A FEW OPENING OBSERVATIONS

I recently put together a short and casual history of Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, a base I served at back in the mid-60s on my first US Air Force duty assignment as a medical service specialist with the 862nd Medical Group. Base construction was started in 1955, with the purpose being to establish a new North American Air Defense installation capable of defending the north-central area border of the continental United States against a surprise post-war (WW2) Soviet nuclear bomber strike.

These were the early years of the so-called ‘Cold War’, that period in history when our ostensible war-time ally, the Soviet Union began to emerge as America’s chief antagonist in the new post-war quest for world economic hegemony. America had emerged essentially entirely intact from that war, with the war’s economic devastation fully confined to areas of the globe outside our immediate borders (principally the nations of Japan and Germany). The Soviet Union, our former ally, had suffered terrible losses and destruction at the hands of Hitler’s German Wehrmacht, consequent to Der Fuhrer’s invasion of the eastern European nations (a territorial expansion which grew to include Soviet Russia) but emerged, determined to not just recover but contest America for world domination. As a result, while America had become the world’s largest and most economically powerful nation, while the USSR, under Stalin’s leadership and hewing resolutely to the absolutist dictates and dogmas of Marx and Lenin’s ideological philosophies, dedicated itself to the total annihilation of our opposing system of democratic capitalism. A sort of modern analogue of Athens and Sparta, replayed 2000 years later.

The powerful nuclear weapon that had been unleashed upon Japan in 1945 consequently began an arms race between our two nations that would span almost half a century (lasting until the collapse of the USSR in roughly 1990). Meanwhile, with the Soviets determined to catch up with the US in terms of nuclear weapons advances, America’s greater immediate fear was that the Soviets would achieve parity in the nuclear arms race and perhaps even attempt to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against America.

The most obvious and effective way to do that back then was to penetrate America’s northern borders with a massive wave of bomber aircraft carrying nuclear bombs, sent across the northern polar icecap (the shortest direct route). Minot Air Force Base was therefore intended to be a base at which an impressively formidable deterrent against such an attack could be stationed. In the mid-50s period this would at first consist of a force of advanced Air Defense interceptors but would later be complemented with a contingent of nuclear-armed strategic bombers (the then-new, 8-engined Boeing B-52 ‘super bomber’). Finally, as guided missile technology advanced sufficiently in the early 60s, a force comprised of nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) would be also added. A key part of the plan involved deployment of the so-called “Dew Line” (Distant Early Warning network of long-range radar stations) intended to enable advanced detection of such an attack.

By the mid-60s, as progress with rocket powered guided missiles continued, the initial feared manned-bomber threat took proportionately lessened priority to the new ICBM threat, but until the first Minuteman I ICBMs came on station in the mid-60s, our primary Air Defense strategy against an attack by the USSR relied exclusively on the capability of our new air defense jet fighters. Thus, Minot Air Force Base rapidly came into being in the mid-50s.

I mention all of the foregoing details due to the fact that today, with a radical falling-off of any real interest in historical precedents and events among younger generations, any real awareness or knowledge of all this has almost completely disappeared among the under-40 set.

Truly Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana’s famous admonishment that “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it” (or words to that effect) has also been utterly lost upon them, despite the fact that the saliency of his observation has been serially born-out for more than several thousand years. As such, the above backstory is almost a necessary contextual requisite to what I am about to delve into here. For those of somewhat more advanced age (i.e. those of us who actually lived through all that), it is, of course, all well-known and commonplace history. For some of us who actually manned those missile silos and bombers, it is an ineradicable part of our early lives.

CHANGE IS INEVITABLE, UNVARYING CONTINUANCE IS NOT

Back in the 60s, when I served in the US Air Force, things were markedly different than they are now, of course. When the Soviet Union crumbled in 1990, the feared nuclear threat from Russia rather suddenly and unexpectedly dissipated completely into thin air. As succeeding years passed, the former nuclear threat to America by Soviet Russia was soon replaced by a succession of limited regional conflicts in the world. This change in the world’s socio-political climate exerted a rather drastic impact of the mission of all the US military forces, not least among them the US Air Force, which changes witnessed the end of the Air Defense Command (subsumed into Tactical Air Command) in the 1980s (TAC itself would later be morphed into Air Combat Command and eventually melded together with strategic bomber forces to comprise the latest US Air Force Global Strike Command).

In 1992, the former mighty Strategic Air Command (SAC) itself was inactivated, ending almost a half-century of 24/7 alert preparedness during the post-WW2 ‘Cold War’ era.

Other factors markedly impacting the Air Force’s major commands structure involved economic changes, as costs for both operating the Air Force and for its ever-advanced technologies rose exponentially, while the defense budget continued to barely meet modern force needs. In so-called ‘peace-times’ the usual pattern is for national defense needs to suffer budgetary shortfalls commensurately.

Today, these same factors continue to exert immense pressure on all the services and their personnel but in the past decade or so, a whole new set of challenges have materialized due to internal political changes in the nation’s make-up (specifically, a shift to the radical progressive left, with all its drastic social and logistical demands for change within the services).

Given that my service took place within SAC, as a medical corpsman based at Minot Air Force Base (MAFB), my experiences there (which I detailed to some extent in a separate ‘casual’ history), vary remarkably from those that are being lived at MAFB, presently.

This initially came to my notice when I recently brought myself up to speed on some of those radical changes in policy, direction and social conditions within the Air Force that have occurred since the 1960s (Vietnam and the ‘Cold War’ days).

WHY SO MANY AIRMEN HATE MINOT AIR FORCE BASE

Namely, an article by David Roza, published on 1 Feb 22, titled ‘Cold, Isolated and Stretched Thing – Why So many Airmen Hate Minot Air Force Base’, caught my eye while I was searching the internet and it was rather an eye-opener!

In this article Roza cites a profound and growing dissatisfaction with duties at that former base of mine among the enlisted personnel and even some of the junior officers charged with crucial (nuclear) mission responsibilities.

“What!? Dissatisfaction over what?”, I thought. At first, I found this news to be somewhat puzzling aside from the fact that Minot is indeed a decidedly isolated duty station in the flat, rural northern part of North Dakota, beset with imposing and often quite severe winters. Located 14 miles north of the city of Minot, with its 40-thousand-or-so people of varied Scandinavian and German descent, during the winter months personnel at the base are frequently cut off from the few creature-comforts the nearby city of Minot has to offer young men. Furthermore, conditions at MAFB can be extremely demanding in Winter regardless of what your job responsibilities consist of.

Granted that those involved with aircraft maintenance suffer inordinately more (often performing technically demanding aircraft maintenance while exposed to the cold), along with base security forces who are charged with protecting bombers, nuclear weapons stores and base perimeters from external threat (outdoors, in the same extreme cold) and I found myself accordingly interested in the specific nature of the complaints and expressed dissatisfactions of the enlisted Airmen referenced in the 2022 Roza article.

MAFB maintains a force population of just under 60-thousand individuals of all ranks, but has a far greater enlisted personnel total than officers, since it is estimated that (generally speaking) about 82% (4920) of the base’s personnel are enlisted ranks, while only about 1020 or 17% are of officer grade. The ratio is understandable, given that enlisted ranks technically do all the technical, hands-on labor, and officers’ jobs are in almost every case either to fly aircraft or administratively direct the enlisted ranks’ in their duties (a few enlisted men have flying status, but pilots and senior aircrew are more typically officers). Traditionally, the ratio of enlisted men to pilots has always been roughly that, ever since the Air Force’s earliest days (early 1900s).

So, what exactly were the enlisted complaints that expressed such dissatisfaction with MAFB? It is interesting to note that a number of airmen at MAFB expressed their disapprobations on social media, specifically on FACEBOOK (META).

Among them were complaints (for example) by one young female airman that she was “…useless because I was pregnant. If I were to stay in, there’s no guarantee I’d be alive in a year or two.” It did not specify who exactly had told her that but presumably it was a peer and not a supervisor!

Another person who posted on FACEBOOK (on a page identified as ‘Air Force Amn /nco/snco,’ said “Minot is extremely toxic, especially certain squadrons.” Over the span of a week, supposedly, a further 15 people claiming to be Minot vets (past & present) wrote ‘nine-single-spaced-pages worth of criticism’ of the base on these social media sites.

It is salient here to observe that social media was the source of these mutually disapproving sentiments…not any sort of official Air Force or base-related venue.

Also noteworthy, in my opinion, is that a disproportionate number of similar disparagements seem to have come from former MAFB Air Police squadron airmen (the so-called ‘Security Forces Defenders’), who must stand guard outdoors, even in the worst weather.

Despite official statements from base spokespeople, addressing these complaints, Roza’s article goes on to say that “…recent complaints about the base seem to confirm what many airmen feel about a MAFB duty assignment. A former base airman named Brandi Hoff, a veteran of both the US Army and the Air Force, said that MAFB had the same reputation back in 1996 when she was on duty there”. She told Roza that she had served as program manager for the base’s ‘True North’ program a base initiative to make mental health and other services available to airmen.

“Minot had a bad reputation”, she said, “and we were trying to break that stigma. Still, it was an uphill battle.”

When critics remark upon the fact that the base’s relative isolation and harsh winters make it a difficult and unpopular duty station for young airmen away from home for the first time, Hoff pointed out that other bases in the north of the country (such as those in Wyoming and Montana) are quite similar in environment but (oddly) lack the same level of negative stigma that MAFB has.

The question Roza then posed was “…why does Minot get such a bad rap, when the others (other bases) don’t?” One answer, Hoff stated, was that the matter goes all the way up the chain of command “…to the halls of Congress.” An Air Force Security Squadron airman Roza identifies as “Mike”, said that given the huge size of the Minot AFB site (about 8500 squared miles), with three squadrons of widely dispersed Minuteman III ICBMs to protect and guard, the demands on the Security Forces defenders are especially challenging and burdensome. Mike cites one particular drive, while training a new Security Forces airman, in a Humvee vehicle with no heat and a ‘hole in the floor that allowed draughts of frigid wind to sweep in’, in ambient outside temps hovering around 30 degrees below zero. Complaints to his leadership personnel about such extreme difficulties were largely unhelpful and unproductive.

Mike went on to say that it wasn’t just the extreme cold, poor equipment maintenance and the length of drives from site to site, but overwork, inadequate personnel resources and excessively long work shifts. Airmen (in Security Forces) are routinely expected to work 15+ hour shifts and often come in the following day with 6 or less hours of sleep, day after day after day.

In 2014, a DoD (Department of Defense) review of America’s military nuclear arsenal found that personnel assigned to bases handling nuclear weapons (according to Roza), were often considerably stretched past their breaking points. Given the extreme importance of the nuclear mission, “…security Forces are always on high alert, regardless of the current world threat situation and under such condition, questions are frequently voiced as to the credibility of the absolute necessity of such constant readiness.”

Roza goes on to say that the security forces supporting both US Navy and US Air Force nuclear missile missions are ‘continually ratcheting-up the requirements’, based upon calculated projections of their effectiveness against highly-capable and well-organised aggressor forces in high-consequence but low-probability scenarios. Sheer manpower factors seem, at this point, to play a disproportionate role in stress levels sustained by the Security troops. When the severe winter weather conditions at MAFB are factored-in, complaints such as the above examples appear to take on especial substance.

Roza also mentions the aircraft maintainers, whose work keeps the B-52H nuclear-capable strategic bombers in immediate fly-away status. Given the age of most of the ‘BUFFS’ (averaging about 60-70 years old, amazingly) in the base’s 5th Bomb Wing. Their work is often subject to much the same demands and challenges as are the security forces.

Interestingly, given the stresses placed upon both security airmen and upon the aircraft maintainers, one might think that they would be rewarded somewhat for their high standards of efficiency, despite that constant demand, but as one airman put it, “…instead of giving airmen proportionate time off as compensation for this (sort of excessive work level efficiency), they are given ‘make-work tasks to fill any extra hours not spent directly on their aircraft or security responsibilities. Picking empty lots, picking up trash, etc. etc.’”

The problem at MAFB is an order of magnitude higher than that found at non-nuclear bases, Razo states, given the crucial importance of maintaining nuclear mission readiness at all times. To that end most nuke-bases have a ‘Personnel Reliability Program’ standard that must be met, a quality assurance enforcement that assures airmen in critical (nuke-base) areas of work are both mentally and physically fit enough to handle nuclear weapons they are tasked with maintaining or protecting.

A LOT MORE TO IT THAN JUST GENERATIONAL ‘FRAGILITY’

When I first encountered this article at the Task & Purpose website, my initial, knee-jerk reaction was ‘…this is all due to the ‘fragile’ nature of today’s DEI/Woke enlistees. WRONG (This was an assumption of mine, probably more reflective of my socio-political biases than hard, cold facts).

Back in the mid-60s, when I was assigned to MAFB, I admittedly remained largely unaware of any grumbling in the ranks among the base’s airmen, since I was in a somewhat ‘privileged’ status. Only briefly housed on the base (14 miles from town) while working the base clinic, my contact with the other AFSC troops was limited mostly to clinical visits by aircraft maintainers, dependents, and late-night ER drop-ins by Security Forces ‘defenders’, who were tasked with patrolling the SAC alert pad (known on base as the 'Christmas Tree’), to secure the area against intruders and possible saboteur/penetrators.

The Security troops, who were walking around in sub-zero weather, out on the BUFF alert pad, worked long shifts, of course, and quite often they would find a convenient excuse to get relief from this arduous duty to go to the ER, complaining of one medical problem or another. Most of the time, this amounted to somewhat embarrassing admissions that they were having pain and whitish discharged from a certain part of their reproductive apparatuses. Clap/Gonorrhea was seemingly a fairly typical SF Defender complaint and the usual resolution was a quick prescription for antibiotics (usually V-Cillin-K) before they were returned to the alert pad (or the missile sites) by the MOD (duty physician of the day) to resume their duties out there in the freezing cold. Otherwise, I didn’t interact much with the non-medical troops.

[It might be helpful here to recall the popular Hollywood movie and later TV series, M*A*S*H, in which the assorted oddballs, misfits and characters seemed mostly interested in finding ways to avoid having to conform to military protocols. Us Air Force medics who were based at MAFB can definitely relate to that popular stereotyped concept.]

A DIFFERENT DAILY LIFE THAN WAS TYPICAL ON THE BASE

Somewhat later, when I was assigned to duties at the in-town hospital (John Moses Veterans and Air Force Hospital), I was even more isolated there from everyday life and the complaints of airmen on the base, since taking care of critical in-patients in a hospital setting is a full-time responsibility that leaves little time for goofing-off!

When off-shift (and we worked normal hours, only occasionally working ‘extended hours’ during SAC Command-wide exercises), our time was entirely our own and we had the full run of the City of Minot to amuse ourselves as we wished. Since I, along with most Air Force medical people, did a very limited amount of drinking, our amusements and diversions tended to be a whole lot more innocuous that the sort of bar-hopping tendencies of so many of the base troops when they were able to make to town (which wasn’t often).

Just down the street (University Avenue) and only a few blocks away from us was the State College (now Minot State University, but back then still mostly a ‘teachers’ college’), with LOTS of nubile young co-eds. My closest buddies and I (see my other writings about my time at MAFB for the background on them) were mostly science-fiction fans (not so-called’ Trekkies’, of course, since that series hadn’t even begun on TV yet), steeped in the tradition Buck Rogers sci-fi ‘fandom’ of the late 40s and 50s. We were also more literate, well-schooled in the English language, and in the case of my friend Mike Z. and I, experienced amateur writers who had published what were called ‘fanzines’, or amateur periodicals about science fiction and its hard-core fans.

Having discovered the Lutheran Church close to the University, we quickly infiltrated the youth group that Pastor Jurgens (who was a practicing anti-war pacifist) supervised. It was, of course, also filled with comely young co-eds, and thus had a ready supply of potential peers and prospective girlfriends for us to avail ourselves of and access.

In this manner, we developed a rather content and insular, semi-civilian posture and when the base was shut-down during the severe winters with all personnel confined to the base, we literally had no competition for the affection and attention of these dozens of cute, young Norwegian-derived female students!

My point here, albeit cited at some length, is that us medical stiffs at the hospital in town had a whole different outlook on the ‘rigors’ of Strategic Air Command life than all the poor sods out at the base had. But when you think about it, medical people have always had this sort of vastly different experience than gun-toting grunts and front-line combat personnel. Just watch a few episodes of the Korean War vintage experiences of Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John to better understand this dramatic difference. Although M*A*S*H was a comedy, played up for highly emotional laughs and vicarious ‘TV moments’, in a greater and all-encompassing sense it was closer to the truth than not (we didn’t have any cross-dressing ‘Klingers’, back then, however; that’s an entirely contemporary development!).

THERE WERE OTHER FACTORS AT WORK, AS WELL

Today, some 56 years after I was actively serving at Minot, America is a whole different nation than it was in the 60s. Given the contagious effusions of ‘critical theory’ racial-identity ‘wokeness’ dogmas that Herbert Marcuse, Pablo Freire, Angela Davis and Derek Bell have inspired in the radical leftist progressives, the country has undergone a regular ‘sea-change’ in terms of its political and social attitudes that often leaves people of my age somewhat bewildered.

Back in the mid-60s, blacks (for instance) were still conforming to traditional military command structures and regimens that reflected a significant vestige of white bias and racial constraints. The 60s civil rights movement was still getting off the ground in the 60s, as was the radical feminist movement. ‘Gays’ were still afraid to openly declare themselves, owing to frequent retributive acts of reprisal and violence that they were occasionally subject to by the more redneck whites.

On the base, blacks were just beginning to associate more and more together, as black-versus-white (civil rights) animosities that arose during the Vietnam War began to make themselves felt. I vaguely recall hearing that at the on-base Enlisted Men’s Club there were reports of only very occasional heated exchanges between black and white airmen, but it was at that time not considered a major morale problem (as it would be today), since the vital needs of National Security (stringently hewed-to and demanded by Strategic Air Command, charged with its critically important nuclear retaliation mission) required that strict discipline be maintained at all times. In short, given the continuous dire threat America faced from the USSR at any given moment, there was simply no room for dissent or in-the-ranks racial dissidence.

For greater understanding of this truly tectonic shift in political and social cultural attitudes that has today enmired us all, I recommend an excellent book by social observer and author Christopher Rufo, titled America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything, (July 2023). In this newly released book, Rufo minutely details the processes that have, since the 1970s, enabled the present expression of Professor Herbert Marcuse’s, Harvard professor Derek Bell’s, and (black radical-lesbian-feminist-intellectual, former Black Panther, and avowed Communist…she apparently ‘came out’ in the mid-90s) Angela Davis’s extreme left-wing ideologies to literally take over and dominate America, lock, stock and barrel. The book is not an easy read by any means if you take the time to absorb it all, but it is exhaustive in its extensive revelations, insights and carefully documented references. As such, it is the most comprehensive, key compilation of insights presently available towards understanding not just how race-based critical theory came into being nationally, but how it spread even to the point where it has today overwhelmed and saturated America’s traditionally conservative military establishment from top to bottom.

AN ARRAY OF ENLISTED COMPLAINTS IN TODAY’S AIR FORCE

As has been noted already, in the TASK & MISSION article of 2018, a great many of the gripes and grumbles of enlisted personnel have to do with constrained personnel resources, seemingly unsympathetic leaders (officers) and oppressive MAJCOM policies.

It is no great secret that today, not just the Air Force but all of the US military services are experiencing drastic shortfalls in enlistment quotas required to man and equip US military war-fighting organisations. Whereas half a century ago, military service was deemed a good alternative to a college education in which to gain usable work skills and experience that would prove useful in civilian life, today there’s a whole different mind-set in place. Although authoritative sources are hesitant to say as much, many of the changes in organizational protocols and procedures most affected by the new ‘woke’ critical race theories (including the ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ dogma) are substantially the issue among troops. Given that the Marcusian/Marxist underpinnings of ‘wokeness’ dictate that all ‘white’ culture (and white people) are oppressors and that all blacks and ‘people of color’ are inherently victims), today the shift in attitudes has elevated blacks to the pinnacle of priority. This translates into a tacit regard that the white cultural emphasis on ‘individual merit’ over racial identity is what matters least and that ‘people of color’ should rightfully be elevated to higher positions of responsibility than white (i.e. ‘non-black’) counterparts, regardless of their native talents.

The results of this all-pervasive race-based idiological outlook, exemplified even at the highest level of the US Air Force command hierarchy by President Biden’s appointment of a black four-star Air Force Chief of Staff (General Charles Q. Brown) with an openly declared, emphatic and unequivocal bias for skin color over pure merit in all key circumstances, situations and positions of responsibility, has assured that a great many white potential enlistees who may be exceptionally gifted (in various ways), are seeking other alternatives to national military service in a regime that blatantly favors blacks over whites. Recruiting goals are clearly showing this effect today, thus contributing to a pressing lack of adequate manpower to perform the critical duties of maintaining America’s once formidable and superior defense capability.

To say this is literally ‘reverse racial bias’ is not understating things, as anyone who read’s Rufo’s book will readily grasp, and as any intelligent individual can also easily grasp, racial bias and/or prejudice OF ANY SORT, whether for or against any particular group, is both ethically unacceptable and constitutionally unlawful.

One should never mistake equality, which is guaranteed by the US Constitution, for equity, for example, which does not imply equality but rather meritless redistribution of goods (wealth, material property, possessions, etc.) to a specific recipient (based entirely upon race and not on intrinsic ethical, intellectual, moral or academic merit). But of course, the radical leftist progressives regard the US Constitution as an illegitimate institution that promotes ‘inherent white privilege’, as terrifyingly ignorant as that premise may be!

AT MINOT AIR FORCE BASE TODAY A frequent complaint, aside from severe deficits in available manpower to perform critical duties (i.e., nuclear weapons maintenance and handling, et al), is a profound reluctance within the higher command ranks to identify and recognise the effects these shortfalls are having on Air Force personnel, lower down on the rank food chain. And by direct extension, on the Air Force’s ability to fulfill its mission commitments of defending the nation.

Demanding, for instance, that Security Forces Defenders work overly long hours under the most brutal climatic conditions, is both unethical and an abnegation of responsibility by leaders for one’s troops, simply because the new ‘woke’ policies of the US Air Force are increasing pressure on existing personnel to make-do more with less, increasingly with each passing month.

It seems to be pretty obvious that too, a substantial number of the lower ranks harbor strong abhorrence of and resistance to other aspects of the new ‘politically correct’ dictates they are subject to (such as having to work with and tolerate openly gay, transsexual and/or declared ‘queer’ personnel). Many of the enlistees are conservative, religiously oriented individuals and the ‘new’ sexual/gender confusions create no small amount of work-stress for them.

Mandating that everyone work closely and precisely under such lifestyle extremes within a military organisation is ultimately both harmful and unworkable in the long run, although these are the ‘new’ constraints that exist in today’s US Air Force.

Other factors also have a major impact on the ability of a service to carry out its critical duties with precision and exactitude under possible (wartime) duress. Examples come to mind in which airmen have been found smoking marijuana while on duty in and around nuclear weapons storage areas, and other examples of seeming laxity that include a Minuteman III ICBM missile launch crew falling asleep at their consoles (formerly unthinkable and severely punishable) have also been revealed.

In 2008, a notorious and now well-known incident (unthinkable, back at the height of the 'Cold War') took place at MAFB in which live nuclear weapons were mistakenly loaded onto one of the base’s BUFFs and flown to another 5th Bomb Wing base (Barksdale AFB, Louisiana), an action that is strictly forbidden without explicit permission and authorization from the highest levels of command. This incident resulted, by the way, not just in the ‘firing’ of the MAFB Commander and Vice-Commander, but in the dissolution of the Air Combat Command, and its replacement by a newly organised ‘Global Strike Command’ force (in other words, it was a VERY major organizational blow-out that sent reverberations throughout not just the Air Force but the entire American nuclear deterrent forces structure).

GLOBAL DEPLOYMENTS REDUCE CONTINENTAL ASSETS AND LOGISTIC RESOURCES (in summary)

In prepared statements explaining morale problems stateside at certain bases such as MAFB, Air Force spokespersons have admitted that the continual overseas force deployments, with their high demand for ‘conventional response’ mission readiness and related logistics, have had a substantial impact on morale at these erstwhile ‘hardship’ facilities (such as Minot). That is, having to keep foreign deployment forces supplied with weapons, ammunition, fuel, support AND personnel reduces the availability of these resources at ZI bases (e.g. ‘Zone of the Interior’).

These circumstances are normally trying enough at non-nuclear mission bases but given the crucial retaliatory nature of bases such as Minot and Malmstrom, where nuclear deterrent strategic bomber and ICBMs are based, the referenced constraints on enlisted personnel welfare have taken a significant toll on morale.

Common complaints from the troops at MAFB include the recurring burden of taxing, over-extended shifts, expanded duty hours, reduced opportunities to relax and compensate for the rigors of making do with fewer resources and lack of adequate personnel, hesitation of commanders to approve requests for (sometimes much needed) medica, psychiatric and even pregnancy needs, and what seems to be a palpably ‘uncaring attitude’ of leaders in charge of crucial areas of operational proficiency.

As more and more logistical assets and support are diverted abroad, to augment US commitments (such as in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Far east), concurrent with troop levies at US bases so that key vital personnel may be prioritised for overseas duty, an aggregate feeling of being overwhelmed by the constant need to ‘give even more’ in the face of increased workload demands sits heavily on the shoulders of the enlisted ‘worker-bees’ upon whom stateside operational readiness so crucially relies.

One former member of the base’s personnel was quoted as saying “Somebody doesn’t give a shit about the nuclear mission or the people, and I guarantee you it’s NOT the mission (i.e. that of being instantly ready to launch a nuclear retaliatory strike, if need be, at an aggressor).”

It is a sentiment that echoes resonantly on the base among enlisted ranks and it brings to mind that classic admonishment by Konstantin Joseph Jireček [Konstantin Josef Jireček (Bulgarian: Константин Йозеф Иречек, pronounced [jiretʃek]; 24 July 1854, Vienna – 1918, Vienna), son of Josef Jireček (1825–1888) and Božena, a daughter of Pavol Jozef Šafárik (1795–1861), was a Czech historian, politician, diplomat, and Slavist. He was the founder of the Bohemian Balkanology (or Balkan Studies) and Byzantine studies.] that goes “We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.” QED!

Added to all the above complexities are additional impositions levied by the new ‘Critical Theories’ dogmas that wokeism has imposed upon the military forces. While younger generations, who have never actually experienced the failed socialist states (or had relatives that suffered through such regimes) that fill history’s dustbin, find the new critical theories novel and promising, older personnel who have the benefit of wiser awareness and experience in the world, all too well understand the erstwhile ‘pie-in-the-sky’ promises of ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ for what they are: real-time evidence that George Santayana’s immortal observation that ‘…those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them’.

MEANWHILE, OVER IN RUSSIA AND CHINA…

It has recently been pointed out in a number of prominent journals that while the former Cold War threat of a nuclear Armageddon back in the 60s is now a relic of the past (another ‘forgotten’ history lesson?), America is presently facing a whole new and even more terrifying global threat scenario, as the emerging new socialist ‘Axis’ coalition of Russia, North Norea, China and Iran takes shape on the world’s immediate foreign-policy horizon.

And as never before, given that there are now multiple nuclear ‘players’ that give every indication that they are blissfully oblivious of the frightening consequences of unleashing a ‘modern’ nuclear war, doomsday looms far closer than any of today’s junior members of society can readily get their minds around and comprehend. Unmindful of the fact, for example, that regardless of who (or what nation) first presses the Big Red Button to launch a first ICBM weapon strike, strategic estimates indicate that at least 90 million people will die in the first hour or so alone. Also conveniently overlooked is that further sobering fact that human life on this poor, beleaguered planet will be set back at least several hundred years (if not more) by any such global conflict, should anyone be so uncaringly or capriciously reckless as to release the several thousands of nuclear warheads in the stockpiles of the four nations referenced immediately above.

As has been noted from statements of various present and former members of the enlisted ranks at Minot AFB quoted and/or referenced here, it is not them…the missile and bomber maintainers…who fail to grasp all this. But their unceasing protests about being given inadequate resources and/or support to carry out their assigned nuclear retaliatory mission seem to repeatedly fall short of the ears of the highest levels of US military command, and that in itself is frightening enough!

For all of our sakes, let us hope that this precarious situation is reversed without delay, sometime soon, before America is put to the test by the array of nations that have indicated they wish to destroy ‘The Great Satan’ that they believe America to be.

But I wouldn’t advise anyone holding their collective breath any time soon…particularly if the nation continues to be dominated by Joe Biden (et al) and a host of political cartoon characters in Washington DC that would stretch even Walt Dizzy’s imagination…

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SOURCES, REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

1) America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything, Christopher F. Rufo (book), Broadside Books (Harpers-Collins), 2023, 340 pp, ISBN 9780063227538

2) The War on Whites: How Hating White People Became the New National Sport, Ed Brodow (book), TousDroit Publishing, 2023, 189 pp, 9798395875587

3) Minot: The Magic City, Joeseph L. Gavett (book), 2006, Wexford College Press, 358 pp, 1929148607

4) Frozen Hell: The Memoirs of a USAF Security Forces Defender in Minot Air Force Base, Patrick Thomas (book), 2015, 230 pp, ISBN9781512379709

5) Minot Air Force Base (Images of America series), Lt.Col. George A. Larson, USAF ret (book), Arcadia Publishing, 2029, 130 pp, ISBN 9781540238207

6) A Casual History of US Air Force Medical Operations at Minot AFB, North Dakota (1962-2023) and an Account of Some Adventures While There, Kalikiano Kalei (article, 72 pp), 2023

7) Cold, Isolated and Stretched Thin: Why So Many Airmen Hate Minot Air Force Base, David Roza (article), 2022

8) Opinion: Poor Morale Stems from Changes in Air Force Culture, SSgt. Preston Haskell, Air Force Times (op-ed), 2018

9) Air Force’s Enlisted Recruitment Pipeline is Drying Up, General Warns, Rachel S. Cohen, Air Force Times (article/story), 2022 10) Goldfein: Rebuilding End Strength Key to Fixing Air Force Morale Troubles, Stephen Losey, Air Force Times (article), 2018

10) Two US Air Force Commanders and Four Subordinates are Fired After Failing to Ensure Safety of Nuclear Weapons at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, Hope Sloop (news article), Mar. 2023

11) Cold War Adventures With Heinie, a 1962 VW Ragtop Bug (in North Dakota), Kalikiano Kalei (story), 2016

12) What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (Pt. 1), Kalikiano Kalei, 2011 (article/story)

13) What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (Pt. 2), Kalikiano Kalei, 2011 (article/story)

14) Minot Air Force Base History Walk, Minot Air Force Base Library (a participatory historical tour of MAFB), Jun 2021

15) Task & Purpose, online military website providing a variety of timely issues, concerns and news about military personnel of all services.