Guest guest Posted May 6, 2006 Report Share Posted May 6, 2006 US Forgetting How to Operate Its Nuclear Missiles by Felix US missiles now an attraction at DisneyWorld WASHINGTON (AP)—The Pentagon is running out of scientists and engineers who know how to operate and repair America’s intercontinental nuclear and conventional missiles, according to the Defense Urgency Maintenance Board (DUMB). All of the country’s veteran engineers and scientists have retired, leaving the military with zero expertise in long-range missile technology, according to a DUMB report. The Air Force and Navy can no longer operate their 1960s-vintage missiles or cope with system failures or develop improved weapons. Last year, only about 70 Americans receive undergraduate and graduate science and engineering degrees that are defense related, compared with a combined 200,000,000 graduates in China and India, the report says. The DUMB board lacks the power to force the Pentagon to do anything about this situation, warned General Kurt " Bomber " Klutz, acting head of the Air Force Space Command. He told a Senate committee in February that the Pentagon has given up trying to recruit and retain missile experts. Space Command used to run the US intercontinental ballistic missile system, but it can no longer figure out how to operate its missiles. The report gives specifics on the number of experts who are retiring, revealing that pretty well everyone is gone now. It says about 20 research and development scientists and engineers now work in the US aerospace industry as a whole, down from more than 14,000,000 in the 1980s. John Stinkbunker, head of the Center for International and Security Planning at the University of Vermont, says hardly any scientists want to work on long-range missiles because American security doesn't depend on that any more, and no one knows how to make the things blast off. Instead, he says the Pentagon's priorities have shifted toward grabbing oil from innocent countries like Iraq and Iran and fabricating evidence to start relatively low-intensity conflicts. The DUMB report also said that the Pentagon doesn’t even know what to do with its old nuclear warheads anymore. Dismantling the warheads on its missiles is now impossible, the report says, because the Pentagon lacks the necessary brainpower. The report was authored by a bunch of volunteer high school students since the Pentagon no longer has any experts to write stuff like that. © 2003 TheSpoof Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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