“It is lonely work,” he said. “They do feel unappreciated many times.”
He said he spoke to a small group of nuclear weapons officers in November.
“I asked about their futures, and they were very honest, and most of them said they were unsure,” he said. “Well, morale is a huge part of that.”
F.E. Warren Air Force Base, which is headquarters for the organization in charge of all 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles, has about 3,100 enlisted airmen and officers and saw 12 courts-martial in 2013, compared with nine the year before, 12 in 2011 and eight in 2010, according to Air Force statistics provided to The Associated Press last week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
In each of the past four years, the courts-martial rate at F.E. Warren was higher than in the Air Force as a whole
The AP documented problems that go well beyond low morale in a series of stories in 2013, including one that disclosed that an ICMB operations officer had complained of “rot” infesting his missile force. Since then it has tried to improve nuclear operations, but problems remain, including attitude issues, leadership lapses and, far more perilously, security lapses such as taking naps during a 24-hour shift with the blast door open, which could leave the missiles and airmen vulnerable and violates Air Force rules. A RAND study done for the Pentagon also noted that the morale issues may be leading to higher rates of suicide and discipline problems than exist among other service members.