The nation's deteriorating nuclear force will get a $10 billion cash injection to shore up sagging morale and correct serious mismanagement problems, officials said Friday.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced the top-to-bottom overhaul at a Pentagon press conference before flying to a nuclear site in North Dakota.
Hagel's proposed upgrades are the result of two separate probes into the nuclear program he ordered in February, following a series of damning investigative reports from the Associated Press.
The AP had revealed several serious breaches in vital protocols, including two different incidents of personnel taking approved naps while on solo guard duty - but leaving security doors that should have been closed wide open to intruders.
The AP also found widespread leadership lapses and plummeting morale at nuclear sites.
The Pentagon will get the additional $10 billion in payouts over the next five years, Hagel said.
It costs about $15 billion a year to maintain the nation's nuclear arsenal.
The ex-Senator, a Republican from Nebraska, flew to Minot Air Force Base after his announcement to deliver a pep talk.
'You are an indispensable element of our national security,' he said, although he acknowledged that too many years of neglect resulted in a 'pervasive sense' that nuclear security was a dead-end career.
Evan Vucci/AP
Hagel's reviews also detailed a serious disconnect between the upper echelon of the nuclear program and the rank-and-file.
Reports of chronic mechanical problems would go unfixed, technicians were unable to get proper tools and in one case had to share a single set - used to tighten bolts on the Minuteman 3 missile - between sites in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota, using FedEx to ship them back and forth.
Hagel said crews now have tool kits at each base.
But even with its problems, the country's nuclear force has been operating securely, officials said.
'You don't see the mushroom cloud or that sort of thing. We must continue that,' Hagel's head of strategic command, Navy Adm. Cecil Haney, told reporters.
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With News Wire Services
Posted by Unknown on Sunday, November 16, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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