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We want to welcome to Veterans Radio Jim Warner.
He is a retired Air Force Colonel.
We're going to talk to him about his activities with the Air Force Missileers Association.
Jim, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thanks for having me.
Well you had a long and distinguished career starting out in the Air Force and ROTC at
Holy Cross College.
Little did you know it would be a civilian career after that, all focused on missiles.
What did you think you were getting into when you joined the Air Force ROTC at Holy Cross
College?
Interesting question.
I joined, so we're talking the early 1970s in the middle of the Vietnam War, college
campuses were closing down due to protests.
It was a crazy time.
I met a guy in one of my classes and he basically dared me to join ROTC.
He said, you don't have the, you know, what's to walk around in a uniform on this campus.
And I said, oh really?
So I went down and talked to the ROTC guys and the next week I was walking around in
a uniform.
It was just once a day, once a week, a couple hours a day, but enough in the middle of the
protests that you got a little bit of attention.
I found that the people there were good, solid Americans and I liked being around them.
So I tried it out for the first couple of years and then at your junior year you have
to commit to going in and so all of a sudden I've committed.
My dad and his brother's own construction company always said if you want to come work
for us you've got to go work someplace else first.
So I said, hey, you know, four years in the Air Force it's not a bad place to get some
experience and then go back into family business.
Little I know that I never go back.
Now you ended up initially on a Mintman 2 missile combat crew in Ellsworth Air Force
base in beautiful South Dakota, but really went all over the world I think over the
next couple of decades of your career.
Along the way you would have had opportunities to go back to the family business, but this
obviously captivated you.
Yeah, I was at the end of my four years, I was sitting at South Dakota and my boss called
me into his office and said, hey, you've been requested by name to go to California and be
part of the schoolhouse where they teach missile ears.
And I called my dad up and I said, you know, because I was probably four months away from
separating at the time and I called my dad up and told him what's going on.
He said, hey, the job will always be here, pursue your dreams, see what happens.
And that second assignment was just the, you know, the ceiling of the faith so to speak
and I just really enjoyed teaching and I really enjoyed, you know, dealing with the future
missile ears and I said, I'm not leaving as long as the Air Force will have me.
And like you said, that ended up being 27 years before I finally said that was enough.
Most of our assignments were in the U.S., South Dakota, Wyoming, California, Colorado,
the Pentagon.
We had one assignment in Belgium in the ground launch cruise missile and that was a funny
year in Belgium, but all the rest were stateside.
Well, let's start with, before we turn to the Association of Air Force Missileers, explain
to people, because I think this is the first time on Veterans Radio in 20 years we've had
somebody on who can talk about what is a missile ear?
That's a good question.
So a missile ear, so let's start with the basics.
Today we have 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles stationed underground in the central
part, upper part of the central part of the United States, meaning Montana, North Dakota,
Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado.
400 Minuteman missiles, Minuteman three missiles.
We started with Minuteman one during the Cuban Missile Crisis and have upgraded the system
to they are today.
They're in silos, hardened silos underground and they're solid fuel missiles that are designed
to go over the polar ice cap and hit targets on the other side of the world.
From those, for each 10 missiles there's one launch control center, which is about 60 feet
below ground and every day, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, there are two crew members,
missile ears that are sitting in that capsule, awaiting direction from the President of
the United States to launch those missiles.
This is all defensive hope we never have to use them kind of thing, right?
Yeah, the whole purpose is deterrence.
The Russians were the first ones to launch in space, the first ones to put up a satellite
and then of course we got into the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and that was the
real, the late 1950s was the beginning of Atlas and Titan missiles, which were liquid
missiles and didn't have as much range, but then Minuteman came in during the Cuban Missile
Crisis and we've had ICBMs on the alert ever since.
They're not, I mean, they're offensive weapons in the fact that it is a weapon.
It's not defenses and it can't stop something coming in.
But its purpose is to convince the enemy not to launch a nuclear weapon at us because if
you launch at us, we have the capability to destroy you.
And what we want is the Russian President or the Chinese Premier to wake up every morning
and go, I can't afford to launch a weapon at the United States because the impact on
us would be horrific.
So that's the whole purpose.
Yeah, we'll do this in a bit of a reverse order because this is so interesting.
I would say we'd wait till the end.
But I mean, part of this is the world crazies have expanded beyond China and Russia.
We've got Korea, we've got Iran.
I mean, as you look at the present time and look into the future, are our missileers going
to continue to be part of the US military arsenal?
Oh, yeah.
The Air Force is developing a replacement system for Minuteman, which will probably serve 70
plus years from its inception in 1961 before it's replaced.
The Navy has the Ohio class submarines, which are also ballistic in nature.
Ballistic means the flight path, how it gets from one point to another.
A cruise missile, a gun, all that is a direct shot.
But a ground launch missile has got to go over in an apogee over the earth and back
down to its target.
So we still have the Navy submarines and the Air Force ICBMs on alert every day, and they're
going to be around for a long time to come.
As long as our enemies have that capability to strike us, then I believe we need that capability
to diss them not to strike.
Yeah, as you might imagine, I think our audience listening in goes, I don't have a lot of
exposure to this other than what I see at a Hollywood or read in a novel, and those
things don't necessarily match up with truth, do they?
Well, and it's true.
I mean, we're really the silent sentinels in that many people, unless you live in North
Dakota and you see the fenced in silos or the guys driving out to alert every day, I'd
say 90% of our country has no concept of what these guys do every day.
And when I talk missile ears, it's not just the operators that sit in the capsule, but
it's the maintenance guys that keep it all running, the security defenders that protect
the sites, the communicators that keep our lines of communication open to the president,
all the contractors that support it.
They're all missile ears.
They also support the ICBM mission.
Well, let's turn to that.
Let's turn to the Association of Air Force Missileers.
Talk to us about what the association purpose is and kind of what it does today.
Well, we have a couple main missions.
The first is to do exactly what we're doing today and that is to inform the public on
the role of ICBMs because people just don't know what they do.
The second is to retain the heritage of the system.
There aren't that many.
I mean, over the last 60 plus years, there's probably less than 70,000 people who have
served as a missile ear and maybe 10% of those aren't around anymore.
And so we retain the heritage of and share the heritage of what these guys have done.
To that end, for example, this year, we're kicking off our first Air Force Missileers
Hall of Fame where we've identified 21 missile ears who contributed to the early fielding
of our missile systems in the 50s and 60s that led to what we have today.
And we'll recognize them at our national meeting in Bulton, California, outside of
Vandenberg Space Force Base on the 26th of October.
Well, I think these Hall of Fames are so important to recognize the men and women, particularly
of a silent service that doesn't get a lot of recognition.
But I've seen the list of the inaugural class in front of me.
It ranges from generals to sergeants and master sergeants, chief master sergeants.
We really got a good swath of missile ears here, and I suspect that was part of the goal.
Oh, definitely.
We want to recognize not just the senior guys who led us there, but the people who were
at boots on the ground that made the difference and made it all happen.
We're very fortunate in the Museum of the Air Force and Dayton is going to add to their
missile display with a presentation of our Hall of Fame.
That'll be our digital version.
We won't have a separate facility.
We're not big enough to be the baseball Hall of Fame, but we will have recognition at the
Air Force Museum.
One of the things I wanted to talk about, because it's not just sort of looking back
in reunions and the good old days, AAFM is doing work on health issues that I thought
was pretty interesting.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, it's very interesting that within the last year, we've had some of our missile ears
identify a serious problem with cancer that has come up with those who have served in
the underground systems.
It has led to the Air Force actually conducting the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine
out of Dayton is actually conducting a formal study into the causes for these cancers and
working to identify the causes, clean up anything that can, and make sure that those who are
serving today are safe to serve in the future.
And then to work with the VA and the Air Force to ensure that we get medical care for all
these people.
Colonel Danny Siebeck, who was a missile error at Malstrum and has since moved over to the
Space Force, was putting together a presentation for his leadership when it actually got leaked
to the press early and it caused a lot of attention.
But as sad as it was, in fact, it got leaked, it turned out to be everybody's benefit because
it got a lot of interest and the Air Force is really behind ensuring that we make sure
that we take care of our missile ears.
And this recognized some statistical disparity or disproportionateness in non-Hodgkin Lafoma
as well as maybe some other diseases.
And I think it's really important, anybody who's been in the service, all veterans, we've
all been exposed to more toxic stuff than we ever knew because it was just part of what
you did, cleaning parts, cleaning guns, cleaning tanks, working on missile systems, adding
fuel, blowing fuel off, whatever it might be.
There's just a lot of toxic stuff there.
So this is not really that surprising to me, but it's surprising that maybe it's taken
this long to folks say, hey, we ought to look at this subgroup and see if something's going
on.
Yeah, I think that's the important thing is we knew there were people that were having
health issues, but we never could pinpoint it.
And because it was isolated here and there, and it tended to show up after someone retired
from the Air Force or left the service when they did a shorter term.
And so it didn't show up within the Air Force system because of the period of time.
But when Kerl Sivak started getting a group together, and he has a site called the Torchlight
Initiative, which we're supporting, the number that have come in to self-identify, including
the medical records, was sufficient enough to get the Air Force's attention.
You're talking about, it's one thing, and I agree with what you're saying about working
with chemicals in an open air environment, refueling aircraft and all that type of stuff.
The operators and maintainers are working in underground, sealed environments where
air is recirculated and purified, but it's still, it's like going down in your basement
and closing all the windows and doors and putting limited fresh air in there to keep
the air circulating with cool equipment.
We're talking 1960s electronics in many cases and the potential hazards that those electronics
put off.
And then the electric panels were just full of PCBs.
So you put all that into an environment, you close the door and you seal the guys inside,
and it turns out it was a pretty dangerous work environment.
I'm surprised we didn't have a lot more people with non-hocs to this little pulmonary and
other cancers.
The numbers are starting to grow and we're trying to get the word out.
Yeah, and I want to put a little spotlight on that, which is torchlightinitiative.org.
There's a registry there, you can get a lot of information.
If you're in this class of veterans, you ought to check that out.
Again, this is one of the reasons being a member of the Air Force, Association of the
Air Force Missileers is important because you're going to get this kind of information.
As I say, it's not just reunions, it's not just interesting getting together with guys
and telling stories.
These health issues are really important, as are the histories that go along with the
Missileers and one of the things I think you've just done as the executive director of the
Association has put out a book on the history of Missileers.
You want to talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, thanks.
We have a new book coming out the end of this month.
It's a coffee table book, 324 pages of color pictures and stories.
It starts by telling the history of Mintman and how it got developed.
There's a whole chapter on what it's like to be an operator, a maintainer, a security
defender with these systems.
Then there's a chapter for each of the Mintman bases, the bases that have Mintman missiles,
some that have been retired and some that are still active.
A lot of the, imagine yourself 60 feet below ground, a lot of blank concrete walls.
In the late 80s, there was an effort to paint the walls with history.
Our bombers in World War II were known for their nose art.
We actually had blast art, but most of it is hidden below ground where the average
citizen can't see it.
Exactly.
He knows about nose art or painting of the leather jackets.
We've done programs on flight jackets.
I never knew about blast door art until I got into reading some of your newsletters.
Tell us about what would we see in blast door art?
I'll tell you that one of the best ones, and you can see it in person if you go to the
Mintman missile national historic site in South Dakota, right outside the Badlands.
It's a national park, and you can actually go below ground and tour the capsule, its
destination is Delta 01.
On the blast door is a Domino's Pizza box.
On the top and the bottom of the box, it says, delivering 30 minutes or the next one is free.
Many of us remember the old Domino's commercial that was their tagline.
The funny thing was that the artist, Tony Gatlin, when he was on alert, he started to
his crew commander.
He called upstairs to the facility manager and said, hey, do you have any red, white,
and blue paint?
He said, sure.
He said, send it down.
They put it on the elevator and sent it down to him.
They thought they were going to paint the American flag on the outside of the blast door.
When they got the colors, they opened it, and the blue just wasn't right.
His crew commander joked to him, it's more like Domino's than the American flag.
Tony said, I've got it.
Inspiration.
Inspiration happened, and he painted the Domino's.
You can see that, and there's another good artwork just outside on the wall, near it,
at that site in Delta 01.
All the others, there's one that's an igloo with penguins coming out of the igloo.
There's one that's Hotel 01.
I think it's in my not North Dakota.
You hear me using the phonetic alphabet.
Each of our sites are lettered A through O, alpha through Oscar.
I say, alpha 01 or Oscar 01.
That's the launch control center, and then there's 10 missiles assigned to it.
There's one in North Dakota where they actually painted a Star Wars battle scene inside the
elevator shaft.
As you ride down the elevator, you can see the battleships and the Jedi fighters going
against the other fighters.
There's a whole battle scene, 60 feet long, about 12 feet wide, top to bottom.
Some of the guys there painted that entire scene.
We've got another one that says, no vacancy, if you remember back in the old days, 3 HBO,
some of the motels that used to stop in.
A lot of that type of humor is what you would see.
All of it's captured in the book.
The book is titled The Silent Centenials, Minutemen Artwork Revealed.
Sentinels.
Sentinels, yeah.
Where can one get that book if they're interested?
If you go to anthmissalleers.org, there's a link on our front page, and you can get
it there.
Well, we really do appreciate the time you've given us today, Jim Warner.
You've had a long career in this space.
Obviously, as the executive director of the association, you know from what you're talking.
I think all of us have to remember a little bit that, yeah, there's a past here, but
there's a future also.
If people are interested in joining the organization, because they didn't know it was there, and
they qualify, how do they do that?
Same thing, anthmissalleers.org.
There's a button that says, join here.
Well, we certainly appreciate the time that you've given us today, Colonel, and thanks
for all the work that you're doing.
Yeah, I just want to say thanks to all the guys that are out here, and the men and women
that are pulling an alert today, protecting our nation 24-7.
They're the quiet ones, the silent ones that don't get recognized.
We see our fighter pilots and our soldiers and all that every day, but these guys are
protecting us, and they deserve some recognition.
So I appreciate you putting the spotlight on them and this association.
You've got it.
Amen.
Thanks, Jim.
All right, take care.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fawcone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
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