Nuclear Safeguard System 'Utterly Debased' During Nuke Missile Mishap

[babylonsister]

Missteps in the Bunker

By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 23, 2007; Page A01

Just after 9 a.m. on Aug. 29, a group of U.S. airmen entered a sod-covered bunker on North Dakota's Minot Air Force Base with orders to collect a set of unarmed cruise missiles bound for a weapons graveyard. They quickly pulled out a dozen cylinders, all of which appeared identical from a cursory glance, and hauled them along Bomber Boulevard to a waiting B-52 bomber.

The airmen attached the gray missiles to the plane's wings, six on each side. After eyeballing the missiles on the right side, a flight officer signed a manifest that listed a dozen unarmed AGM-129 missiles. The officer did not notice that the six on the left contained nuclear warheads, each with the destructive power of up to 10 Hiroshima bombs.

That detail would escape notice for an astounding 36 hours, during which the missiles were flown across the country to a Louisiana air base that had no idea nuclear warheads were coming. It was the first known flight by a nuclear-armed bomber over U.S. airspace, without special high-level authorization, in nearly 40 years.

The episode, serious enough to trigger a rare "Bent Spear" nuclear incident report that raced through the chain of command to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and President Bush, provoked new questions inside and outside the Pentagon about the adequacy of U.S. nuclear weapons safeguards while the military's attention and resources are devoted to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092201447.html?hpid=topnews

[spanone]

1. 'Bent Spear' = 'Fuck Up' maybe they should paint the nuclear warheads a bright color?

you know, something that would distinguish them from their NON LETHAL breathren.

this is very difficult to believe.

[angrycarpenter]

2. everything the military has is painted with a serial number

The thought that they mistook anything is ludicrous. The printed orders would have had the numbers on them and they would have been checked against the numbers on the Bombs. If it was a mistake is was in the orders not the men following them.

[DemoTex]

3. Weight & Balance Question ...

Does the weight of an un-armed AGM-129 approximate that of a nuclear-armed AGM-129? I assume that they must be about the same weight (dummy warheads on the unarmed missiles). If not, that B-52 could have had a serious lateral imbalance problem.

[pushycat]

4. Two missile transport crews? 2nd crew finds the nukes?

The first crew starts unloading missiles for 15 minutes before a 2nd crew arrives. The guys in the 2nd crew find the nukes and report to the supervisor. What gives?


From page 3 of the article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR2007092201447_3.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2007092300048

"It would be another nine hours -- until 8:30 p.m. -- before a Barksdale ground crew turned up at the parked aircraft to begin removing the missiles. At 8:45, 15 minutes into the task, a separate missile transport crew arrived in trucks. One of these airmen noticed something unusual about the missiles. Within an hour, a skeptical supervisor had examined them and ordered them secured."