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."
We have 3 options here (Score:4, Interesting)
Or maybe that's just me.
Terrorist.....who???? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
WTF can they do? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:We have 3 options here (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:B-52? (Score:4, Interesting)
uh oh? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/sep/05/s
Re:Nukes weren't live - Shitty reporting (Score:5, Interesting)
"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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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/s
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.
http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2007/09/flying_nuclea
Bad reporting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Still, arming a nuke isn't always as hard as it's cracked up to be... remember all those all-zero launch codes we had during the cold war? Now that's a weak password.
Interesting quote (Score:5, Interesting)
He's not claiming that it never happened before, just that it's never been reported before.
Into perspective... (Score:4, Interesting)
But there was so little chance of accident detonation that it is a far smaller story than one might immediately think.
Modern Nuclear Weapons are one of those things you have to really WANT to detonate
Plus considering even the military didn't know they were moving Nuclear Weapons, the chances of someone attempting to steal them is next to nill.
Re:Terrorist.....who???? (Score:5, Interesting)
What do you think could be the worse story?
Re:Mistakenly? (Score:1, Interesting)
So in the end all this will probably end up being a Master Sargent misread a number, and the airmen with him in the no lone zone, probably just figured the Sargent knew what he was doing and didn't even think to question the higher ranking NCO's ability to read a number.
In short, it was an accident, though a big one for sure.
Much better than crashing with a bomb on board... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 have 3 options here (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Three and a half hours is a long time (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure why the media has pumped this up like they were Broken Arrows. BUFF crews have been carrying nukes for decades, live and ready for delivery, without incident. It's not like the act of flying them over American territory was dangerous. I lived on the end of a SAC runway during the Cold War and those contrails weren't all passenger flights. But the mistake of having live loads on a BUFF was a paper-pusher nightmare that breached security and possibly treaty agreements.
Some O's just got a quick exit from the USAF.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Broken Arrow! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We have 3 options here (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Three and a half hours is a long time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We have 3 options here (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting thing is, the B-52 was designed to carry a nuclear payload. Just, not as cruise missiles, and the B-52 upgrades were mostly conversions to carry conventional payloads after the Titan missiles were developed.
Considering what an ex-Chair Force buddy tells me about life at 'Mindrot', I'm surprised this hasn't happened before...
Re:We have 3 options here (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words, the first five might fail by themselves without detonation, but those first five could possibly provide enough neutron flux for the sixth to go off in a big way.
There are shitloads of ways of achieve criticality once you have multiple nuclear devices banging around. See some examples here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident [wikipedia.org]
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:3, Interesting)
Russians have dusted off their Bears and Backfires and are sending them on patrol loaded with cruise missiles, so does the USA. As it is in these cases it is an open question who started first. The Russians are saying the that the Americans did, the Americans are saying that the Russians did it.
Anyway, it is all irrelevant now as both sides are happily dusting off their toys to show them off. As a result nukes that have stayed in storage for the last 17+ years are now out and about being loaded and unloaded on patrol bombers. This is all done by staff that has done this only as a training exercise and has never had to do it for real. It was only a matter of time until they were loaded on the wrong bomber which is most likely what happened here. Thanks god the bomber in question did not do any test firing.
Re:uh oh? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/hail-caesar -by-digby-ive-been-getting.html [blogspot.com]
Interesting reading...
Re:Ze puns, zey do nothing! (Score:3, Interesting)
Pretty damm good actually - you note the problem was caught did you not? The system isn't designed to be 100% perfect with never a mistake, the system is designed to be 100% certain that mistakes are caught before they become Very Very Serious.
Yeah, this should not have happened without some pretty serious bungling somewhere, and it is pretty serious - but ultimately the system worked as designed and the triple check caught what the double check missed.
(Yes, I am a former nuclear weaponeer.)
Your are wrong (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:We have 3 options here (Score:5, Interesting)
[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.
Something fishy about this story (Score:1, Interesting)
At the end of the investigation, I am betting that someone -- likely the air crew and their superiors -- thought it might be some real hot-doggin fun to fly the nukes and take photos or something. It just doesn't make sense that this could have happened without their knowledge. Even without specific briefings to inform them as such, shouldn't a bomber crew *know* what a nuclear warhead looks like, compared to the usual munitions that they carry?
The Press around this incident could be a PR gag (Score:4, Interesting)
I smell lot's of proactive appliance of psychology here.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:4, Interesting)
You're trying to tell me there's *not* any special nuke release codes, just fire and forget like a regular missile? I think not. What is scary is if one of these were to "disappear", so that someone can rig/replace the detonator. That'd save you about 99% of the work of building one yourself
Re:We have 3 options here (Score:2, Interesting)
Thule Incident [wikipedia.org]
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:3, Interesting)
Similarly, I do not know if you can simply dump it either if it refuses to fire. The latter AFAIK is standard practice - if something has refused to work properly unless you have a very good reason you do not try to land with it.
Re:We have 3 options here (Score:3, Interesting)
If the nuke hit the ground hard (for example was simply dropped off the plane), the missile's fuel would surely catch fire. That could easily set off the explosives which are supposed to detonate the nuke. It wouldn't be coordinated enough to actually cause a nuclear explosion, but it would instead very effectively pulverise the radioactive material and put it into the air. That's what we call a dirty bomb, and currently obsess about terrorists building.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:3, Interesting)
The question is did the Cold War really suck. Sure it did in some areas, but was it good for the world? Third World Countries kept inline based upon alignment, and every Govt around the world had a 'fear' that they could hold over their residents. Yeah, that kind of sucks.
WWIII is inevitable, it's just a matter of time and who the primary combatants are. Personally, I see a battle between the borders of China and Russia for natural resources when the time comes. That should kick things off nicely around the globe.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:3, Interesting)
We used to have B52's permanently flying above Iraq with a selection of cruise missiles armed and ready (but non-nuclear tipped) so that a commander on the ground can ask for a particular buidling to disappear and it will do so very quickly. The order is imediately relayed to a controller who programs the missile with the co-ordinates and then launches. Since the B52 was already in the air above the target zone with a number of these things on board the time from request to detonation is alot shorter than if they were launched from a ship in the Gulf.
The big difference in this case is that these were nuclear tipped so would have made a much bigger bang.
The big question to my mind though is how this happened by accident? Was this a training flight where there was never any intention of launching or was the plane about to go on a sortie but some mistake on the ground meant they got given the wrong payload and the plane was in the air before this was realised.
I suppose the other option is that it was reaction to a nuclear armed bomber taking off from Russia at the same time (They have resumed these flights again recently) and the pentagon not wanting to take any chances / make a point. Although if this is the case I would rather not think about it.
Re:This is troubling all the way around (Score:3, Interesting)
"Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran?"
Why don't you take off the tinfoil hat and look for a simpler explanation: that we wanted the IRANIANS to know that we are probably staging nukes into the Mid East. (Not like our carrier groups don't have a few, c'mon.)
If one looks like one might be confronting a theocratic possibly-nuclear power which is run by people whose goals may just be to bring on the "end of times" for their 13th Imam or whatever, mightn't it be a decent idea to 'telegraph' to them that our forces in the theater will be capable of dealing with whatever conflict they choose to engage in? Tactical, one-sided Assured Destruction in a post Cold-War world.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:4, Interesting)
That is probably the best outcome. Can you say dereliction of duty? I would bet that people are going to facing jail time for this one. Your right when it comes to special weapons the military really doesn't play around.
I just wonder what poor enlisted guy at Barksdale thought when he found out they still had the warheads. That must have been an oh crap moment. If you don't raise the alarm fast enough your in deep trouble. If you are wrong you are in deep trouble. Is there even a protocal for dealing with that kind of a mistake? Kind of a man I hope I am right but I really wish I am wrong moment.
Re:Anonymous Idiot (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is this even news? (Score:3, Interesting)
Generally speaking, the "live" warheads will only go up when there is a time of increased alert (aka the various DefCon levels) mainly to prevent an accidental detonation, but nukes have additional safeguards well above and beyond normal chemical detonation (gunpowerder and C4 explosives) devices. And even those are safeguarded where during some training flights where true dummy warheads will be used that don't have any of the avionics or any kind of explosive on the airplanes. This would be for demo flights like at an airshow or for a flyby at a stadium for events like the Superbowl. I will note that since 9/11 when I've seen these demo flights in a public venue, the warheads on the fighters doing the flyby seem to me as if they were live warheads and not the standard dummy missiles that were on the fighters before hand, but this is just raw speculation based on relatively non-expert observations.
Even more surprising to me about this particular incident is that it was mentioned in the press at all. It is not our responsibility as citizens to know the status of any aircraft, ship, or other military unit in the U.S. armed forces or citizens of other countries to know about their military like this. Indeed knowing that information and having it publicized can significantly jepordize the lives of those military personnel who serve with that unit. If a reporter does find out this kind of information, they shouldn't publishing it, under threat of being prosecuted under federal espionage laws and divulging classified material. This is not to bury a blunder that some general or admiral made and doesn't want to have ruin his future military career, but to protect the lives of those who serve and to ensure that when the military does go into action that they have every possible advantage against potential enemies, and not to give potential enemies additional information that is not necessary.
This information should simply not be published in any news outlet, and I would have to agree that this is very likely to be a deliberate leak with authorization from a very high level in the military chain of command to let potential enemies know America has nuclear weapons, and routinely make them available to junior officers (aka the pilot of this particular aircraft) and have them available at a moments notice to be delivered nearly anywhere in the world. If this is the message, then the USAF should consider that the message is received, at least by an ordinary American citizen.
If anybody reading this think it is a sign of gross incompetence on the part of the USAF, they are missing the point of what really happened. You shouldn't be hearing about things like this in the news, as it is about unit operations and routine operations at that. If every time a nuclear warhead is moved was published in the news media, you would hear about it every day As such, this isn't really "news", any more than even having the space shuttle be moved to the launch pad. And the USAF has far more than 4 bombers, nor does the USAF do only 3 flights per year with its bomber fleet. If anybody is showing a huge lack of judgement, it is on the part of the editors and reporters involved with this news story, not USAF personnel.
Re:Your are wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
While strategic bomber patrols were a common practice during the Cold War (particularly before ICBMs were available to deliver the nukes), Bush Sr. and Gorbachev agreed in 1991 to stop flying nukes on bombers, along with some other terms. Russia has recently backpedaled on this treaty, resuming the bomber patrols though supposedly without nukes on board. In doing so, they cited opposition to U.S. plans to build anti-missile defenses in eastern Europe. If the U.S. had been violating the agreement all along, that would have made for a much better justification for Russia's move, and they presumably would have mentioned it.
Do you have any source for your claim that the U.S. flies nuclear patrols on a daily basis, or even that they have done so at any time post-Cold War?
Noooo (Score:4, Interesting)
"...the fact remains that the Air Force didn't know where six of its nukes were for three hours."
I know the press likes to make it seem that way, but that is probably not true at all. Based on my experience I would say it isn't true at all.
They new they were on the missile. They new the missiles had been moved. If anyone went to look for them, they would have known immediately where they were.
Yes, of course the president is notified, because he will need to deal with the political ramifications of the treaty violation. Not bbecause people are 'panicking'. In my experience with nukes we don't panic, we quickly deal with the issue.
Sorry, but I feel I need to be clear The media is implying that the nation was in some sort of dangerous situation and someone could have been killed. Some sites are implying that this nearly lead to a nuclear explosion. Fortunately the main stream media has at least put the comments in saying detonation wasn't possible;which as you know is true.
"Disclaimer: I worked with nukes before, although not these."
meh, who hasn't?
Hoo Boy (Score:3, Interesting)
The missiles sat around for ten hours unguarded. One or all of the warheads could have been removed and diverted to anybody...
There is another subtle, but still important problem:
The flight crew had no idea they were transporting nukes.
This was a 'Pinnacle' event.
Re:Missing the major point (Score:1, Interesting)
One day the damm Gold crew put the records for tube 11 into the pocket for tube 12... And it wasn't discovered until the Squadron weps came down to verify the records during turnover. When he did, we went through the whole damm Empty Quiver routine. (Of course it took about two minutes to find the records once we got to looking - but we couldn't look until the notifications were sent off.) The Goldie weaponeers had a very uncomfortable offcrew, and two of the officers ended up with letters in their jackets.
Re:We got some flyin' to do (Score:3, Interesting)
Having spent 4 years as a weapons technician on B-52's I have the creds to know the facts. I also KNOW that there is VERY LITTLE that is more CONTROLLED in the USAF than a nuclear weapon. How this was allowed to happen boggles my mind. The command & control system truly FAILED here and THAT scares the hell outa me.....
Re:Ze puns, zey do nothing! (Score:1, Interesting)
We won't know whether "the system" worked until there is a reconciliation of missiles sent for decommission and missiles actually destroyed. At this point, all we know is that six perfectly usable nuclear tipped cruise missiles were decommissioned on paper, but found their way into the beginning of the supply line for the Middle East.
I'm kind of worried about whether these were the only ones, or only the ones that happened to get caught.