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Report attacks AF nuke inspection architecture

The parade of reports criticizing the Air Force’s ability to handle nuclear weapons kept rolling in on Jan. 8 as the Defense Science Board issued a stinging rebuke of Air Force nuclear inspections.

The board — organized under the Office of the Secretary of Defense — picked apart the Air Force’s nuclear inspection architecture, faulting it for not alerting leaders to the service’s nuclear erosion and recommended the Defense Threat Reduction Agency be empowered to revitalize the Air Force’s nuclear inspection process.

Meanwhile, DSB members, who have extensive nuclear backgrounds in the Air Force and Navy, found few faults with the Navy’s nuclear inspection process.

Board members questioned the credibility of Air Force nuclear inspections after service inspectors passed five nuclear units in 2007 and 2008 even after inspections done by the DTRA, who inspected those same units at the same time, had failed them.

Air Force inspectors passed 20 out of 21 nuclear units that had Nuclear Surety Inspections, Limited NSIs or Defense NSIs from September 2007 to April 2008, according to the report. Passing that many units puzzled DSB members the year after the nuclear enterprise had deteriorated to a point that airmen mistakenly flew six nuclear-tipped weapons from North Dakota to Louisiana in August 2007.

“The Task Force found significant continuing confusion and questionable practices in bomber units weeks after the unauthorized movement incident,” the report read.

This helped lead to the DSB recommendation that DTRA have oversight over Air Force inspectors.

Currently, DTRA inspectors visit units with Air Force inspectors every five years. They do their own inspection, but the service inspectors are the ones who have the power to pass or fail a unit.

The DSB is recommending DTRA inspectors have the authority to instead inspect the Air Force inspectors rather than the units and issue a report to the Air Force inspection team’s command, the Air Force service chief, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs.

A recommendation was also made to cut in half the time between Nuclear Operational Readiness Inspections in Air Combat Command and Operational Readiness Inspections in Air Force Space Command from every 36 months to every 18 months.

Since NSIs are also held every 18 months, the DSB also recommended the NORIs/ORIs be held at the same time, according to the report.

The DSB’s report comes after the Air Force announced a host of changes to its nuclear inspection architecture and process in the Air Force Nuclear Road Map that was issued in October to “reinvigorating the Air Force nuclear enterprise.” Included in those changes was eliminating scheduled nuclear surety inspections. Instead, inspectors will show up to nuclear units unannounced.

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