Report: Air Force lost track of nuclear missiles

Report: Air Force lost track of nuclear missiles

blogs.usatoday.com

The paper, a fellow Gannett publication, cites anonymous sources who say that five Advanced Cruise Missiles were mistakenly loaded on a B-52 bomber that flew from a base in North Dakota to one in Louisiana. The missiles, set to be decommissioned, should have been removed from the plane. Instead, they were mounted on the bomber’s wings.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Alternate Source:

Air Force probes mistaken transport of nuclear warheads

www.cnn.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Six nuclear warheads on cruise missiles were mistakenly carried on a flight from North Dakota to Louisiana last week, prompting a major investigation, military officials have confirmed.

The plane took the cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base for decommissioning Thursday, the Air Force said.

(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 5-9-2007 by UM_Gazz]

OOOPS. Guess we should pay a little more attentions to where the NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE!!

blogs.usatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

This is significant on many levels.

First of all, I doubt there was any real danger, unless the codes required to arm the warheads were issued. In that case it would have required approvals and the President's participation. without that they could have dropped them and not much more than small impact craters would have been the result.

For the conspiracy theorists... Why were they mounted on the bomber's wings?

The other issue is if I am correct, international treaties and agreements particularly with the Russians would prohibit this kind of weaponry movements. If so expect the Russians to complain about this one!

Interesting find TruthWithin.

You don't mistakenly load nukes on the wing of a B-52. Any movement of nukes is at the highest level and equal to the movement of the President.

Originally posted by UM_Gazz

The other issue is if I am correct, international treaties and agreements particularly with the Russians would prohibit this kind of weaponry movements. If so expect the Russians to complain about this one!

Interesting find TruthWithin.

Naw we move them all the time...I did it for five years. But you do not use a B-52 to move them.
Treaties are more for where we can keep them.

Originally posted by Xtrozero
You don't mistakenly load nukes on the wing of a B-52. Any movement of nukes is at the highest level and equal to the movement of the President.

Agreed Xtrozero. Maybe a little show of force to whoever needed their cages rattled?

been watching this all morning.....pretty wild.
i know that there is a whole set of safeguards involved in launching BUT, i'm not too comfy with the fact that these things are mounted on the plane and i'm not too keen that the air force didn't know it.

it don't have to detonate to be a problem...

a simple "oops, it fell off" will do...someone there to pick it up on the ground.

i don't know how this works but the movie broken arrow was rad

Originally posted by crudos
Agreed Xtrozero. Maybe a little show of force to whoever needed their cages rattled?

I can go along with that argument. If they were moved in the day time and at the time that someone’s satellite passed over to take pictures I could see it as a muscle flexing move.
could

I'm suprised at this - just read about it on the BBC site.

I'd also agree that it ought to be a damn site more difficult to load six nuclear weapons onto a B52 (the BBC says up to 6).

The Beeb article says the missiles were to be "decomissioned" which means that they were part of the active inventory and probably capable of proper activation providing the lines were hooked up properly.

It also says;

Col Thomas said the loading crew involved had been temporarily "decertified" pending retraining and an investigation had been launched.

Squeaky bum time for the crew involved....

Originally posted by UM_Gazz
For the conspiracy theorists... Why were they mounted on the bomber's wings?

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I'd wager that B-52's have nukes attached to them more often than we know. Seriously, who actually knows what is attached to those planes other than those who attach them, and those who are flying them, and those who gave the orders? Aside from that chain of command, they could be puting anything under those wings and no one would have a clue.

My problem is with them being decommissioned. The Russian are building new nukes after we paid them to destroy their older ones so why get rid of our advance cruise missiles? As soon as the missiles were plugged into the aircraft the pilots would have seen what they were carrying on their weapons display. I don't buy the whole story at all.

Originally posted by Sky watcher
My problem is with them being decommissioned.

Well, what are the officials supposed to say? I doubt anything is being decommisioned.

Peace

reply to post by Sky watcher



i'm more of the mind that this whole 'discovery' is a contrived scenario,
the PTB are reinforcing the notion that 'They' are vigilent watchdogs
and that a rigid failsafe system helps protect us from errant individuals
or oops events in the System...

besides it gives the news service another white-knuckler that engages the sheeple for a time.


bogus oversight

I think this story should not be a big deal, since we used to do this all the time during the Cold War. Plus, there are many security devices that even a plane crash would not set the bombs off. IMO, I think the media is over exaggerating on this one and is turning a small incident into a fear-mongering story.

[edit on 5-9-2007 by Dan5647]

Does anyone know the process through which a nuclear warhead is "decommissioned'?

What is the life span of a nuclear warhead?

And WHY would we load them on to planes that are designed to DROP them instead of other more "secure" modes of transport?

This all smells a tad fishy and I am not sure why. Is the US going through its nuclear arsenal and doing some "fall cleaning"?

www.cnn.com...

It may be part of a muscle flexing in response to the Russian resumption of strike bomber overflights, and seems to me to be a resumption of the Cold War that never really ended. Since China and Russia are buddy buddy, we find ourselves looking more like 1967 then 2007.

Question about the bomber in the picture. I grew up at Fairchild AFB and spent a LOT of time in and around the BUFFs, but this one has an elongated nose and the wings seem to droop less. Might be the angle, the nose is explained by the updated avionics since the F series, but it looks to me like they might have reinforced the wings with a carbon frame, lightening them up considerably.


As for why they were carried on the wings, that's the normal place to carry a cruise missile.

reply to post by TruthWithin


lol TruthWithin!

Doubtless we're decommissioning these nukes to make way for something even more nasty and nifty, have no fear (or do, depending on your outlook).

As for just "accidentally" strapping 5 or 6 of them onto a B-52, not loading them in the bomb bays even, well that one strains credulity. StratCom is not that stupid; this must have been intentional, for whatever reason, the most obvious being to put on a show for Iran and then ensuring that this gets out and gets lots of news play. Headline: Loose Nukes on B-52s! Well, that will catch anyone's eye.

LOL - gottago. Accidents do happen! I mean after all, whats a couple hundred kiloton nukes between friends?

Heck, the US has so many of them, I can't imagine how you would keep track of them all! You can't fly out of an airport these days without the possibility that there might "accidentally" be a nuke strapped to your plane.

Xtrozero


The weapons on this aircraft were the AGM-129 ACM - newer , stealthier - and being retired (only been on the fleet for 10 years!) than the AGM-86B

AND

they can only be carried on the wing pylons - as the internal rotary launchers (built for the AGM-86B) have all but been removed from all aircraft now.

but the physics package could be removed and reused elsewhere if needed - domestic bomb for a `terrorist` anyone

i dont understand how this is possible..? we have convicts on gps cop cars on lowjacks.... and implants you can get for your pet so you'll always know where they are. So how can we missplace nukes?