THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Even though we "won" the Cold War, we still keep a world destroying number of land based missiles in their underground silos, the lieutenants and captains in command awaiting word to blow up all that we know. Now we find out that some of those junior officers weren't up to the task.

The tip-off to trouble was a March inspection of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., which earned the equivalent of a “D’’ grade when tested on its mastery of Minuteman III missile launch operations. In other areas, the officers tested much better, but the group’s overall fitness was deemed so tenuous that senior officers at Minot decided, after probing further, that an immediate crackdown was called for.

The Air Force publicly called the inspection a “success.”

But in April it quietly removed 17 officers at Minot from the highly sensitive duty of standing 24-hour watch over the Air Force’s most powerful nuclear missiles, the intercontinental ballistic missiles that can strike targets across the globe. Inside each underground launch control capsule, two officers stand “alert” at all times, ready to launch an ICBM upon presidential order.

“You will be a bench warmer for at least 60 days,” Folds wrote.

The 17 cases mark the Air Force’s most extensive sidelining ever of launch crew members, according to Lt. Col. Angie Blair, a spokeswoman for Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the missile units as well as nuclear-capable bombers. The wing has 150 officers assigned to missile launch control duty.

Appearing with Donley at Wednesday’s Senate hearing, the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh, said Folds and other senior commanders at Minot removed the 17 launch crew members after determining that they had “more of an attitude problem than a proficiency problem.” He said he endorsed their handling of the problem.

“More of an attitude problem"??? Really what we want, kids with their fingers on the launch controls and an attitude problem.