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."

I don't think that's the problem

[commodoresloat]

The problem was, they didn't know the nukes were on board. It may or may not make sense to fly instead of drive them, but you have to agree that transporting nukes without knowing the nature of your cargo is a pretty dicey business.

Re:We have 3 options here

[sqrt(2)]

From the CNN story, "The crew was unaware that the plane was carrying nuclear weapons, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the extraordinary sensitivity and security surrounding the case."

Hard to take special safety measures when you're not even aware of what you're carrying.

Re:Why is this even a story?

[slashqwerty]

Yes, we possess tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, and yes they get transported sometimes. So what?

We are supposed to know where the weapons are at all times. They were not supposed to be transported. The Air Force was supposed to transport some conventional cruise missiles.

Re:We have 3 options here

[Nefarious Wheel]

Relatively few people will refer to a B-52 as a "cargo bird" except in certain rather niche circles.

I don't see how this is an incident worth reporting, except that they were carried by mistake, and that they were carried on pylons instead of in containers, and that the media found out...

Okay, it was an incident worth reporting.

Re:Why is this even a story?

[Leuf]

You don't think that a B-52 can take off with six nuclear missiles when it isn't supposed to is a big deal?

I'm confused as to the details here. It says the "missiles" were being decommissioned. Is that the missile itself or the warhead? If it's the missile, first off why the hell are we decommissioning cruise missiles, and second how did the pilots not notice the nuclear warheads on the missiles they were carrying when they did their preflight inspection? If it was the warheads, then it would seem like someone further up the chain is to blame and the crews were just following orders.

Re:B-52?

[jamesborr]

Actually, the B-52's have only been around since the early 50's ;-), and are currently scheduled to be front-line heavy/strategic bombers until 2040 -- so another 30+ years.

Re:We have 3 options here

[Anonymous Coward]

the current design of warhead isn't as sensitive as one might think. all of the warheads operate on a timer or an altimeter, meaning they're not sensitive to being banged around. the warheads are packaged well enough to be able to withstand all kinds of impacts, temperature variations, etc. without detonating or releasing nuclear material. they've literally spent billions of dollars of thinking of every possible situation and tried to safeguard for it if it's in anyway possible.

believe me when i say that the engineers making these things had safety as the first priority, and after all of those considerations were taken care of, payload. after all, it doesn't matter how big a boom you've got if it doesn't get there and go off when you want it to!

as a side note, it's amazing the info that wikipedia has on our current generation of nukes! for instance, did you know that the spherical shape has been dropped in favor of an ovoid package?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Three and a half hours is a long time

[Frosty Piss]

The airmen who load the planes don't make the decisions.

Absolutely true, something went wrong a lot deeper than the crew that loaded the missiles. But they should have picked up on something being wrong. Their Commander was rightfully relieved of his command.

Re:Nukes weren't live - Shitty reporting

[It doesn't come easy]

Actually, that is an interesting question. The warheads are not armed per se, that's true. But if they were properly loaded then the B52 would have controlled the arming, i.e. they would have gone live had they been fired. On the other hand, an "anonymous source" says that pilots didn't know the warheads were real. That is also a mystery because the only way the plane's systems would not know they had real warheads on the missiles is if the missiles were not properly connected into the plane's systems. I can also say that warheads destined for decommissioning are NOT transported mounted on missile boosters. They are very carefully packed in specialized shipping containers and transported on cargo planes (or special trucks or trains but usually cargo planes). In addition, the little bit of news we have isn't entirely clear if it was the warheads being decommissioned or the missile motors. I assume the warheads, so there are a lot of unanswered questions at this point.

Re:We have 3 options here

[sqrt(2)]

The B-52 is a ship of Theseus. It may be a 50 year old aircraft, but nearly everything in it has been replaced and retrofitted several times. The avionics and weapon systems are completely modern.

Re:B-52?

[Bob(TM)]

'B-52 [boeing.com]' was the aircraft designation for the bomber that coincidentally had its maiden flight on April 15, 1952 (the YB-52). The designation was assigned to the design in 1948.

Re:Why is this even a story?

[Xonstantine]

If we can reverse engineer an iphone, you can bet your ass someone will be able to reverse engineer a software lock that was made by the lowest bidder....

Our nukes certainly weren't made by the lowest bidder judging by the cost [brookings.edu] ...and some serious brains went behind the thinking on nuclear security.

Re:B-52?

[jlanthripp]

WWII = 1939-1945

The first Boeing B-52 Stratofortress flight took place on April 15, 1952, almost 7 years after the end of WWII. This was a test flight of a prototype, not a production plane; the B-52 was . The B-52 has been modified, updated, and adapted to meet the changing needs for a large, long-range, high-level bomber. It was initially designed as an intercontinental nuclear strategic bomber, and has since been adapted for low-level flight, conventional bombing, launching cruise missiles, tactical attack, direct- and indirect-fire ground support, photographic reconnaissance, etc.

The airframes are indeed aging (the last B-52H airframe was completed in 1962), but it boils down to efficient use of resources and adaptation of existing equipment. It's such a superb aircraft that any possible improvements to be had with an all-new design would be so small as to make it not worth the expense of said new design. There is no finer long-range, fast-subsonic, jet-powered strategic bomber aircraft on the planet right now, nor is there likely to be in the near future.

There are other examples of military equipment that hasn't undergone a significant redesign in a long time due to lack of need. The current M4 Carbine that is issued to infantrymen in the Army and Marine Corps is simply a slight evolution of a design from 1956 - the AR-15, adopted by the US Air Force in 1961, re-designated as the M16 in 1962, and type classified Standard A in 1965, meaning it became the individual weapon of choice for US military personnel. The M1911 pistol was the standard sidearm of the US military for 74 years, from 1911 to 1985. The M60 general-purpose light machine gun has been around since 1957, and was largely based on a WWII German design, the MG42.

In short, just because something's been around for a while doesn't mean it's no longer useful :)

Re:Why is this even a story?

[Xonstantine]

Sure it matters. Most of the American nuclear weapons are thermo-nuclear and optimized for size and efficiency. Meaning, the primary is just big enough to light the secondary. And while you can harvest the plutonium even if you can't unlock the PAL code, it's doubtful you could get a Hiroshima sized weapon out of it...because if you had that kind of technical capacity, you wouldn't be resorting to stealing bombs in the first place.

Re:Why is this even a story?

[arth1]

There's several undetonated US nuclear bombs and missiles missing, and waiting for someone finding them.

• 1 bomb, lost in ocean outside British Columbia on 2/13/1950
  
• 1 plane with 2 bombs, lost "somewhere in or around the Mediteranean", 3/10/1956
  
• 2 bombs, dropped in ocean outside Cape May in the Atlantic, 7/28/1957
  
• 1 bomb, lost in ocean outside Savannah, Georgia, 5/25/1958
  
• 1 bomb, dropped into a swamp in North Carolina and never found, 1/24/1961
  
• 1 missile, lost in the Pacific, 6/4/1962
  
• 1 missile, lost in the Pacific, 6/20/1962
  
• 1 plane with 1 bomb, rolled off USS Ticonderoga outside Japan, 12/5/1965
  
• 1 bomb, lost in the ocean outside Spanish village Palomares, 1/17/1967
  
• 1 bomb, lost in ocean outside Greenland, 1/22/1968. This was first reported as retrieved by navy seals in 1979, but newer information shows this unlikely to be the case.
  
  Anything after 1980 is classified.
  
  That's at least 11, and probably 12 missing atomic weapons, just from the US arsenal.
  
  Then there's a handful of them that aren't missing, but were either destroyed in an accident, the detonation failed, or were destructed in the air.
  
  The recent incident pales in comparison.
  

Re:We have 3 options here

[vought]

Right, because a B-52 is state of the art.


Practically everything but the airframe and engines is new in those jets - and some systems on the B-52 are more modern than those on the B-1 and B-2 bombers.

There's a nice list and diagram on this page [fas.org] outlining some of the upgrades to keep the B-52 effective, despite its large radar cross section. If Congress ever lets Boeing upgrade the engines, (4xCFM-56, last time I heard) it'll be able to fly farther on less fuel and with less maintenance, too.

The B-52 is quite state of the art - nothing quite compares, except for maybe stuffing the latest computer hardware inside of an original IBM XT case.

Re:How do we keep track of our weapons?

[vought]

If a nuclear weapon were detonated in a U.S. city how could we verify it wasn't our bomb if we can't keep track of where our weapons are?

By their distinct isotropic [wikipedia.org] signature.

We can tell U.S. Plutonium from Soviet Plutonium from Chinese Plutonium. Rather easily, I gather.

Re:I don't think that's the problem

[TooMuchToDo]

There are drastically different protocols for emergency situations based on the type of ordinance being carried.

Was a loadmaster [wikipedia.org] a lifetime ago.

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

[Detritus]

A nuclear weapon without its pit is not a threat to anyone. The pit is the fissionable plutonium sphere that is imploded to produce a nuclear detonation. In early U.S. nuclear weapons, the pit was stored separately from the rest of the bomb. To arm the bomb, the weapons officer opened the bomb casing and inserted the pit. This was usually done in flight, to reduce the danger of an accident during take-off. Since it took hours to reach the target, the crew had plenty of time to perform the procedure.

Re:This is troubling all the way around

[crayz]

No, the event is a B-52 landing with unauthorized nukes.

According to the FAS [fas.org], the last time a bomber was loaded with nuclear weapons was over 15 years ago. The last time a bomber flew with nuclear weapons was nearly 40 years ago. So it would appear GP was correct, and you are not

Re:We have 3 options here

[Gordonjcp]

Those are the most advanced CPUs available that are certified to work in a rad-hard environment. You don't want some £30-from-dabs.com SiS motherboard and overclocked Athlon here, unless you want your glass cockpit to die randomly.

Re:Broken Arrow!

[ozbird]

The Wikipedia article says that both theft and loss are referred to as "Empty Quiver".

"Broken Arrow" is the "accidental event that involves nuclear weapons or nuclear components but which does not create the risk of nuclear war". e.g. Jettisoning a nuclear weapon (which is not the same as losing one.)

Re:Not quite right.

[SnowZero]

Yeah, did you know that this little thing called the Constitution has a clause in it (not an amendment either, like that much ignored list of 10 amendments called "the bill of rights", but an ACTUAL clause in it) that states that ALL treaties entered into by CONGRESS shall be the supreme law of the land?

Way to miss the point. GP wants to know where it was specified, he didn't say that we shouldn't break treaties or laws.

The treaty you are referring to, is the "UN, Nuclear Arms NPT (Non Proliferation Treaty)". Sure I don't approve of the UN either, but that is a treaty we've entered into by allowing the tyrants in DC to do as they pleased.

In that case you shouldn't have any trouble quoting the part of the NPT treaty [un.org] which states you can't transfer weapons within your country via air. I'll save you the trouble: It's not there. This may be regulated by the IAEA [iaea.org] somehow, in which case you should quote the regulation covering it. The only possible relation to the NPT is that it requires states to follow IAEA guidelines.

While this was certainly a fuckup, I doubt it was illegal (I'd be happy to be shown otherwise with proof). Russia would have trouble dismantling some of their remote weapon sites if they could not transport weapon components via air, so I doubt this limitation would be present in treaties.

Re:We got some flyin' to do

[iphayd]

It is apparent that you didn't RTFA. (Yes, I know this is Slashdot, but you didn't even skim it)

These nukes were enroute to be decommissioned. As in destroyed. The problem wasn't that they were on the wing. The problem was that someone didn't remove the warheads from them first. This was not about dusting off the weapons, this is about dusting the weapons.

Re:Tell us again?

[icebrain]

In additionm, I'd like to point out that:

a) Had we invaded, there would have been many more deaths on both sides

b) Invasion plans called for peppering the landing areas and rest of Japan with nukes anyways

I remember reading about Japanese plans for an invasion... basically, everything down to little rowboats would be loaded with explosives and sent on suicide missions. There's a very real chance Japan would not have given up until the vast majority of the people had died.

Re:We got some flyin' to do

[volpe]

It's "have". Would have detonated. Would have been a radiation leak.

Re:Double standards

[Anonymous Coward]

The nukes on the B-52 were not Live, contrary to what the title of this post incorrectly states.

From http://www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A ID=/20070904/NEWS01/70904040 [thetowntalk.com]: "At no time was there a risk for a nuclear detonation, even if the B-52 crashed on its way to Barksdale, said Steve Fetter, a former Defense Department official who worked on nuclear weapons policy in 1993-94. A crash could ignite the high explosives associated with the warhead, and possibly cause a leak of the plutonium, but the warheads' elaborate safeguards would prevent a nuclear detonation from occurring, he said."

"Live" implies that they were in an armed state, able to be detonated upon command. This was clearly not the case.

Re:We have 3 options here

[jimhill]

Nonsense. Safety analysis of multiple weapons in an accident scenario has been part and parcel of nuclear safety since nukes got small enough to put more than one on a delivery vehicle. I spent the first 8 years of my career at Los Alamos doing just that. What Tom Clancy novel did you get your assertion from?

Re:We got some flyin' to do

[Constantine XVI]

I read somewhere that at least one officer has been canned over this.

Re:We got some flyin' to do

[Anonymous Coward]

The base commanding officer was fired. The team that loaded the weapons was "decertified" for weapons loading, apparently meaning that they keep their jobs, but will be re-trained.

Hard to guess what will happen when the investigation is done.

Re:Not quite right.

[Enigma2175]

While this was certainly a fuckup, I doubt it was illegal (I'd be happy to be shown otherwise with proof).

From the CNN article [cnn.com]

'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.'

That's from the Air Force Major General they were interviewing about the incident. If you have something that contradicts that please speak up.

Re:We got some flyin' to do

[innerweb]

No matter where they flew them, this was a violation of nuclear handling procedures. I had to deal with these rules many years ago. This kind of screw up is a career ending move.

As much as people like to make fun of the military, there are some things the military does that it takes extremely seriously, and generally has a relatively excellent track record with. Handling nuclear weapons is one of them. Having nuclear weapons somewhere they are not supposed to be scares the military. They could fall into the wrong hands, they could cause an accident (bad publicity not needed), all kinds of issues. Then there are very stringent laws on handling nukes. Stuff you can go to jail for violating.

Maybe there was never any danger of a nuclear explosion, but there was a temporary loss of control of nuclear weapons. Someone caused (by accident, oversight, misinformation, etc.) nuclear weapons to be loaded on a plane and then flown somewhere they are not supposed to be. Each nuclear weapon has a location it is supposed to be in. They may change where from day to day, but by the will of the military they will be in that place. Nukes are not treated the same way as so many other comparatively unimportant items (like toilet seats).

So, whether the potential was there or not for some serious explosion (it was not), there is a very serious breach of handling which in the military will be treated seriously. Yeah, flying over US air space is a big no-no, but the bigger no-no was a temporary misplacement of nuclear weapons. That is huge in military terms.

InnerWeb

Re:We got some flyin' to do

[menos]

B-52's do indeed have hardpoints on their wings for ordnance.

Check the following page on Wikipedia for an example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:B-52H_prepares_ to_refuel_over_Afghanistan.jpg [wikipedia.org]

that's ok then...

[fantomas]

"the worst would of been a radiation leak that could of been cleaned up. The military has egg on their face but no-one was put in danger."

That's ok then. I'll pop the USAF a line to let them know if any of their nuclear armed planes are about to crash, to drop them on your property. Heck, if there's no danger it won't matter if the nukes crack open next to where your kids play. Only a radiation leak after all.

"Would have" not "would of" by the way.... I've never understood why coders of all people are slack with their grammar. You guys wouldn't tolerate it in the code you write...

Missing the major point

[Quila]

It's not so much that nukes were flown, but in the accountability of nuclear weapons. While the nukes were always under Air Force control and there was never any danger, the fact remains that the Air Force didn't know where six of its nukes were for three hours. They thought they were at the base when in fact they were on a plane. All of our military must have physically-verified paper accountability of all of its nuclear weapons for every second of every minute of every hour.... you get the picture.

Imagine an inspector coming up to the commander in those three hours, "Where are those nukes?" and he says "Oh, they're here in this --- OH SHIT!" You don't know at that moment if they've been misplaced or if they've been stolen. Everybody panics. The President must be informed.

Any violation of the accountability rules is taken dead seriously. You can get punished if the nukes never moved but you messed up the paperwork, so heads will roll here.

Disclaimer: I worked with nukes before, although not these.

Re:We got some flyin' to do

[Shakrai]

Find weapons grade material scattered around centrifuge sites

Of course that weapons grade material would be traced back to the reactor in the United States that made it in the first place, thus rendering your conspiracy theory moot. Any halfway advanced nuclear power (think, the US, Russia, UK, France, Israel, etc) can tell from the isotopes of the material where and when it was produced.

Re:We got some flyin' to do

[Perl-Pusher]

Russians have dusted off their Bears and Backfires and are sending them on patrol loaded with cruise missiles

Well I was in the Airforce for 20 years. Ten of which was spent maintaining avionics on a B-52. And there is a huge difference between standard cruise missiles and nukes. Those nukes by treaty and national directives aren't supposed to fly anywhere unless there is direct national authority. Meaning President, Vice President,joint chiefs etc.

During the cold war, there was a lot of worry about this type of thing. Each bomber base has an alert facility. That is where the crews wait for what they hope will never come. Well most of them, hope that! There are secret sicko's in every group. There are checklists upon checklists. No enlisted person can work alone on an aircraft, there most be 2 people in view of each other at all times. Each has to have knowledge of the task to recognize when the other is deviating. Inside the aircraft cockpit in addition to the 2 maintenance, you have to have 2 officers both cockpit certified. If you notice something isn't right you stop the task. If your not sure if you trust the other guy, you radio in a 'helping hand'. You both will then spend time spread eagle on the tarmac with a gun pointed at you.

To work on nuclear weapons system, you are subject to the 'personal reliability program' , this means you can lose certification for drinking too much, divorce proceedings etc. Anything where your supervisor or commander believes you might not be thinking about the task at hand. Its non punitive, you can also be temporarily de-certified for a tooth extraction. What seems to me happened here is someone removed that aircraft from alert status and did not notify every one in the checklist. The aircraft munitions didn't get unloaded. This is a major screw up.

Re:Your are wrong

[Shakrai]

We do it everyday. Normally over the oceans, but we still do it. At any one time, they are on their way to whoever we consider the enemy. The pilots never know when they are carrying live or not.

Nice fear mongering but it's completely inaccurate. For starters the pilots would know what they are carrying and the days of 24/7 airborne nukes ended back in the 60s or 70s. It was too expensive, with too much room for error [wikipedia.org] and quite redundant when we have a force of boomers [wikipedia.org] that can't be detected/engaged/destroyed before launching.

Re:Broken Arrow!

[Eponymous Bastard]

interestingly, Wikipedia mentions Pinnacle - Nucflash, "refers to detonation or possible detonation of a nuclear weapon which creates a risk of an outbreak of nuclear war" which includes among other things:

Unauthorized flight of, or deviation from, an approved flight plan by a nuclear armed or nuclear-capable aircraft with the capability to penetrate the airspace of another nuclear-capable country.

Unauthorized loading of a nuclear weapon on an intercontinental bomber would probably apply. Are there regulations on Pinnacle - Nucflash? Does Congress have to be told? This might be the reason for the leak, they had to talk about it.

Re:Your are wrong

[mstone]

They'd know they were carrying ordnance, and they'd know that the bombs might be nukes, but they wouldn't know for certain what was actually inside the casings.

For every nuke in our arsenal, there's a set of dummy weapons with exactly the same look and feel. The only people allowed near the vehicle while the ordnance is being loaded are the loaders themselves, and even they probably don't know whether the weapons are real or not.

It's a security measure. A load of nukes is both extremely valuable and extremely dangerous. If the Bad Guys knew they could get an arsenal by attacking a specific plane or by bending a few members of a specific flight crew, they'd try it. By the same token, if a few members of a flight crew managed to convince themselves it would be a good idea to convert a certain part of the planet to dirty glass, they might try that.

Running fake weapons most of the time eliminates the certainty of payoff in both cases. But an investigation and reprisals are damn well certain, so it just isn't worth attacking a plane or letting a few bombs fall on the off-chance that they might be real.

You're correct (as far as I know) that we stopped carrying live nukes at the end of the cold war, but that doesn't mean the drills with dummy weapons have ended. We really don't want to be at the low end of the learning curve if we end up needing nukes in a hurry.

In this case, it sounds like someone screwed up a requisition. Instead of calling for dummy weapons to be used in a practice flight, someone got real nukes instead. And yeah.. that's a case where the CO in charge of the base is in serious deep shit. We really don't want the people who take care of our nuclear arsenal to get confused about their inventory.

Re:We got some flyin' to do

[RockoTDF]

Actually, it was the munitions squadron commander that was sacked. On any base there are several squadrons (Fighters, bombers, etc depending on the type of base) and then there are support squadrons such as logistics, supply, etc. It makes more sense as ultimately his squadron was the one responsible for getting the live nukes out for decommissioning and put them in the wrong place which resulted in them being loaded on the B52. Having said this, the crew that loaded the munitions on the B52 would be a part of the Bombardment squadron and this will be a huge black mark on the careers of all parties involved.