I did, and found no particular cause for concern with regard to safety. Past practice lacked in some regards, I agree. But, as I recall the book, even Schlosser conceded that those issues have been effectively addressed, and that the balance between agility of response and effective C&C had been swung pretty firmly in the latter direction even by the time of the 1980 Titan accident, to say nothing of today.
This seems like a rather mild interpretation. As for the effective addressing of safety issues, it was not that long ago that the USAF last "lost" nuclear weapons [1]. (The weapons were in fact in USAFs possession, but no one knew were they were, or even that they weren't where they should have been. During this time the weapons were not handled according to the normal procedures.)
True. That was also the first time in forty years that such an incident had occurred. The officers responsible were relieved of their commands; the enlisted personnel involved were retrained and in some cases demoted; the entire command structure around nuclear-armed formations was reworked to reduce the likelihood of future such incidents. What about this response strikes you as having been ineffective?
