Air Force Mistakenly Transports Live Nukes Across America

kernel panic attack writes "Surely the late Stanley Kubrick is somewhere smiling at this one. Forbes.com has a story about a B-52 Bomber that mistakenly flew 6-nuclear tipped cruise missles across several states last week. The 3-hour flight took the plane from Minot Air Force Base, N.D, to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug. 30. The incident was so serious that President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were quickly informed and Gates has asked for daily briefings on the Air Force probe, said Defense Department press secretary Geoff Morrell."

Comments

We have 3 options here

[tx_kanuck]

We can drive the nukes across the country, we can throw them on a train, or we can fly them. Personally, I'm much happier knowing they are being flown places then being sent via ground. I don't care how many safe guards are in place to prevent the weapons going off accidentally, there is always the risk of a crash sending radioactive material all over the place (not an explosion, but a leak). At least in the air the material is safer from accidents (how many air-to-air collisions are there?), and a plane can always find the most depopulated areas to fly over. Trucks and trains don't have that option.

Or maybe that's just me.

Re:We have 3 options here

[jjohnson]

Barksdale, where they landed, is in fact where bombing missions in the Middle East are staged out of. Politerati can't decide whether this was a real leak by a concerned officer who wanted people to know that the U.S. was staging nukes for Iran; or a deliberate leak by the Bush Administration so that Iran would know.

Re:We have 3 options here

[modecx]

I'm with you on this one. I was listening to the news earlier and I was thinking the exact same thing.

However, I seriously doubt that nuclear weapons are staged in such a way, so it doesn't make sense that an officer would be worried about the use of the weapons. Secondly, I doubt that it's so easy to get a nuke on a plane that one can mistake a rack of nukes for a rack of anything else, so it was probably loaded by order; however, a hypothetical officer may be worried about leadership decisions that led the bombs to be put on the plan, and thought that the only way around the situation was to go to the press, otherwise an unsuitable leader would remain in a position of power, and the incident would be swept under the Air Force rug. That's plausible assessment.

This really does smell more like a political leak. The thing that bothers me most is that I'm not sure what end it's supposed to achieve.

Re:We have 3 options here

[Plutonite]

You have good reason for it to crawl. From the BBC coverage:

[quote] (Retired Air Force Major General)Shepperd said the United States had agreed in a Cold War-era treaty not to fly nuclear weapons. "It appears that what happened was this treaty agreement was violated," he said.

The warheads should have been removed from the missiles before they were attached to the B-52 bomber, according to military officials.[/quote]

So right away you can tell that a cover-up is happening, because decommissioned warheads would not be fixed on cruise missile tips and flown to the base where mideast bombings are staged. It is very possible that both US and Russia violate their agreements in secret, so that part is not a major issue IMHO. But something very unfunny is going on.

Terrorist.....who????

[3seas]

First of all you have to wonder how it is that the media gets such a story and second of all how they are allowed to tell it.

Doesn't this matter equate to national security, or is national security more a spam and IP issue?

Certainly Homeland security has to be in on this information????

But again, how is it that the media are even allowed to find out about such an insident?

Maybe the US government wanted them to media it, in order to commit more terrorism....

Now maybe someone will flamebait mod me down but seriously, how does the media find out about what
would otherwise be considered a typical US military plane flight? Did the plane accidently have a big "warheads on board" sign stuck on the side of it?

Re:Terrorist.....who????

[dwater]

It is a common tactic to tell a story that makes you look bad in order to cover up the real story that is even worse.

What do you think could be the worse story?

uh oh?

[wordsnyc]

Ex-CIA agent Larry Johnson has a different take on this incident:

http://tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/sep/05/st aging_nuke_for_iran

Re:Nukes weren't live - Shitty reporting

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Having worked on relevant software, I can confirm that just the unclassified side of arming a cruise missile warhead involves multiple steps, some of which only happen after launch. For example, the onboard computer waits for a characteristic maneuver to happen before it goes to the next step in the arming process.

"Live" is not the word I'd use, except maybe as opposed to "dummy". The scary issue, as pointed out elsewhere, is that the inventory tracking broke down.

This is troubling all the way around

[jollyreaper]

I've been reading comments all over the place about this. People who say they've served in the military and worked with nukes say that this sort of thing simply cannot happen, too many people checking each other, too many safeguards. For this to happen would require an unbelievable number of screw-ups all working together. But if that's so, then the only other explanation seems crazy, that this was no accident.

Here's one take, take your own grain of SALT. Can't take it with the ABM Treaty since Bush withdrew from that in 2001.

http://tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/sep/05/st aging_nuke_for_iran

Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in Minot, North Dakota and subsequently landing at a B-52 base in Barksdale, Louisiana? That's like getting excited if you see a postal worker in uniform walking out of a post office. And how does someone watching a B-52 land identify the cruise missiles as nukes? It just does not make sense.

So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let's call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.

Then he told me something I had not heard before.

Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can't imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?

His final point was to observe that someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.

Now maybe there is an innocent explanation for this? I can't think of one. What is certain is that the pilots of this plane did not just make a last minute decision to strap on some nukes and take them for a joy ride. We need some tough questions and clear answers. What the hell is going on? Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran? I don't know, but it is a question worth asking. I dearly hope that's crazyhead speculation. But even if this is just an accident, this is fucking scary.

http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2007/09/flying_nuclear _bombs.php

"If the B-52 incident tells us that the military's command and control system cannot ensure with 100% certainty which weapons are nuclear and which ones are not, imagine the implications of the wrong weapon being used in a crisis or war. 'Sorry Mr. President, we thought it was conventional.'" As for the official story about transporting these weapons by air for decommissioning, that's fishy.

Although nuclear weapons are not flown on combat aircraft under normal circumstances, they are routinely flown on selected C-17 and C-130 transport aircraft, which as the Primary Nuclear Airlift Force (PNAF) are used to airlift Air Force nuclear warheads between operational bases and central service and storage facilities in the United States and in Europe (see overview here).

Interesting quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible," said Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the House task force on nonproliferation. (emphasis mine).

He's not claiming that it never happened before, just that it's never been reported before.

Much better than crashing with a bomb on board...

[Bobzibub]

http://www.portaec.net/library/peace/1950_bomber_c rash_in_bc.html

TERRACE, B.C. (CP) -- A determined group of local citizens wants some answers about the mysterious crash near here almost five decades ago of a B-36 bomber carrying an inactive atomic bomb. The gigantic bomber -- 50 metres long with a 70-metre wingspan -- was apparently flying without a crew when it plowed into Mount Kolaget in the vast Coast Mountains range on Feb. 13, 1950.

It was carrying an inactive Mark IV Fat Man atomic bomb similar to one dropped on Nagasaki when it got into trouble over Hecate Strait, according to a U.S. military declassified report. Three engines were ablaze and the giant aircraft was losing altitude. Crew members dropped the bomb over the strait and bailed out.

Re:We got some flyin' to do

[afaik_ianal]

Keep in mind, they weren't just flying them as cargo: They were flying with them attached to the wing. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's not something the US has done anywhere in the world for decades.

Re:Three and a half hours is a long time

[Detritus]

I once saw a Navy weapons storage facility where many of the bunkers had their doors blocked with 20,000 pound blocks of concrete. You needed a big crane to remove the block before you could open the door of the bunker. Official policy was to neither confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons, but most people assumed that they were being stored there. This was back when the Navy still had tactical nukes.