I grasped that *boring is good* back about the time this was filmed. About the same time I qualified MCCSUP and was suddenly The Guy. Not Boring meant something was happening, usually bad.* And when stuff goes wrong, it's The Guy who has to make decisions and who is held accountable for them afterwards. (And if it's bad enough, the Old Man takes an interest, and that's never fun.)
As I've said elsewhere, I soon learned to appreciate boring like it was a lovely single malt.
I don't recall our training (at the enlisted level) ever going into morality... But whatever the official line, at the deckplate it was an article of faith that our job was deterrence. That if we ever had to launch, we'd failed. I don't have any idea about officer training.
* And an LCC crew doesn't face nearly the same range of challenges that an MCC watch section does...
Thoughtful response, the kind that I love to find here: many thanks.
As for morality and how it applies to 'other ranks', I suspect that it's always been that way for the people at the front line who have to deal with the sharp end of the stick,...After the beating that we took my old regiment was given the relatively 'light' duty of providing security for the research and storage facility at Pelindaba(South Africa) while we rehab'd and re-equiped. Until that point my main focus was on trying to get through my tour whole and back to the life I had before: I had never entertained any questions concerning the morality of what I was doing. That changed though while we were stationed near Pelindaba and I began to have a sense of doubt about what I was doing and about how the dormant power in secure areas of the facility should be employed. My problems were aggrivated by the fact that I had long had an interest in nuclear weapons and their early history and as a rsult knew far more about the technolgy than most people. That knowledge proved to be a liability because it eventually occured to me that if I voiced my concerns to anyone official I might wind up enjoying an extended stay in military prison on the grounds that I knew far more about the subject than the average person and That of course looked suspicious,...In the end I basically had to keep it all bottled inside of me until I left SA and returned to Canada. About the only consolation that I ever got with the whole thing was that my doubts were somewhat justified when I learned that it was generally accepted in South Africa's high command that the limited number of nukes that we had Would be deployed if things had gone really bad in The Border War: it Was as they say a 'near thing',...
I just found this movie on Kanopy - it’s a listed ‘learning resource’ on my library’s website - right below JSTOR…who knew?
Thoughts:
It always blows my mind how many people involved in weapons and power generation pronounce it ‘new-cue-ler’ (have *I* been saying it wrong all these years?)
Along the same lines I learned NATO phonetic ‘papa’ is pronounced papá…oh, and S is written with a vertical stripe (like pesos!), and a 1 has a horizontal line under it. Are these the rules of writing with a grease pen?
It’s certainly a little slow in spots to be sure…but the overheard conversations provide occasional nuggets - nuke and otherwise (eg the guy talking about scavenging around Battle of the Bulge sites…he found a paratrooper helmet!?)
For people old enough to have clear memories of January 1986 - it’s a fun time capsule on hair, clothes, glasses styles, slang/expressions, etc.
(Most video of the 80’s provide just a rough time-parallel for me “oh I would have been in 8th grade” - but because of the Challenger tie in, I remember very specific things I would have been doing/saying/thinking that very week.)
On the banality of deterrence thing…
It seems like one goal of missileer training is once you weed people out who are too focused on the moral implications of launching, you bury people in procedure and repetition to disconnect the checklists and status lights from the missiles…make them forget all about what those keys are connected to. That way you don’t end up with any John Spencer (er…Leo McGarry?) moments at go time.
I found it interesting that when the two women graduate, the instructor tells them the Minuteman is so trouble-free, it’s easy to get complacent. Probably a little like flight training vs actual flying.
I used to wonder about all the effort that goes into drills and training and exacting detail and process around nuclear deterrence… But as this movie makes clear - just having the weapons isn’t enough. You have to demonstrate to your adversary that they are available, reliable, usable, and the people who operate them can and will do so…
I grasped that *boring is good* back about the time this was filmed. About the same time I qualified MCCSUP and was suddenly The Guy. Not Boring meant something was happening, usually bad.* And when stuff goes wrong, it's The Guy who has to make decisions and who is held accountable for them afterwards. (And if it's bad enough, the Old Man takes an interest, and that's never fun.)
As I've said elsewhere, I soon learned to appreciate boring like it was a lovely single malt.
I don't recall our training (at the enlisted level) ever going into morality... But whatever the official line, at the deckplate it was an article of faith that our job was deterrence. That if we ever had to launch, we'd failed. I don't have any idea about officer training.
* And an LCC crew doesn't face nearly the same range of challenges that an MCC watch section does...
Thoughtful response, the kind that I love to find here: many thanks.
As for morality and how it applies to 'other ranks', I suspect that it's always been that way for the people at the front line who have to deal with the sharp end of the stick,...After the beating that we took my old regiment was given the relatively 'light' duty of providing security for the research and storage facility at Pelindaba(South Africa) while we rehab'd and re-equiped. Until that point my main focus was on trying to get through my tour whole and back to the life I had before: I had never entertained any questions concerning the morality of what I was doing. That changed though while we were stationed near Pelindaba and I began to have a sense of doubt about what I was doing and about how the dormant power in secure areas of the facility should be employed. My problems were aggrivated by the fact that I had long had an interest in nuclear weapons and their early history and as a rsult knew far more about the technolgy than most people. That knowledge proved to be a liability because it eventually occured to me that if I voiced my concerns to anyone official I might wind up enjoying an extended stay in military prison on the grounds that I knew far more about the subject than the average person and That of course looked suspicious,...In the end I basically had to keep it all bottled inside of me until I left SA and returned to Canada. About the only consolation that I ever got with the whole thing was that my doubts were somewhat justified when I learned that it was generally accepted in South Africa's high command that the limited number of nukes that we had Would be deployed if things had gone really bad in The Border War: it Was as they say a 'near thing',...
I just found this movie on Kanopy - it’s a listed ‘learning resource’ on my library’s website - right below JSTOR…who knew?
Thoughts:
It always blows my mind how many people involved in weapons and power generation pronounce it ‘new-cue-ler’ (have *I* been saying it wrong all these years?)
Along the same lines I learned NATO phonetic ‘papa’ is pronounced papá…oh, and S is written with a vertical stripe (like pesos!), and a 1 has a horizontal line under it. Are these the rules of writing with a grease pen?
It’s certainly a little slow in spots to be sure…but the overheard conversations provide occasional nuggets - nuke and otherwise (eg the guy talking about scavenging around Battle of the Bulge sites…he found a paratrooper helmet!?)
For people old enough to have clear memories of January 1986 - it’s a fun time capsule on hair, clothes, glasses styles, slang/expressions, etc.
(Most video of the 80’s provide just a rough time-parallel for me “oh I would have been in 8th grade” - but because of the Challenger tie in, I remember very specific things I would have been doing/saying/thinking that very week.)
On the banality of deterrence thing…
It seems like one goal of missileer training is once you weed people out who are too focused on the moral implications of launching, you bury people in procedure and repetition to disconnect the checklists and status lights from the missiles…make them forget all about what those keys are connected to. That way you don’t end up with any John Spencer (er…Leo McGarry?) moments at go time.
I found it interesting that when the two women graduate, the instructor tells them the Minuteman is so trouble-free, it’s easy to get complacent. Probably a little like flight training vs actual flying.
I used to wonder about all the effort that goes into drills and training and exacting detail and process around nuclear deterrence… But as this movie makes clear - just having the weapons isn’t enough. You have to demonstrate to your adversary that they are available, reliable, usable, and the people who operate them can and will do so…
This is vaguely related, Watchmen and nuclear war: https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/last-war-in-albion-book-two-chapter-ten-where-the-moon-and-the-earth-were-joined-two-riders-were-approaching
Good article / thanks!