Report: Air Force lost track of five nuclear missiles

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Mishap of B-52 at Fairchild Air Force Base Washington

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This is just one of many episodes of lost Nukes. Let's hope they are not an everyday accurance.

[q
url="http://www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070904/NEWS01/70904040"] A
B-52 bomber mistakenly loaded with five nuclear warheads flew from
Minot Air Force Base, N.D, to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug.
30, resulting in an Air Force-wide investigation, according to three
officers who asked not to be identified because they were not
authorized to discuss the incident.

The B-52 was loaded with Advanced Cruise Missiles, part of a Defense
Department effort to decommission 400 of the ACMs. But the nuclear
warheads should have been removed at Minot before being transported to
Barksdale, the officers said. The missiles were mounted onto the pylons
of the bomber’s wings.

Advanced Cruise Missiles carry a W80-1 warhead with a yield of 5 to
150 kilotons and are specifically designed for delivery by B-52
strategic bombers.

Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Ed Thomas said the transfer was safely
conducted and the weapons were in Air Force custody and control at all
times.

However, the mistake was not discovered until the B-52 landed at
Barskdale, which left the warheads unaccounted for during the
approximately 3-1/2 hour flight between the two bases, the officers
said.

An investigation headed by Maj. Gen. Douglas Raaberg, director of
Air and Space Operations at Air Combat Command Headquarters, was
launched immediately to find the cause of the mistake and figure out
how it could have been prevented, Thomas said.

Air Force officials wouldn’t officially specify whether nuclear
weapons were involved, in accordance with long-standing Defense
Department policy regarding nuclear munitions, Thomas said. However,
the three officers close to the situation did confirm the warheads were
nuclear.

Officials at Minot immediately conducted an inventory of its nuclear
weapons after the oversight was discovered, and Thomas said he could
confirm that all remaining nuclear weapons at Minot are accounted for.

“Air Force standards are very exacting when it comes to munitions
handling,” he said. “The weapons were always in our custody and there
was never a danger to the American public.”

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.

“The main risk would have been the way the Air Force responded to
any problems with the flight because they would have handled it much
differently if they would have known nuclear warheads were onboard,” he
said.

The risk of the warheads falling into the hands of rogue nations or
terrorists was minimal since the weapons never left the United States,
according to Fetter and Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution, an independent research and policy think tank in
Washington, D.C.

The crews involved with the mistaken load at the 5th Bomb Wing at
Minot have been temporarily decertified from performing their duties
involving munitions pending corrective actions or additional training,
Thomas said.

Air Combat Command will have a command-wide mission stand down Sept.
14 to review their procedures in response to this oversight, he said.

“The Air Force takes its mission to safeguard weapons seriously,” he
said. “No effort will be spared to ensure that the matter is thoroughly
and completely investigated.”

[/q]