Nuclear Nose Cones Mistakenly Shipped to Taiwan

Reservoir Hill writes "The Pentagon announced that the United States had mistakenly shipped to Taiwan four electrical fuses designed for use on intercontinental ballistic missiles, but has since recovered them. The mistaken shipment to Taiwan did not include nuclear materials, although the fuses are linked to the triggering mechanism in the nose cone of a Minuteman nuclear missile. Taiwanese authorities notified U.S. officials of the mistake, but it was not clear when the notification was made. An examination of the site in Taiwan where the components had been stored after delivery indicated that they had not been tampered with. The fuses had been in four shipping containers sent in March 2005 from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., to a Defense Logisitics Agency warehouse at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. It was then in the logistics agency's control and was shipped to Taiwan "on or around" August 2006, according to a memo from Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordering Navy Adm. Kirkland H. Donald to investigate the incident."

Comments

Nosecones?

[Talking Goat]

The article references fuses designed for use in nose cones... Is this story's headline misrepresenting the true nature of the mistake?

Re:Nosecones?

[jonnythan]

Not really.

The electronics and detonation systems used in nuclear bombs are very advanced, and very difficult to get right. A large portion of the time spent developing a nuclear weapon is devoted to the detonation electronics.

Mistakenly handing over a crate of said electronics would give a nation a significant shortcut toward developing their own nuclear weapons.

Re:Nosecones?

[Ellis D. Tripp]

I saw the story on TV news last night, and the items they showed looked like the stereotypical "nose cone", with a big wiring harness and connectors hanging out of the open end.

What I am curious about is exactly WHAT the electronics here consisted of. Are we talking about the system that senses altitude and triggers the detonation sequence (which would be serious enough), or was this the actual "X-unit" electronics package that fires all the separate detonators on the explosive lenses to compress the plutonium pit?

If the latter is actually what they shipped out (complete with the krytron switches, high energy capacitors, etc.), then some heads REALLY need to roll over this one. The media isn't being all that specific about what is actually involved here, either because the DoD isn't telling them, or because of the usual "dumbing down" of anything that might be considered too technical for Joe Sixpack to care about.

Re:Nosecones?

[jonnythan]

The 1960s were a full 20 years after we developed the only nuclear weapons ever to be used against a real target.

That's 20 years of development.

Why do you think we still have these nose cones, anyway? The US has not come all that far since the 60s in terms of nuclear weapon design. By the 60s we were already detonating fusion bombs, and I guarantee you that the designs and electronics used in the 60s to create hydrogen bombs will still work today.

I don't think anyone would care whether the megaton hydrogen bomb just detonated in their city was based on 1960s designs or 1980s designs :)

Re:Nosecones?

[orclevegam]

Nothing quite so fantastic as all that. First of all, China will be a self correcting problem. We outsource to them currently because they're going through a period of rapid industrialization that allows them to produce items who's quality if quickly approaching that of ours, but because of the rapid industrialization their industry controls haven't gone into place (which make for safer work environments and products, and also add a fair bit of overhead to the final cost) which allows for cheaper products. Once they achieve parity with the rest of the modern world the next step is to introduce the proper industry controls at which point costs will also achieve parity and it will no longer be economically advantageous to offshore to them.

Secondly, we knew of the mistake almost as soon as it happened. It's just that we only recently finished processing the paperwork. The next step is to file the paperwork that gets those fuses sent back over here. ETA is somewhere in 2015.

Re:Nosecones?

[asuffield]

But the parts in question are from designs in the 1960s, how far behind/ahead of that mark is China with regards to being able to create a nuclear fuse of similar function?

Well, they had them in the 1970s. That's either 30 years ahead or 10 years behind, depending on how you look at it.

Also, we're talking about electrical fuses here. An electrical fuse is a bit of wire or something similar that gets hot and melts when you put too much current through it. You'll find the details in your physics textbook. They do not become magic fuses just because somebody intends to use them in an obsolete weapon.

Why are we even talking about this?

Re:Nosecones?

[megaditto]

Taiwan is not the same thing as China. They are at war with each-other, so it's unlikely they'd actually hand over any of this to the Chinese. Besides, they are among our strongest allies and already have a lot of the advanced missile tech just like Japan for example.

So yeah, they should have better controls over where our nuclear tech is shipped, but in this particular case there's no problem.

Re:Nosecones?

[bkr1_2k]

It's actually irrelevant what tech China uses, when the crates were shipped to Taiwan. China's tech may be just as good as our (the USA) current stuff, but it's very unlikely Taiwan's is, since there are significantly smaller than their mainland cousin and spend far less on military funding. Having a "big step up" in technology through "accidentally" released fuse designs could play a significant role in their status against China in the future.

Misleading Title: "fuses" not "nose cones"

[Swave An deBwoner]

Hmmm.. fuses not nose cones. Still not good, but different.

How long did it take to get them back?

[downix]

I mean, if I had 4 fuses suddenly show up, I might be tempted to "look em over" a bit...

Re:disparity...

[Otter]

we send them really nifty stuff like nuclear nose cones and they ship us some crappy sneakers...

This is Taiwan, not the PRC. They make the computers around which your nerdly life revolves.

Expected news considering that

[zappepcs]

The US appears to have been dealing in nuclear information and weapons for quite some time now. A few lost shipments of this and that are to be expected when you are shipping with fly-by-night-drugs-R-us airlines.

Seriously, I'm amazed that we don't find more shipping accidents. A CIA plane crash lands with a buttload of cocaine on it, nuclear fuses get shipped to a foreign country like lost luggage on an airliner? Rumors and stories everywhere of secretly selling nuclear secrets to now declared enemies of the USA. Where does it stop? Ooops, Sorry Los Angeles. We mistakenly sent that suitcase bomb to Iran. Brown was supposed to handle that, but Columbian based DruglordCo came in at a cheaper price.

In other news, the US government looks foolish for trying to stop Iran's non-weapons nuclear program with war if need be, while misplacing EVERY FUCKING THING Iran needs to build a bomb, through some shipping miscommunication...

Fuck, I give up. Either the Whitehouse and government is full of evil geniuses or they are incompetent as to be less useful than tits on a boar hog as my grandfather used to say. How can they pull off the media circus they did to get us into war with Iraq but clumsily admit "oh, yes, we made a mistake with some nuclear weapons stuff, sorry about that" ?!?!?!?!?!?

Yeah, big today, gone tomorrow

[WindBourne]

The simple fact is that China is trying hard to put a major spotlight on this to pull it off of themselves and Tibet. In a normal time, China would be pretty quiet about this. It should be obvious that this is nothing more than a mistake. Otherwise, why would we bring it up?

ugh

[AxemRed]

I have been reading this story though various news outlets since yesterday. And I am going to post here the same thing I posted on Fark...

This is a non-issue. Something got mixed up when we were shipping them some batteries, and we shipped them some fuses instead. And they returned them with no problems. This story keeps on cropping up, and it's just sensationalism... especially using the word "nuclear" in the headline in this particular case. For shame.

ROC vs. PRC

[mutube]

china would argue that taiwan is technically part of china. taiwan begs to differ.

Conversely Taiwan would argue that China is part of it.