Kehler: NSI failures part of solution - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Kehler: NSI failures part of solution

The 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., became on Dec. 17 the third missile wing to fail its nuclear surety inspection this year.

Air Force Space Command leaders insist that’s exactly what they expected.

Gen. Robert Kehler, head of Space Command, and Space Command Inspector General Col. Scott “Scooter” Gilson, said the failures didn’t surprise either one of them during a year in which nuclear inspections got tougher as the Air Force works to repair its nuclear enterprise.

“We don’t like failures, but failures in this case, in terms of identifying the problems, are part of the fix to the nuclear enterprise. It’s like medicine,” Kehler said.

The 90th failed the NSI after its maintenance group did not properly document tests on its missiles, even leaving some tests completely undocumented, said an Air Force official who asked not to be named.

“The inspector general gave us an exceptionally thorough review, looking deep into all areas,” said Col. Michael Morgan, the 90th Missile Wing commander. “Improvement continues, but as highlighted by this inspection, we need to do much better in administrative and equipment control processes.”

The wing became the fifth nuclear unit known to fail its NSI this year. It’s only the fourth time since 1992 that five nuclear units have failed their NSI. The Air Force had zero failures in 2006 and 2007.

Inspectors also failed the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., in November after they found problems inside the maintenance group and the personnel reliability program, which monitors who handles nuclear weapons.

Inspection results for the Air Force’s third and only other nuclear missile wing, the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., in January are more complicated. Inspectors from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency failed the wing for errors made during security procedures.

However, former Space Command Inspector General Col. John Stocker’s team passed the wing because members performed the entry control procedures correctly based on the procedures they had. The problem was that Space Command headquarters had not sent them the right procedures, a senior Air Force official in the nuclear community said. Therefore, the IG issued an “unsatisfactory” grade to headquarters, not the wing, for its support of the inspection.

Kehler said that despite the complications, he still considered the 91st Missile Wing’s inspection a failure.

An NSI typically takes place every 18 months and measures a unit’s readiness to execute nuclear operations over a two-week period. An unsatisfactory grade on any portion of the NSI fails the entire wing. All other areas of the wing can rate perfect, but an “unsatisfactory” rating sticks to the wing, Gilson said.

Kehler said the problems uncovered by the NSIs were not serious enough for him to fire members of wing leadership or decertify the wings from handling nuclear weapons.

The 90th’s NSI failure comes less than a year after Defense Department officials discovered the wing was involved in the mistaken shipment of ballistic missile fuses to Taiwan in 2006.

Airmen at F.E. Warren shipped the fuses in 2005 to Hill Air Force Base, Utah, where they were placed in unclassified storage after being misidentified as helicopter batteries because of wrong labels and classifications. A year later, Hill airmen shipped the fuses, encased in ballistic missile nose cones, to Taiwan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Gen. Michael T. Moseley in June for the erosion of the Air Force’s nuclear mission.

Since then, new Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz has made it his top priority to revamp the service’s nuclear enterprise, including its nuclear inspection process.

“All this attention has beefed up requirements that everyone has to be perfect,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.

After the unauthorized transfer of six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles onboard a B-52 from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., in August 2007, the Air Force inspector general was ordered to inspect each nuclear base. The number of nuclear bases to receive an NSI jumped from nine in 2006 and nine in 2007 to 22 in 2008, according to the report issued by a panel led by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger.

Investigations both internal and external, such as the one done by Schlesinger, “found deficiencies in [the Air Force] inspection process,” Kehler said.

Schlesinger wrote, “Over the past 10 years, inspection pass rates point to anomalies that indicate a systemic problem in the inspection regime. Something is clearly wrong.”

“There were concerns raised that our inspections were not providing a high quality independent assessment and the theory was: If you have a good inspection process, why are we discovering the problems we have discovered?” Kehler said.

The Air Force has since worked to make NSIs tougher and restrict the notice units receive before inspectors show up, Gilson said.

“We have a long history of NSIs, and they are tough to pass. We made them tougher,” Kehler said.

An example is how intensely inspectors check the personnel reliability program, which Kehler said is a serious area of concern. A great deal of paperwork, including health records, is involved in distinguishing who can be trusted with nukes.

Before, inspectors only audited a sampling of records, but now 100 percent of personnel reliability paperwork is inspected, and problems are being found, Kehler said.

Who is getting inspected has also changed. Now, inspectors randomly choose who will perform procedures to prevent commanders from only putting forward their best airmen.

“We need to know the youngest airmen among us can do the job,” Gilson said.

Starting next year, those inspectors will be showing up to most NSIs unannounced.

The Air Force IG announced in June that NSIs would be no-notice, but most NSIs done this year have been scheduled, and wings had warning before inspectors showed up. Kehler said his IG teams won’t have the resources or manpower to make all inspections no-notice until at least next year.

“We’re in the crawl phase of the crawl, walk, run process of no-notice inspections,” Kehler said.

That’s not to say some units in Space Command didn’t receive no-notice inspections. Three units — the 341st Missile Wing, 21st Space Wing and the Space and Missiles Center — received limited inspections focused on areas commanders deemed critical to their mission, Gilson said. Inspectors have provided the wing commander a report of observations and recommendations, but the inspections are not pass/fail.

Restricting notice for wings is a sign of progress to Kehler, which he said is why he’s not demoralized by the failures of all three of his nuclear missile wings.

“This is part of the fix ... I am never going to be happy with failure, but on the other hand, as a commander, I am being told where the problems are. I am being shown where the problems are. In this case, I think that’s a positive thing that we can use to take us where we want to be,” Kehler said.

Related reading: F.E. Warren fails NSI