Just after 9 a.m. on Aug. 29, a group of U.S. airmen entered a sod-covered bunker on North Dakota’s Minot Air Force Base with orders to collect a set of unarmed cruise missiles bound for a weapons graveyard. They quickly pulled out a dozen cylinders, all of which appeared identical from a cursory glance, and hauled them along Bomber Boulevard to a waiting B-52 bomber.The airmen attached the gray missiles to the plane’s wings, six on each side. After eyeballing the missiles on the right side, a flight officer signed a manifest that listed a dozen unarmed AGM-129 missiles. The officer did not notice that the six on the left contained nuclear warheads, each with the destructive power of up to 10 Hiroshima bombs.
That detail would escape notice for an astounding 36 hours, during which the missiles were flown across the country to a Louisiana air base that had no idea nuclear warheads were coming. It was the first known flight by a nuclear-armed bomber over U.S. airspace, without special high-level authorization, in nearly 40 years.
The episode, serious enough to trigger a rare “Bent Spear” nuclear incident report that raced through the chain of command to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and President Bush, provoked new questions inside and outside the Pentagon about the adequacy of U.S. nuclear weapons safeguards while the military’s attention and resources are devoted to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That last line was a bit irritating. A couple of maintainers screwed up. That was it. If you want to go looking for root causes, look no farther than the policy of storing conventional and nuclear bombs in the same igloo. Rest of the article is pretty interesting though, check it out.
This is unfortunate, but if it will make the Air Force tighten up it’s procedures then it is a good thing. Doesn’t hurt to dust off the cobwebs.
As bad as the incident was it is good to know the military can get nukes up and in the air quickly in the event that they were actually needed.
Why were nukes and nonnukes stored in the same igloos?
Perhaps a lack of storage space….
maybe if ye weren’t busy bloggin’ and playin’ Halo3 … :)
Ah… yes… but… our society no longer embraces personal liability. It couldn’t possibly be the maintainers fault, so it must be the fault of the process. And I’m sure, somehow, it’s all President Bush’s fault.
Pardon the question, but was a conventionally-armed version of the AGM-129 ever fielded? It seems not, from my first glance.
Ah… yes… but… our society no longer embraces personal liability. It couldn’t possibly be the maintainers fault, so it must be the fault of the process. And I’m sure, somehow, it’s all President Bush’s fault.
How did you get that? Of course it is someone’s fault, but that doesn’t mean the process shouldn’t be looked at, and improved if possible. Dust off the cobwebs, do some re-training, and kick some butt.
Yes, a breach never occurred BUT, as has been pointed out, it COULD have occurred. All it takes is a snoop from the “other side” to discover it and we’re toast. Protocols & procedures are for a reason. Someone obviously [bleep]ed up BIGTIME and ASSUMED…and we all know what the little play on words with that word says. And they did make asses of themselves. Mistakes happen but never should have. Yes, investigate, correct and kick BUTTS, so it never occurs again. We might not be so lucky next time.
“A couple of maintainers screwed up”??? Are you kidding me?? If a couple of maintainers can forget to rub the sleep out of their eyes and put six nucs on a buf there is more wrong than just their short attention span.
They entered a nuclear weapons storage area and pulled 6 nuclear weapons out and stuck them on a plane with no one noticing? Last time I was involved in a nuclear weapons we had marines surrounding us and an some type of armored vehicle on the perimeter. No security on the weapon storage seems very peculiar.