Nuclear warheads go AWOL on a B-52

Various media (see below for links) have reported the story of the Advanced Cruise Missiles (ACMs) that were flown from a base in North Dakota to a base in Louisiana, apparently by accident, and sat relatively unguarded at both bases for a number of hours before the error was noticed. The flight was supposed to have taken non-nuclear ACMs on the journey to Louisiana to be decommissioned.

The root cause: An Airforce investigation uncovered that the ground crews who loaded the planes had abandoned the formal process for managing the loading and unloading of missiles in favour of their own ‘informal’ system. The Chairwoman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces sub-committee was quoted as saying:

“These are not just rules that people dreamed up … just so they could check off the boxes,” she said. “This is fundamentally important to the security of the country and the world.”

The coverage from boston.com gives some detail on the various process checks that appear to have been missed or skipped.

The impact:

The potential impact in terms of the risk of nuclear material being stolen or the risk of nuclear contamination if the planes had crashed (the warheads would not have exploded) were thankfully avoided in this case.

However, the impacts have been severe on the careers of those involved. According to the AP Wire service (via AOL), four officers have been relieved of their commands, 65 Airmen have been de-certified from handling nuclear materials and the entire 5th Bomb Wing has been “de-certified from its wartime mission”. Which apparently was not to misplace nukes. Some media services report that the Airforce is planning to fire some of those involved.

Perhaps worryingly the original count of missiles that arrived in Louisiana was put at five and then later upgraded to six.

A conspiracy theorist’s dreamscape if ever we saw one.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2396127.ece

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/21/wnuke121.xml

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/10/20/4_colonels_relieved_of_command_over_nuclear_armed_flight/

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