Pentagon pushes out top Air Force civilian, officer

by Dave Keating | June 5, 2008 at 11:06 pm

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Defense secretary Robert Gates has announced a big shake-up at the Pentagon, with the highest-profile casualty being chief of staff General Michael Moseley. The news comes after some high-profile screw-ups, including accidentally sending nuclear centrifuges to Taiwan and accidentally equiping a B-52 bomber with nuclkear-tipped missiles before it flew across the US.

The Air Force's top civilian and senior officer were forced to resign Thursday after Defense Secretary Robert Gates concluded that the service was lacking proper leadership in overseeing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Gates cited a failure of leadership in the Air Force's top echelon, including Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, as he announced the shake-up at the Pentagon.

This year, it was revealed that the Air Force mistakenly sent a shipment of fuses for nuclear missiles to Taiwan in 2006 in the place of helicopter batteries. The fuses sat in a warehouse in Taiwan for more than two years before being discovered in March.