When I first glanced at today’s “Pic of the Day,” I thought I might have been looking at a photo of SEAL Team SIX, or Delta Force, maybe. Then I read the caption. These folks work for the Department of Energy. Specifically, they work for the Office of Secure Transportation (OST). Now, I consider myself fairly well-educated, and I know a thing or two about the armed forces, but I have never heard of the OST.
Let’s be clear from the start. These men and women are not military.
The OST is a law enforcement agency within the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). They are federal agents and are trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
Who They Are and What They Haul
Since 1975, OST has driven over 140 million miles—more than the distance to Mars—with zero nuclear-release fatalities. Their cargo? Nuclear weapons, test assemblies, enriched uranium, plutonium—joyrides for the whole apocalypse. These loads ride in Fort‑Knox‑style tractor‑trailers or aboard Boeing 737s and DC‑9s—rolling bunkers with sleeper berths, armored bodies, and escorts of armed agents, while Albuquerque’s Transportation & Emergency Control Center (TECC) watches every mile, 24/7
How You Become an Armed Federal Nuke Courier
Paraphrased straight from the USAJOBS nuclear materials courier announcement:
- Must be a U.S. citizen with Active Top‑Secret or Q‑clearance—or be ready to earn one.
- Physical mettle: 1‑mile in 8:30, 40‑yard dash from prone in under 8 seconds, tested half‑yearly—no couch potatoes need apply.
- Firearms qualification, class‑A CDL during training, suitability check, random drug/alcohol testing, and full medical/psych exam to meet the “Human Reliability Program”.
- Specialized experience: armed tactical ops—military, police, border patrol, security—they wield guns aplenty.
- Then survive 18 weeks at Fort Chaffee—tractor trailers by day, marksmanship, team tactics, FLETC law, mental scrums, and emergency-management stuff at night.
Why This Job Is a Necessity
The job is basically playing atomic roulette: every convoy is a cakewalk until it isn’t. Agents are prepped to shoot, drive, flank FBI-style, call up local LEOs, spin up a National Security Area, and shut down a freeway if even a biker gang flashes them a side-eye.
Per the DOE Office of the Inspector General, they also track every training mile, weapon toggle, and drug‑testing bottle into an OCD-grade Qualification Tracking System. Why? Because a single slip—an agent fatigued, impaired, or lazy—could unleash plutonium rain.
Why You Should Care
This isn’t Homeland Security theater nonsense; OST moves literal weapons of mass destruction. If they fail—due to hijack, crash, or have a radiation leak—there’s no press release, just fallout. Your daily commute could become a radioactive superfund site.
But here’s the quiet victory: no releases, no terror, no detritus. That’s not luck—that’s hardened agents with legal authority to use lethal force, ride out storms (convoys stop for ice), and keep America’s nukes off the literal and figurative highways of annihilation.
A Toast to the OST
So here’s to these midnight road warriors: the overqualified ex‑special‑operators, the marksmen turned couriers, the steady hands on the wheel at 65 mph. They don’t get parades. Their only companions are silence and catastrophe, and both ride shotgun.
The job’s not sexy. They’re highly lethal nuclear custodians. And in the twisted highway of modern menace, they’re the only ones we trust to drive the bomb.