"Walt BJ" wrote
I want to point out that the USAF, as well as the other services, does
not take anything about nuclear weapons lightly. Having sat alert with
the blasted things and later been responsible for a base full of them
I can assure you that everybody with any responsibility for them is
deadly serious (in every sense of the word) in matters concerning
their security. When an intrusion alert is sounded the responding
force has no idea as to whether the cause is a fox, some Taliban types
after a nuke or in this case three irresponsible women with not the
foggiest idea what they were actually getting into.
You-all can discuss as to whether we need nukes, they were right or
wrong, or whatever, but please don't screw around with nuke security -
it's a losing game. The security forces ARE authorized to shoot, as
was I, while on alert.

I happened to drive a bread-box van down the taxi-way one day at
Ramstein, when I came up to a taxi-way and decided to take a
short cut. After driving through the line of really cool looking F-4's
I got to the gate-house, and the AP asked me if I had driven in from
the flight-line. Yea, I decided to take a short cut! He asked me to
step out of the van and put my hands on the hood and spread my
legs as far as I could. He then went back in the gate-house and
waited about 2 minutes, when a whole ****ing squadron of base
security types with guns bigger than I'd ever seen before surrounded
me, and had me take off my flight suit as they began to inventory my
possessions into plastic bags, and when complete took me to a steel
holding cell where my commander came and got me out! I asked him
what the *hell* that was about, and it wasn't until then that I realized
they were the nuclear alert F-4's! ****, what a bird brain...