Air Force Missile Launch Crew Falls Asleep on the Job

But the July 12 incident comes on the heels of a series of missteps by the Air Force that had already put the service under intense scrutiny.

In this case, officials said the crew members reported themselves for the violation of procedure. The crew members were apparently leaving the control center at the end of their shift and took a set of old codes, which are typically replaced after every shift, to a rest area in the facility. Rather than proceeding back to Minot Air Force Base to dispose of the codes they fell asleep.

Air Force officials said the deactivated codes were not at risk of being lost or stolen and that they were always contained at a secure facility.

But the Air Force did not initially make the incident public, and on Thursday the Project on Government Oversight issued a report saying the Air Force base was on "security lockdown" after discovering a "nuclear weapon launch code" missing.