that a guy with federal credentials putting a bullet in somebody’s chest seemed to be right on several different levels, from a deterrence point of view and from a U.S. government standpoint. That this was the U.S. government that was taking this action. They had to kill this person because the use of deadly force is authorized and that made sense to us as well.
Do you still think federalizing is the right way to go?
I don’t think there’s a prohibitive favorite model here. They ought to solve the problem in a consistent way across the Department and then they ought to make that work. One of the things we found, it’s just a cultural thing in the Department: it was informal, but there was clear evidence that the headquarters was in support of the labs and the production facilities and when there was a difference of opinion between the labs and the production facilities, those geographically separated units out there held sway more often than not. If they had a different view on how it should be done, they could justify being different than the next guy.
As an ICBM guy, I had three wings and there was a Malmstrom way and a F.E. Warren way and there was a Minot way when I took command. I hated that. You went into this saying, okay, there’s a common way we’re going to do everything. I’m not naive, there are reasons that you can petition and defend to be different. But right now, you’ve got to be the same and if you lose the argument, you’ve got to be the same.
The same thing carries over to the Department of Energy. There’s reasons why Pantex might do things a certain way, because everything is flat and from a security perspective, that requires a certain set of capabilities. If you have to defend Oak Ridge, that is a different problem set, and therefore there would be modifications to accommodate the geography of the two different places. But fundamentally, you need to have an approval process and control over security from a central point of view. There needs to be a central influence that breeds common practices, common approval processes, common operational testing and evaluation before you deploy. Those attributes contribute to headquarters doing all the right things, that there is as much centralization as appropriate, and then there is decentralized execution in the field, because at the end of the day, they’ve got to be able to have procedures that work in their neighborhood, and protect resources as they need to be protected.
