Air Force Mistakenly Transports Live Nukes Across America 898
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."
Ze puns, zey do nothing! (Score:2, Insightful)
Wrong branch of the service, but if Admiral Hyman Rickover were still alive he'd be shitting cinderblocks when he heard about this fiasco. I'm still not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Three and a half hours is a long time (Score:5, Insightful)
How do we keep track of our weapons? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would hope we would have protocols in place that would ensure we never lose track of any nuclear weapon. 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?
Mistakenly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the logistical and safety related problems when transporting those weapons on the ground, could it be that they intentionally moved the weapons and now that the news got wind of the story call it a mistake?
Re:We have 3 options here (Score:4, Insightful)
OR WE CAN LEAVE THEM WHERE THEY ARE.
They weren't supposed to be transported to begin with. You obviously didn't bother to RTFA at all.
First Rule of Fight Club... (Score:2, Insightful)
An extra flight is serious, but not dangerous.
Where as a leak may not seem serious, but be entirely dangerous.
Re:B-52? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really wanna fly such warheads over the US in newer planes?
here is another saying "if its not broke then don't fix it."
A large load bomber does not have to be fast but steady and sure.
Another saying "Murphy loves complexity"
But here the real thing to consider. Now they we have told extremist groups that B52 Bomber may or not be caring warheads over the US, unguarded.......
Unloaded Gun == Loaded Gun (Score:5, Insightful)
Anonymous Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose a few months after they went missing, five of them blew up in major cities.
New York.
Washington D.C.
Chicago.
Los Angeles.
San Francisco.
Suppose one were held back to make you wonder if it was going off in your home town tomorrow.
Yeah, so it seems like a minor bookeeping error, compounded by accidental transport. However, the error also implies that they were transported by a crew that didn't know they had nukes on board, landing at a base that wasn't prepared to handle the nukes securely, since they didn't know they were receiving nukes.
It's not a minor thing. It's a big, big story. It's a bigger story than will ever be admitted.
Suppose this wasn't the first time this happened, only the missing nukes were not detected because they were removed from the cruise missiles before the receiving crew noticed they had warheads. This terrifying scenario is why a full inventory is being conducted right now.
Re:How do we keep track of our weapons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now *that's* +5 Funny.
Re:Terrorist.....who???? (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is that this is pretty much exactly the sort of thing that should be kept confidential.
I wholeheartedly agree that it's the duty of a democratic government to be as transparent as possible, and to disclose as much as it can on its inner workings to the public.
HOWEVER, information on the whereabouts and transportation of nuclear warheads is at the top of a very short list of things that should unequivocally be kept as a closely guarded state secret no matter what.
The risks of releasing that sort of information staggeringly outweigh the benefits if there even are any.
Re:We have 3 options here (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The worst that could have happened (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't even know these five warheads (not armed, and not able to be armed) were off the base in Minot until someone in Louisiana noticed that they were "hot" shots.
To lose track of one warhead - much less FIVE - is a very serious transgression.
Re:Three and a half hours is a long time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Into perspective... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's alarming. The Military ought to know damn well where every warhead is, every second of every day. The idea that a half dozen nukes could be flown off in a plane they aren't supposed to be in, and it go unnoticed until the destination is reached is terrifying.
Accident? not so sure. (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds an awful lot like the kind of "accident" that happens on purpose. Russia has just recently resumed strategic bomber flights - am I the only one that thinks that this may just have been a particularly ham-handed attempt by someone at the pentagon to remind the Russians that, hey, we have bombers with nukes too.
Not quite right. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a big deal for two reasons:
- We're obligated by international treaty to not fly nuclear weapons.
- Anytime nuclear weapons are someplace they're not supposed to be it's a problem. If no one knew these things were not where they were supposed to be, they could have just as well been, well, anywhere.
Not to mention, the crew of the plane didn't know they had a nuclear payload. That means that if they had some sort of issue with the flight, they are in the position where they're not making the right decisions.
Re:Why is this even a story? (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that there have been bigger stories doesn't negate the fact that this is a story as well, and not a very good story either. Losing track of nukes for over three hours is completely unacceptable.
Re:I don't think that's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
You've GOT to know where these things are always.
You can't accidentally stick them on some transport.
If anything deserves a tonne of Red Tape and Bureaucracy, it's the storage and movement of Nukes. Surely.
Re:Terrorist.....who???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Incompetant clowns losing track of weapons is a national security issue - and the information getting out makes it more likely that they will be dealt with properly instead of having an unblemished record and a string of secret disasters. A free press assists national security.
Consider Oliver North. The fact that he was stealing a lot of money and goods for personal use (eg. airconditioned his house) was also a secret. If the facts of his case had not come out there could have been a long string of incidents of petty crime and outright treason.
Re:We have 3 options here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't think that's the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
But basically at some levels of security a single person is not even allowed to handle the materials. During the Wen Ho Lee case it was published that vaults at the lab could be visited, and worked in, only by two people checking actions of each other. This is reasonable, and that's why (as I read) control rooms of ICBMs were manned by not less than two people who both must agree to launch, and on submarines a similar system is also in effect.
But in this case a bunch of nuclear weapons - which were not meant to be sent anywhere - was given to a group of people who were specially trained to work as one person, to fly like one person, to know each other and so on - to be efficient in what they do. Unless that was a random crew, which I doubt. If there was no oversight of the actions of that single, cohesive group then they could have flown the weapons anywhere, sold them to Osama, and crossed the Mexican border before anyone would have realized what happened. I of course believe that the flight crew is honest, and so it apparently is, but they *could* - and in this business, when Osama is ready to pay *anything* for a nuke - the society simply shouldn't take such an unnecessary risk. These nukes, if taken apart and reassembled by Osama's technicians, could easily start the World War III. I don't even know what would be worse to the USA - terrorists exploding a warhead in New York or exploding it in Mecca, or in New Delhi, or anywhere when a spark (of this proportion) can cause a world wide attack on everything american.
Re:Three and a half hours is a long time (Score:5, Insightful)
As a more qualified poster indicated, it is unthinkable that the nuclear warheads would be even stored where any soldier can drive a forklift in, pick up a few crates and cart them out. James Bond movies are not a guide, I know, but don't they *lock the doors* for example, with keys stored in locked safes of base's big brass, and with two or three keys needed together to unlock? If the storage was open (by who? a lowly ground crewman can't do that, I hope!) and accessible (like no armed guard at the doors?) then the weapons were supposed to be moved, despite what the official line is, and the fsckup is just that they were loaded on a wrong plane. That is not very encouraging.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell us again? (Score:2, Insightful)
Previous answers :
1) We are more RESPONSIBLE about nukes than others!(RTFA)
2) We don't share the knowledge with others(We honestly don't know where israel got those! Seriously! And okay that dictator in pakistan both has WMDs and is profilerating them, but hey... their chief scientist said "ok sorry!"... and plus they are our allies, you know? different rules so the said dictator gets away scott free for something we killed saddam for.)
3) We will never use them! They are too *dangerous* to be *ever* used! (Okay so we dropped a couple on Japanese civilians including women and infants, and we are the only country in history to ever use them ... but hey it was *us* ... that is different!)
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is this even a story? (Score:3, Insightful)
How many people had the opportunity to try?
How old is the technology behind it?
I'm sure the money used to develop a working DRM is comparable to the money used to develop those locks.
Re:Your are wrong (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Tell us again? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Japanese had it coming.
Period.
Japanese abuse of anyone non-Japanese was all but government policy. Japanese troops tied women to trees in Nanking and drove sharpened bamboo poles up their vaginas. American prisoners of war prayed to be bombed by their own forces to end their suffering.
The most conservative estimates at the time by the US Military estimated that an invasion of the home islands would have cost at least 500,000 civilian Japanese lives. That's conservative, mind you.
We dropped a couple bombs, killed 80,000, and they surrendered - but even then there was a plot by Japanese extremists in the Imperial Army to steal the tapes of the Emperor's surrender radio broadcast before they could be aired, as they wanted to keep fighting.
A "demonstration" of the atomic blast for the Japanese would merely have been suppressed by the Japanese military.
The Japanese got off easy. When a nation chooses to embark on wars of aggression and piracy, its citizens must bear the consequences. It's a lesson we in the US should learn, as we meekly accept a government that appears more corrupt with each coming day, but to argue that the use of nuclear weapons during WW2 is to ignore the historical realities of the time. The world was a big old slaughterhouse back then, and with a couple of big booms we ended it.
The lesson we should take from that time is how General MacArthur turned Japan into a thriving democracy within five years. If the Bush administration had been less concerned about how to maximize profit for civilian contractors and more interested in studying what MacArthur did for Japan and what the Marshall Plan did for Europe we wouldn't have such a mess in Iraq right now.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:5, Insightful)
That having been said, they weren't in a condition that they would of detonated if the plane had crashed; 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.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, it's too early to blame the explosion on Iran
You don't use a bomber to "transport" something. (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't put a cruise missile on a B-52 because you need to ship it somewhere. You do it because you want to make some kind of point.
I know! I know! I know! *waving hand* (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:5, Insightful)
To err is human. To really fuck up, you need to work for the government.
Honestly, the Average Joe can get in trouble with the law for driving 47 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone.
But this? "Whoops. Looks like I accidentally put nuclear bombs in my plane." Did they ever figure out whose fault this was? I'm just trying to figure out if he'll be fired (low level employee) or given a Congressional medal (high ranking official).
Re:Mistakenly? (Score:3, Insightful)
They weren't mistakenly mounted. It was a deliberate flight from Minot to Barksdale, with missiles on the wing, just as planned. The issue is that the missile bodies, which were supposed to be empty, weren't empty.
But no, we didn't almost nuke ourselves. USAF aircraft are never accidentally loaded with nukes. There is no way for a single load crew to do it, nor a single aircrew to cause it to be loaded. And as far as an accidental nuclear explosion. I won't use the word "impossble". But its as close to that as you can imagine.
The problem here lies not with the load crew, the crew chief, nor even the pilots. There is no way to tell, by looking at the outside, whether the warhead is inside or not. And it is none of those peoples responsibility to ensure that it is or isn't. In fact, they don't have the clearance in to the backshop where such operations are performed. The breakdown came somewhere earlier in the chain.
The pilots were told to take 6 empty missile bodies from Minot to Barksdale for eventual destruction. They get to the aircraft, lo and behold, 6 missiles on the wing. All is good.
Earlier that day, a load crew was tasked to load 6 ostensibly empty missile bodies onto Aircraft XYZ. The delivery crew brought out the correct 6 supposedly empty missiles. And the exact same custody and handoff procedures are used for empty missiles as well as those with warheads.
So the delivery crew brings them out, the load crew loads them and then turns the aircraft over to the crew chief and aircrew. Everything checks out as it should.
Off they go to Barksdale.
The missile shop, for whatever reason, did not remove the warheads from the missiles identified for destruction.
The relevant questions are:
Did they mistakenly not remove the warheads? Major screwup, as they were now missing 6 warheads)
Or did they knowingly leave the warheads in, under the mistaken assumption that the complete missiles were to be destroyed?
Either way, many heads will roll. Some already have.
Re:I know! I know! I know! *waving hand* (Score:5, Insightful)
Except it is not so simple. It is not a foregone conclusion that it really is in the US's best interest to have nukes, and to deny them to anyone they don't like.
There are plenty of arguments that argue for everyone having nukes.
Given the US has nukes and no one else does, the US is both resented and feared. Worse the US is tempted to use them as leverage to further its own goals, which in the short term leads to 'benefits' to the US, but in the long term leads to things like terrorist attacks on US cities, and violent anti-americanism around the globe.
Clearly this wouldn't be in the US's best interest.
Now I'm not saying the current situation is the result of the US having nukes, per se, but it is the result of the US leveraging its economic and military superiority against the rest of the world.
And now, its economic superiority is crumbling, and the world is faced with a lone superpower that is increasingly desperate. I don't think that is in anyone's best interest.
Its eerily frightening. Bush/Cheney in particular have shown that congress, the courts, and so-called checks and balances are weaker than we might have hoped. Calling one's opponents terrorist sympathizers, perpetrating the pretense of war, shrouding everything as a national security issue, stuffing the supreme court with allies, and all the other political tricks when taken together... well... a "Hitler" could potentially do a lot of damage at the helm of the US before he was stopped; and its not clear exactly who would stop him.
Could the US elect a madman? Why not? Its happened elsewhere. And if history has shown us anything, its shown us that it tends to repeat itself.
Isn't it a bit early? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's always too early for that
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:4, Insightful)
You've not seen the commercial sector much, have you?
Honestly, while this is bad, and the nuclear debris from the missles would have been a pain had the plane crashed, it's not what I would call a royal fuckup. You are more likely to win the lottery twice in a row than it would be for those bombs to go off if the plane crashed (nuclear warheads, are delicate, even if made from plutonium, and if those are uranium warheads, they are even more so).
Regardless, another three good disproofs to your comment:
Sony. Microsoft. Apple.
Each of these companies had screwed up royally. One took decades to recover.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:4, Insightful)
Sony. Microsoft. Apple.
Each of these companies had screwed up royally. One took decades to recover.
those are weak. i got two words for you: Union Carbide.
Re:Tell us again? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? The horrific firebombing of Tokyo wasn't enough to get Japan to surrender. And the first a-bomb on Hiroshima wasn't, either. Japan didn't actually surrender until after Nagasaki. How many more lives would you have been comfortable seeing lost on both sides if we'd dropped only the bomb on Hiroshima, and then gone on and on with more equally/more horrible meat-grinding/roasting conventional warfare afterwards? Several hundred thousand? Because that's what the second bomb prevented.
obviously done on purpose (Score:3, Insightful)
HLS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:that's ok then... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:that's ok then... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now calculate the chance that the kid gets run over or cracks his head while playing.
Maybe I should start selling nuclear bomb shelters and cash in on all this misinformed hysteria.
myth of japanese citizens fighting to the death (Score:2, Insightful)
The most conservative estimates at the time by the US Military estimated that an invasion of the home islands would have cost at least 500,000 civilian Japanese lives. That's conservative, mind you.
This is a myth commonly and often repeated, used by teachers to qualm the guilt middle schoolers feel when watching videos of our country blowing up tens of thousands of civilians. It's easy to picture "those evil japs" fighting to the death with pitchforks and samurai swords against "our boys" for "honor" and to "save the emperor", which is why it made for great propaganda, playing to the racism of WW2 vets and their families, for a good 40 or 50 years.
The fact is that Japanese war machine was so run down they were sending pilots on suicide missions because of a lack of fuel and weapons. Said pilots were not exactly thrilled at the prospect; most of them did it only because the knew they'd be shot if they didn't. Military leadership was very divided on whether the war should continue. For months, some were deeply worried about open revolt leading to revolution among the general populace, which was tired of war, tired of hearing their sons died. Sound familiar?
The use of nuclear weapons to end a war which was largely won, was the greatest display in foolish use of military might.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:3, Insightful)
It could be a she too.
Re:This is troubling all the way around (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not hard to imagine lots of reasons why. It could be as simple as you're ordered to get them to Barksdale, and it's easier to strap the (supposedly empty) weapons on one of your planes and fly them there with your crew than to requisition a mostly empty C-130 flight and fill out the paperwork that those guys require before they transport anything related to nuclear ordnance.
So much in life turns out to be guided by the invisible hand of convenience.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tell us again? (Score:3, Insightful)
The most Specious reasoning ever posted on Slashdot.
Homer - Well, there's not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol is sure doing its job.
Lisa - That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer - Thank you, sweetie.
Lisa - Dad, what if I were to tell you that this rock keeps away tigers.
Homer - Uh-huh, and how does it work?
Lisa - It doesn't work. It's just a stupid rock.
Homer - I see.
Lisa - But you don't see any tigers around, do you?
Homer - Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.
Re:I know! I know! I know! *waving hand* (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course not. The US screwed up on a whole lot of things. I don't think having nukes even makes it to the top 10.
There is a long trail of bloody dictators (Saddam included) that reached power and held to it with help from the US (mostly to "protect the country from being taken over by communists"). When they fall (and fall they do) it's natural their former sponsors end up paying part of the bill.
"a "Hitler" could potentially do a lot of damage at the helm of the US before he was stopped; and its not clear exactly who would stop him"
It won't make you feel better, but Hitler was stopped in the end. The catch is that it was not the German people who did.
We live in interesting times...
Re:Tell us again? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? The horrific firebombing of Tokyo wasn't enough to get Japan to surrender. And the first a-bomb on Hiroshima wasn't, either. Japan didn't actually surrender until after Nagasaki. How many more lives would you have been comfortable seeing lost on both sides if we'd dropped only the bomb on Hiroshima, and then gone on and on with more equally/more horrible meat-grinding/roasting conventional warfare afterwards? Several hundred thousand? Because that's what the second bomb prevented.
The truth is, there is no way to tell how many people would have died. I don't care what analysis you throw out there, it's pure speculation. Regardless, I still cannot bear the thought of nuclear bombs being dropped on innocent civilians. Innocent men, women, and children who wanted nothing to do with a war. And we blew them up. I mean, that concept is what we fear the most; some rogue nation using nuclear weaponry on our citizens. Right? Yes, the Japanese did attack us first and their government was ruthless, but they attacked our military base. And we keep talking about ALL THE JAPANESE lives we saved.
Wrong. We saved OUR lives. We didn't care about the Japanese. And in the end, the Japanese had around 140,000 dead, with more dying within the next four or five years due to birth defects and radiation poisoning. Not military, mind you, but civilians. "We're here to save you...BOOM." We shot to kill, not to make them surrender. We wanted revenge for Pearl Harbor. We wanted mass carnage and devastation. Why else would we drop bombs designed to kill hundreds of thousands of people?
http://www.gensuikin.org/english/photo.html [gensuikin.org]
It was sad, cowardly, and plain murder, no matter how you look at it.
Re:You don't use a bomber to "transport" something (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tell us again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, "rounding down" is more like it. Are you deliberately ignoring the months and years that preceded the events that drove their surrender?
I still cannot bear the thought of nuclear bombs being dropped on innocent civilians.
But... you're OK with the Japanese army sitting in various ports, factory towns, and other facilities and cities throughout Japan, and being "conventionally" bombed into oblivion, along with the civilians they're standing next to? How about the factories and shipping facilities (such as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki), staffed and supported by civilians, but with their output entirely directed to supporting the fight-til-the-end Japanese military? What technology, available in the 1940's, are you proposing we should have used in order to get Japan to surrender? The only other one available had ALREADY BEEN TRIED: to wit, massive conventional bombing, in advance of an on-the-ground invasion. Were you paying ANY attention to what happened on the countless Pacific Islands that had to be handled that way? The Japanese mainland would have been unbelievably worse, because a devoted Emprorer-obeying population would have largely done the same things that Japanese soldiers did in Okinawa or elsewhere: fight to the death.
You're confusing the fact that, owing to their surrender, far fewer Japanese soldiers and civilians died than would have in a bloody block-by-block invasion of the mainland with anyone feeling generous about that. That fewer of them died is just frosting on the cake. The CAKE was the end of the war, without having to send half a million US solidiers and marines into horrific urban struggle that would have made the insurgency in Iraq look like a football game in terms of collateral damage to non-combatants. This was 60 years ago! The conventional conquering of that ground would have been far, far worse for everyone involved. But the motivation for getting them to surrender was to save OUR people from having to do it in a vastly bloodier, more costly way. It's just luck for the average Japanese citizen that they didn't have to have every village burned down, every town square riddled with machine gun fire, and vastly more people caught up in horror that - because of a limited but violent solution in Hiroshima, and because the Japanese military thought maybe it was some sort of one-time stunt, Nagasaki - didn't have to happen.
And we keep talking about ALL THE JAPANESE lives we saved.
Actually, "we" are simply OBSERVING that fact. You're the one that's obsessed with preferring a conventional invasion of the mainland, and somehow preferring "standard" deaths of far more people. Which is pretty perverse, really, when you think about it. But you're not really thinking about it, obviously.
We shot to kill, not to make them surrender.
False dichotomy. We shot to kill because no other action, as had been amply demonstrated by the Japanese military over and over again, would cause them to surrender.
We wanted revenge for Pearl Harbor.
Gross simplification. We wanted to shut down the entire campaign that Japan had put into motion, of which things like Pearl Harbor, or the brutal rape of Nanking, were merely episodes. The military regime that authored those events and which was torching so much of the Pacific rim, needed to be stopped. And there was no fiercely effective UN (hah!) to somehow make them do so through angry letters and corrupt sanctions. Every minute that the Japanese continued with that campaign, untold thousands of people died. You clearly think it's rude to stop them using violence, but you are spectacularly silent on just what method you think would have actually worked more quickly, and with fewer deaths.
We wanted mass carnage and devastation.
Has your shrink ever talked to you about "projection?" Regardless, we DID want devastation, in the two limited places where we deployed
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ascii art (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tell us again? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before America had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that America would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that America would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?
IOW, Get off your fucking high horse!