You cannot be serious!

[davidgillon]

The investigative consortium Bellingcat reported Friday that US servicemen responsible for handling nuclear weapons on US airbases in Europe have been practising for tests on their security knowledge by making flashcards of the relevant information. On public apps.

So obviously there's been a bit of a fuss about that.

But what caught my eye was some of the information on the sample flashcards, such as:

"What are the authenticators on the Restricted Area Badge : Volkel* is missing the first L"

What are these people, five?

What is the point of a security test you will automatically pass if you have physically acquired or copied an actual badge?

This would be lackadaisical on many civilian sites, never mind a nuclear weapons storage vault.

*facepalm*

* Major US airbase in the Netherlands

Comments

[vass]

y i k e s

Less scarily, this reminds me of reading somewhere that there was a problem here briefly with soda machines calling emergency services when they needed refilling. The machines in question (owned by a multinational and produced overseas, naturally) had an automated phone-home feature, and if the number accidentally got reset, it'd default to 00000000. The Australian police/fire/ambulance number is 000.