Nuclear Cheating Scandal Hits Navy; Not Like Air Force’s, Say Admirals

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http://breakingdefense.com/2014/02/navy-nuclear-cheating-scandal-not-like-air-forces-admirals/



Nuclear Cheating Scandal Hits Navy; Not Like Air Force’s, Say Admirals
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. and Colin Clark
on February 04, 2014 at 5:16 PM

WASHINGTON: It looks like the scum of scandals that’s afflicted the Air Force nuclear program has spread to the Navy — although top admirals took pains today to emphasize how different the two problems are.

In both cases, military personnel cheated on exams to requalify so they could continue to work with nuclear materials. The Air Force has suspended 92 commissioned officers who served in nuclear missile silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. The Navy did not give a number of individuals under investigation — “I was made aware of this incident yesterday,” Adm. John Richardson, director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, told reporters this afternoon, “we’re just getting started.” But the Navy’s cheating case involves senior non-commissioned officers serving as instructors at the Navy’s school for nuclear reactor operators in Charleston, South Carolina. Nukes are nasty however you package them, but a nuclear reactor is less dangerous than a nuclear missile, if only because it isn’t designed to explode.

Regardless of how much the two service’s experiences may differ, the fact remains that this provides more evidence of what appear to be serious problems in some elements of America’s nuclear forces. While the Air Force’s failings involved those who would fire nuclear weapons and the Navy involves those who deal with reactors, they both involve personnel with intimate knowledge of and access to nuclear materials.

A source with detailed knowledge of the Navy’s nuclear submarine force noted that all reactor and weapons experts are issued Q clearances, although need-to-know restrictions mean that a reactor expert is unlikely to have the detailed knowledge about a warhead that a weapons officer would.