# USAF Missing Nukes



## tomahawk6 (4 Sep 2007)

They were only missing for 3.5 hours and only discovered when the B52 landed. ;D

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/09/marine_nuclear_B52_070904w/

Nuclear warheads mistakenly flown on B-52
By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Sep 4, 2007 21:22:50 EDT

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.”


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## GAP (4 Sep 2007)

I would have to wonder if the inventory control of nuclear weapons is so casual that they can be didy-bopped out of storage, loaded on hard points, and wander away, all without the controlling authority being aware of it? 

Something smells.


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## tomahawk6 (5 Sep 2007)

Sounds like the cruise missiles were to be moved to another base. But someone forgot to remove the warheads or they assumed the warheads would go with the cruise missile. Heads will roll for sure. Its still a bit funny though.


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## Brockvegas (5 Sep 2007)

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Sounds like the cruise missiles were to be moved to another base. But someone forgot to remove the warheads or they assumed the warheads would go with the cruise missile. Heads will roll for sure. Its still a bit funny though.



I believe you may be correct in your idea as to how it happened, and that heads WILL roll, but I don't think that there is ANYTHING funny about 5 nuclear warheads being unaccounted for, for any length of time. They may have still been in control of the air force, but they didn't know that untill the plane landed, and that's a major problem.


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## SeaKingTacco (5 Sep 2007)

Again the question has to be asked: how did the load crew get the weapons out of the Weapon Storage Area and uploaded to the aircraft without anyone noticing they were live?

Betcha the next crew flying supposedly de-warheaded (is that a word?) nuclear weapons is going to ask a whole bunch more questions...


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## aesop081 (5 Sep 2007)

SeaKingTacco said:
			
		

> de-warheaded (is that a word?)



I guess it is now ?


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## tomahawk6 (5 Sep 2007)

Looks like it was 6 nuclear cruise missiles. The 5th Munitions Sqdn CO has been relieved. The munitions crews were decertified which means they cant handle nuclear weapons. Each weapon is tracked by a computer inventory program. Each nuclear cruise missile is heavier than the conventional cruise missile and is marked by a red sign. Each weapon was supposed to be signed out and safety protocols were supposed to be observed while loading the missiles. Alot of steps were evidently ignored.


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## SeaKingTacco (5 Sep 2007)

I was wondering if a cruise missile looks different externally if loaded with a live warhead...in which case...why the hell did the aircrew not notice on the walkaround?  A case of seeing what you expect to see?


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## tomahawk6 (5 Sep 2007)

Evidently the two cruise missile types are identical except the nuclear one is heavier and has a special marking. Unless the missiles were not properly marked in the first place and they grabbed up 6 missiles which I dont think happened. Its possible they thought the missiles already had their warheads removed. Or they were told to ship out 6 nuclear cruise missiles for shipment to Barksdale, but even if that happened evidently the missiles were not signed out and other procedures werent followed. Basically procedures werent followed.

I remember a story my dad told once. He commanded a Nike missile battalion in LA. He was at commanders call at brigade HQ when the meeting was disturbed by an urgent call from his battalion hq. He had to report to the brigade commander that one of his batteries had been compromised and the agent had left a "bomb" in the underground missile storage area.Just when he thought he was about to be fired the other battalion commanders also got similar calls, they had all been compromised. What happened was that the MI agent posed as someone on the access list. The guards simply checked the name with the list and granted access. Procedures werent properly followed as an ID was supposed to be inspected by the guard. Anyway its an example how the commander can get screwed by his subordinates not following SOP.


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## geo (6 Sep 2007)

Aren't we all happy that the Air Force pilot didn't have a negligent discharge


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## Bobby Rico (16 Sep 2007)

Very careless.  What if they'd been on a live fire exercise?


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## Flip (16 Sep 2007)

Bobby Rico said:
			
		

> Very careless.  What if they'd been on a live fire exercise?



Like attacking Iranian nuclear facilities? ;D


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## armyvern (16 Sep 2007)

Flip said:
			
		

> Like attacking Iranian nuclear facilities? ;D



Double the _boom_ for the buck!!


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## Bobby Rico (16 Sep 2007)

I suppose I should have said "What if they'd been on a live fire exercise, near the Iran border?" wink-wink, nudge-nudge! 

Not that I'm trying to suggest anything. Who me?  No, no, never.  what happened?  ;D


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## The Bread Guy (23 Sep 2007)

Longish, and who's to say how much is bang on, but someone's trying to find out - usual disclaimer applies....

*Missteps in the Bunker*
Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, 23 Sept 07
Article link

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.

Three weeks after word of the incident leaked to the public, new details obtained by The Washington Post point to security failures at multiple levels in North Dakota and Louisiana, according to interviews with current and former U.S. officials briefed on the initial results of an Air Force investigation of the incident.

The warheads were attached to the plane in Minot without special guard for more than 15 hours, and they remained on the plane in Louisiana for nearly nine hours more before being discovered. In total, the warheads slipped from the Air Force's nuclear safety net for more than a day without anyone's knowledge.

"I have been in the nuclear business since 1966 and am not aware of any incident more disturbing," retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, who served as U.S. Strategic Command chief from 1996 to 1998, said in an interview.

A simple error in a missile storage room led to missteps at every turn, as ground crews failed to notice the warheads, and as security teams and flight crew members failed to provide adequate oversight and check the cargo thoroughly. An elaborate nuclear safeguard system, nurtured during the Cold War and infused with rigorous accounting and command procedures, was utterly debased, the investigation's early results show.

The incident came on the heels of multiple warnings -- some of which went to the highest levels of the Bush administration, including the National Security Council -- of security problems at Air Force installations where nuclear weapons are kept. The risks are not that warheads might be accidentally detonated, but that sloppy procedures could leave room for theft or damage to a warhead, disseminating its toxic nuclear materials.

A former National Security Council staff member with detailed knowledge described the event as something that people in the White House "have been assured never could happen." What occurred on Aug. 29-30, the former official said, was "a breakdown at a number of levels involving flight crew, munitions, storage and tracking procedures -- faults that never were to line up on a single day."
Missteps in the Bunker

The air base where the incident took place is one of the most remote and, for much of the year, coldest military posts in the continental United States. Veterans of Minot typically describe their assignments by counting the winters passed in the flat, treeless region where January temperatures sometimes reach 30 below zero. In airman-speak, a three-year assignment becomes "three winters" at Minot.

The daily routine for many of Minot's crews is a cycle of scheduled maintenance for the base's 35 aging B-52H Stratofortress bombers -- mammoth, eight-engine workhorses, the newest of which left the assembly line more than 45 years ago. Workers also tend to 150 intercontinental ballistic missiles kept at the ready in silos scattered across neighboring cornfields, as well as hundreds of smaller nuclear bombs, warheads and vehicles stored in sod-covered bunkers called igloos.

"We had a continuous workload in maintaining" warheads, said Scott Vest, a former Air Force captain who spent time in Minot's bunkers in the 1990s. "We had a stockpile of more than 400 . . . and some of them were always coming due" for service.

Among the many weapons and airframes, the AGM-129 cruise missile was well known at the base as a nuclear warhead delivery system carried by B-52s. With its unique shape and design, it is easily distinguished from the older AGM-86, which can be fitted with either a nuclear or a conventional warhead.

Last fall, after 17 years in the U.S. arsenal, the Air Force's more than 400 AGM-129s were ordered into retirement by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Minot was told to begin shipping out the unarmed missiles in small groups to Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, La., for storage. By Aug. 29, its crews had already sent more than 200 missiles to Barksdale and knew the drill by heart.

The Air Force's account of what happened that day and the next was provided by multiple sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the government's investigation is continuing and classified.

At 9:12 a.m. local time on Aug. 29, according to the account, ground crews in two trucks entered a gated compound at Minot known as the Weapons Storage Area and drove to an igloo where the cruise missiles were stored. The 21-foot missiles were already mounted on pylons, six apiece in clusters of three, for quick mounting to the wings of a B-52.

The AGM-129 is designed to carry silver W-80-1 nuclear warheads, which have a variable yield of between 5 and 150 kilotons. (A kiloton is equal to the explosive force of 1,000 tons of TNT.) The warheads were meant to have been removed from the missiles before shipment. In their place, crews were supposed to insert metal dummies of the same size and weight, but a different color, so the missiles could still be properly attached under the bomber's wings.

A munitions custodian officer is supposed to keep track of the nuclear warheads. In the case of cruise missiles, a stamp-size window on the missile's frame allows workers to peer inside to check whether the warheads within are silver. In many cases, a red ribbon or marker attached to the missile serves as an additional warning. Finally, before the missiles are moved, two-man teams are supposed to look at check sheets, bar codes and serial numbers denoting whether the missiles are armed.

Why the warheads were not noticed in this case is not publicly known. But once the missiles were certified as unarmed, a requirement for unique security precautions when nuclear warheads are moved -- such as the presence of specially armed security police, the approval of a senior base commander and a special tracking system -- evaporated.

The trucks hauled the missile pylons from the bunker into the bustle of normal air base traffic, onto Bomber Boulevard and M Street, before turning onto a tarmac apron where the missiles were loaded onto the B-52. The loading took eight hours because of unusual trouble attaching the pylon on the right side of the plane -- the one with the dummy warheads.

By 5:12 p.m., the B-52 was fully loaded. The plane then sat on the tarmac overnight without special guards, protected for 15 hours by only the base's exterior chain-link fence and roving security patrols.

Air Force rules required members of the jet's flight crew to examine all of the missiles and warheads before the plane took off. But in this instance, just one person examined only the six unarmed missiles and inexplicably skipped the armed missiles on the left, according to officials familiar with the probe.

"If they're not expecting a live warhead it may be a very casual thing -- there's no need to set up the security system and play the whole nuclear game," said Vest, the former Minot airman. "As for the air crew, they're bus drivers at this point, as far as they know."

The plane, which had flown to Minot for the mission and was not certified to carry nuclear weapons, departed the next morning for Louisiana. When the bomber landed at Barksdale at 11:23 a.m., the air crew signed out and left for lunch, according to the probe.

It would be another nine hours -- until 8:30 p.m. -- before a Barksdale ground crew turned up at the parked aircraft to begin removing the missiles. At 8:45, 15 minutes into the task, a separate missile transport crew arrived in trucks. One of these airmen noticed something unusual about the missiles. Within an hour, a skeptical supervisor had examined them and ordered them secured.

By then it was 10 p.m., more than 36 hours after the warheads left their secure bunker in Minot.

Once the errant warheads were discovered, Air Force officers in Louisiana were alarmed enough to immediately notify the National Military Command Center, a highly secure area of the Pentagon that serves as the nerve center for U.S. nuclear war planning. Such "Bent Spear" events are ranked second in seriousness only to "Broken Arrow" incidents, which involve the loss, destruction or accidental detonation of a nuclear weapon.

The Air Force decided at first to keep the mishap under wraps, in part because of policies that prohibit the confirmation of any details about the storage or movement of nuclear weapons. No public acknowledgment was made until service members leaked the story to the Military Times, which published a brief account Sept. 5.

Officials familiar with the Bent Spear report say Air Force officials apparently did not anticipate that the episode would cause public concern. One passage in the report contains these four words:

"No press interest anticipated."
'What the Hell Happened Here?'

The news, when it did leak, provoked a reaction within the defense and national security communities that bordered on disbelief: How could so many safeguards, drilled into generations of nuclear weapons officers and crews, break down at once?

Military officers, nuclear weapons analysts and lawmakers have expressed concern that it was not just a fluke, but a symptom of deeper problems in the handling of nuclear weapons now that Cold War anxieties have abated.

"It is more significant than people first realized, and the more you look at it, the stranger it is," said Joseph Cirincione, director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress think tank and the author of a history of nuclear weapons. "These weapons -- the equivalent of 60 Hiroshimas -- were out of authorized command and control for more than a day."

The Air Force has sought to offer assurances that its security system is working. Within days, the service relieved one Minot officer of his command and disciplined several airmen, while assigning a major general to head an investigation that has already been extended for extra weeks. At the same time, Defense Department officials have announced that a Pentagon-appointed scientific advisory board will study the mishap as part of a larger review of procedures for handling nuclear weapons.

"Clearly this incident was unacceptable on many levels," said an Air Force spokesman, Lt. Col. Edward Thomas. "Our response has been swift and focused -- and it has really just begun. We will spend many months at the air staff and at our commands and bases ensuring that the root causes are addressed."

While Air Force officials see the Minot event as serious, they also note that it was harmless, since the six nuclear warheads never left the military's control. Even if the bomber had crashed, or if someone had stolen the warheads, fail-safe devices would have prevented a nuclear detonation.

But independent experts warn that whenever nuclear weapons are not properly safeguarded, their fissile materials are at risk of theft and diversion. Moreover, if the plane had crashed and the warheads' casings cracked, these highly toxic materials could have been widely dispersed.

"When what were multiple layers of tight nuclear weapon control internal procedures break down, some bad guy may eventually come along and take advantage of them," said a former senior administration official who had responsibility for nuclear security.

Some Air Force veterans say the base's officers made an egregious mistake in allowing nuclear-warhead-equipped missiles and unarmed missiles to be stored in the same bunker, a practice that a spokesman last week confirmed is routine. Charles Curtis, a former deputy energy secretary in the Clinton administration, said, "We always relied on segregation of nuclear weapons from conventional ones."

Former nuclear weapons officials have noted that the weapons transfer at the heart of the incident coincides with deep cuts in deployed nuclear forces that will bring the total number of warheads to as few as 1,700 by the year 2012 -- a reduction of more than 50 percent from 2001 levels. But the downsizing has created new accounting and logistical challenges, since U.S. policy is to keep thousands more warheads in storage, some as a strategic reserve and others awaiting dismantling.

A secret 1998 history of the Air Combat Command warned of "diminished attention for even 'the minimum standards' of nuclear weapons' maintenance, support and security" once such arms became less vital, according to a declassified copy obtained by Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists' nuclear information project.

The Air Force's inspector general in 2003 found that half of the "nuclear surety" inspections conducted that year resulted in failing grades -- the worst performance since inspections of weapons-handling began. Minot's 5th Bomb Wing was among the units that failed, and the Louisiana-based 2nd Bomb Wing at Barksdale garnered an unsatisfactory rating in 2005.

Both units passed subsequent nuclear inspections, and Minot was given high marks in a 2006 inspection. The 2003 report on the 5th Bomb Wing attributed its poor performance to the demands of supporting combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wartime stresses had "resulted in a lack of time to focus and practice nuclear operations," the report stated.

Last year, the Air Force eliminated a separate nuclear-operations directorate known informally as the N Staff, which closely tracked the maintenance and security of nuclear weapons in the United States and other NATO countries. Currently, nuclear and space operations are combined in a single directorate. Air Force officials say the change was part of a service-wide reorganization and did not reflect diminished importance of nuclear operations.

"Where nuclear weapons have receded into the background is at the senior policy level, where there are other things people have to worry about," said Linton F. Brooks, who resigned in January as director of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Brooks, who oversaw billions of dollars in U.S. spending to help Russia secure its nuclear stockpile, said the mishandling of U.S. warheads indicates that "something went seriously wrong."

A similar refrain has been voiced hundreds of times in blogs and chat rooms popular with former and current military members. On a Web site run by the Military Times, a former B-52 crew chief who did not give his name wrote: "What the hell happened here?"

A former Air Force senior master sergeant wrote separately that "mistakes were made at the lowest level of supervision and this snowballed into the one of the biggest mistakes in USAF history. I am still scratching my head wondering how this could [have] happened."


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## geo (23 Sep 2007)

Mistakes were made at the lowest level of supervision?

I would contend that mistakes were made at every single level of supervision.
For the amount of slagging dished out at the Russians for their poor security at protecting their nuclear devices, the US has just proven that, they aren't any less at risk of screwing the pooch.


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## The Bread Guy (18 Oct 2007)

Here, with the latest, shared with the usual disclaimer....

*Tough Punishment Expected for Warhead Errors*
Officers May Lose Commands After Nuclear Missiles Were Flown on Bomber
By Thomas E. Ricks and Joby Warrick, Washington Post, 18 Oct 07

The Air Force has decided to relieve at least five of its officers of command and is considering filing criminal charges in connection with the Aug. 29 "Bent Spear" incident in which nuclear-armed cruise missiles were mistakenly flown from North Dakota to Louisiana, two senior Air Force officials said yesterday.

Although senior Defense Department officials have not been fully briefed on the results of an Air Force probe of the incident, the sources said that at least one colonel is expected to lose his position and that several enlisted personnel will also be punished as part disciplinary actions that could be among the toughest meted out by the Air Force in years.

The measures are expected to be formally announced tomorrow along with the detailed findings of an internal, six-week investigation into how a B-52 bomber crew mistakenly flew from one military air base to another with six nuclear warheads strapped to its wings. Air Force veterans have described the Aug. 29 incident as the one of the worst breaches in U.S. nuclear weapons security in decades.

A senior Air Force official familiar with the investigation said officers will be relieved at both installations involved in the incident: Minot Air Force Base, N.D., and Barksdale Air Force Base, La. A colonel commanding one of the Air Force wings is likely to be the highest-ranking officer to be relieved, the official said.

In addition, the official said, letters of reprimand will be issued to several enlisted service members. The personnel actions may be followed by criminal charges against one or more people, but that course of action is still being discussed at the highest levels of the Air Force, he added. The most likely such charge, he said, would be either dereliction of duty or willful disobedience of an order.

The anticipated personnel and disciplinary actions would be the most severe ever brought in the Air Force in connection with the handling of nuclear weapons, one of the officials said. The intention is to send the message that "the Air Force is getting back to the roots of accountability," the other official said. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation remains active.

The August event triggered a rare "Bent Spear" nuclear incident alert that was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and President Bush. Although some details are not yet publicly known, officials familiar with the investigation say the problem originated at Minot when a pylon carrying six nuclear-armed cruise missiles was mistaken for one carrying unarmed missiles. Minot had been in the midst of shipping unarmed cruise missiles to Barksdale for decommissioning.

That initial mistake was followed by many other failures, ultimately allowing six nuclear warheads to slip outside the Air Force's normal safeguards for more than 36 hours. The warheads were airborne for more than three hours and sat for long periods on runways at both air bases without a special guard. Air Force officials say there was little risk that the warheads could have been detonated, but the lapses could theoretically have led to warheads being stolen or damaged in a way that could have disseminated toxic nuclear materials.

One official noted yesterday that the service is determined to handle the case better than it did a 1994 incident in which two Air Force F-15C pilots shot down two Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters that were in northern Iraq's "no-fly" zone, killing 26. Few disciplinary actions resulted then, an outcome that some generals said should not be repeated.

Gen. John D.W. Corley, who on Oct. 2 became chief of the Air Combat Command, traveled to Washington this week to discuss his planned actions with senior Air Force officials. Gates is scheduled to be briefed on the Air Force moves tomorrow.

Officials cautioned, however, that an announcement could be delayed because of continuing discussions among top officials over whether the disciplinary action should go even higher up the command chain, perhaps to include some generals.

Both the 5th Bomb Wing, which is based at Minot, and the 2nd Bomb Wing, based at Barksdale, are part of the 8th Air Force, which is also based at Barksdale. The 5th Wing has been commanded since June of this year by Col. Bruce Emig, according to an Air Force Web site. The 2nd Wing is led by Col. Robert Wheeler, who took command in July. They are the Air Force's only two B-52 units.

The 8th Air Force, historically the service's main bomber force, is overseen by Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder Jr., a veteran B-52 pilot.


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## daftandbarmy (20 Oct 2007)

... and here's the punishment. I wonder if 'decertification' includes cell time?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071019/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/nuclear_mistake


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## geo (21 Oct 2007)

> 70 punished for warhead blunder
> ARMED B-52 FLEW ACROSS U. S. Carried 15 times power of Hiroshima A-bomb
> ANDREW ALDERSON
> and TIM SHIPMAN LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
> ...


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## daftandbarmy (22 Oct 2007)

So if an infantry soldier can go to jail for leaving an empty rifle lying around unattended, why no apparent jail time for these guys?


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## tomahawk6 (22 Oct 2007)

The nukes werent lying about, they were attached to a B52. I havent seen a soldier go to jail for leaving his rifle lying around.


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## armyvern (23 Oct 2007)

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The nukes werent lying about, they were attached to a B52. I havent seen a soldier go to jail for leaving his rifle lying around.



Oh I've seen one go to jail for it. It (his rifle) was attached to (well at least leaning against) a tree (and he was infantry) ... but that didn't count in the long run!! Egads!!


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## Spr.Earl (23 Oct 2007)

Er let me see? 
Was it not a mix up of live ammo with training ammo?
But in this case it's Nuke's !!

We are all trained not to mix ammo,live with dummy(training)right?

Yup all from the top down should be hanged,no one looked at the colour codes of the weapon's"
I don't know the colour code of a Nuke but I bet there is one for H.E. which is yellow which may or may not be on the weapon.

This is a lesson again of not mixing training rounds with live rounds.


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## geo (23 Oct 2007)

4 Senior officers & 66 other staff being punished.... I would suggest that this represents pert much everyone who screwed the pooch.  Also, would fathom a guess that all 70 of them will have their careers held back due to this near mishap.


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## Flip (23 Oct 2007)

Hmmmm, lucky to still have careers.



> 4 Senior officers & 66 other staff being punished.... I would suggest that this represents pert much everyone who screwed the pooch.  Also, would fathom a guess that all 70 of them will have their careers held back due to this near mishap.



In my little civilian world I've heard tell of whole teams being fired for a bad batch
of electronic assemblies. That way the employer is sure to to get to the cause.
Personally I think that civilian example is a little extreme but it is becoming an
accepted standard.( In electronics assembly anyway )

Once they get past all the recriminations it would be interesting to know what the 
process error actually was. And would the result be the same if the errors had the
opposite effect.  ie. Some nukes need to be moved and someone sends HE instead.

I'm sure we'll never know...


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## geo (23 Oct 2007)

Flip,
WRT the four senior officers.... there is a good chance that their careers have ended - though they will keep their pensions.

Process errors?   They did not check each and every unit.  They are supposed to check every single last one of them.  They did not.... they ARE the process error.


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## tomahawk6 (23 Feb 2008)

Update to the original story.Its not any better now than when I first posted it. 

Nuclear deficiencies

Records show Air Force let safety standards slip for many years before Minot
By Michael Hoffman - mhoffman@militarytimes.com
Posted : February 25, 2008

Before airmen at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., lost track of six nuclear warheads in late August, nuclear security there had eroded to such a level that instead of using orange cones and multiple official placards to distinguish racks of non-nuclear missiles from nuclear-tipped ones, the 5th Bomb Wing was using 8-by-10-inch sheets of paper placed on the pylons.

That all changed Aug. 30, when Air Force officials discovered a B-52 Stratofortress bomber had mistakenly flown the six warheads from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., and the glare of the national spotlight returned to America’s nuclear stockpile for the first time since the end of the Cold War.

Over the past four months, Air Force leaders have scrambled to review the nuclear program. On Feb. 11 and 12, they announced 132 recommendations to improve the service’s ability to protect the world’s most lethal weapons, the result of two internal reviews and a Defense Department investigation.

Four Air Force generals who testified about the Minot incident and nuclear security before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 12 said the service has lost its focus on the nuclear mission.

However, internal Air Force reports and safety records dating to 1992 show service officials received regular and consistent warnings about the erosion of nuclear safety standards. But there was no thorough examination of vulnerabilities until after the incident at Minot.

The intent of the late August mission was to fly a dozen Advanced Cruise Missiles from Minot to Barksdale to be decommissioned. But instead of loading two pylons, each containing six non-nuclear missiles, under the B-52’s wings Aug. 29, the 5th Bomb Wing airmen rolled out one pylon loaded with nuclear warheads and strapped it onto one of the wings.

All six warheads sat on runways for close to 36 hours — first at Minot and then at Barksdale — without the appropriate nuclear security until a 2nd Bomb Wing airman at Barksdale discovered the mistake Aug. 30.

Former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak warned 16 years ago when Air Combat Command took over the nuclear mission from Strategic Air Command “about the worsening practices regarding the safe handling and storage of nuclear weapons and directed commanders at every level to review surety programs,” according to a 2005 Natural Resources Defense Council report, “U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe: A Review of Post-Cold War Policy, Force Levels and War Planning.”

That sentiment was echoed in the Air Force’s most recent reviews of its nuclear program.

The review, done by a Defense Science Board task force upon the request of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and headed by former Air Force Chief of Staff retired Gen. Larry Welch, was particularly critical of the erosion of the nuclear program and the systemic Air Force problems that allowed it to occur.

“The task force and several of the senior [Defense Department] people interviewed believe that the decline in focus has been more pronounced than realized and too extreme to be acceptable,” the report read.

Last October, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, Air Combat Command produced a list of 237 reported “safety deficiencies” — known in the nuclear community as Dull Swords — over the past six years, three months.

Dull Sword is a term the Air Force uses to describe and report a discrepancy or problem with certified nuclear equipment or with the processes for handling nuclear weapons, said Col. Billy Gilstrap, ACC safety director. The more serious incident at Minot is described as a Bent Spear.

The records Kristensen received in response to his FOIA request went back only as far as June 2001, because the Dull Sword ACC digital database was not created until 2005 as part of a mishap prevention effort, Gilstrap said. Before that, Dull Sword records were deleted once the problem was fixed, or two years after the initial report, he said.

The list of Dull Sword records provided by the Air Force includes a short description of each safety discrepancy: From failures in the Personnel Reliability Program — which is used to determine which airmen can handle nuclear weapons — to broken towing vehicles used to transport warheads from the storage units to the bombers, to unexplained problems with the equipment designed to carry the nuclear weapons on the aircraft and other deficiencies.

The 509th Bomb Wing, which operates the B-2 Spirit bomber at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., alone recorded 111 of the 237 safety deficiencies, by far the most for one wing. However, Gilstrap said he looks at those records as a positive, not a negative.

“We’re proud of those guys,” he said. “We really encourage Dull Swords as much as possible. If we don’t know about it, we can’t fix it.”

Since the Minot and Barksdale mishap, top Air Force leaders have had a fix-it-now attitude, but back in 2003, an Air Force inspector general report warned that pass rates for nuclear surety inspections — which nuclear units receive every 18 months — had “hit an all-time low.” 

Historically, Air Force units had a 79 percent pass rate on NSIs, but that year, it dipped to 50 percent. Five of 10 units tested that year failed, with only one unit test left, the report stated.

“The poor performance can be rationalized many ways: the NSI sample size is dramatically smaller in recent years, ... conventional operations tempo is higher than ever before ... or the failures are attributable to complex regulatory guidance,” wrote Lt. Col. Lynn Scott, deputy director of inspections for the IG in 2003.

“While there is some shred of truth to [these rationalizations], the bottom line is that each one offers a convenient excuse to avoid accepting responsibility for failure — and failure is not something that is acceptable when it comes to the safety, security and reliability of our nuclear weapons.”

Ten years before, nuclear units in Europe faced a similar nuclear surety failure rate. U.S. Air Forces in Europe tested 12 units in 1993, and only seven passed, according to a partially declassified Air Force report, “History of United States Air Forces in Europe, Calendar Year 1993.”

But the inspection issue goes beyond pass-fail rates. 
High marks? 

Last year, Minot’s 5th Bomb Wing passed its NSI and received “outstanding” ratings in certain subareas of the test, such as the Personnel Reliability Program. 

“Our report found that the problem with the inspections is the scope is just too limited,” Welch told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 12. “Over time, the scope has been more and more limited, to the point where they really don’t demonstrate operational readiness.”

The Air Force also is taking its most comprehensive look yet at the breadth and depth of the nuclear surety inspection process, said Maj. Gen. Polly Peyer, who directed the Air Force’s blue ribbon review into the incident, which produced an internal report Feb. 12.

Lt. Gen. Daniel Darnell, deputy chief of staff for air, space and information operations, told senators that now nuclear units might receive less warning before an NSI takes place. 

“We think that there may be some value to a limited-notice inspection for units,” he said.

An executive summary of the blue ribbon review report, obtained by Air Force Times, said Peyer’s team of 30 airmen visited 29 locations and interviewed 822 people. The report criticized the inspection process, the waning focus on the nuclear mission, the lack of experience in the ranks and the aging equipment used to maintain the nuclear stockpile.

“We did see a diminished focus on the nuclear mission,” Peyer said in an interview. “You can kind of trace it back to 1991 and the end of the Cold War.”

The Air Force referenced the blue ribbon review’s 36 recommendations as justification for adding 11 items, totaling $99.5 million, to the unfunded requirements list it sent to Congress. These requests, designed to shore up nuclear security, include nuclear test equipment, intercontinental ballistic missile transporters, UH-1N helicopters to monitor missile fields and nuclear munitions storage trailers.

Service officials said they could not fit the requests into the regular fiscal 2009 budget because it was due before the report from the blue ribbon panel.

Aging infrastructure is a problem, Peyer told senators at the Feb. 12 hearing. “For example, nuclear weapons test equipment is 25 to 30 years old, and so [we’re] definitely [looking] at recapitalizing that,” Peyer said.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said he didn’t understand how updating nuclear weapons security could be put on the back burner over the years.

“How do you think we got to where we didn’t allocate enough to ensure nuclear weapons surety and safety, even in an environment where we’ve got constrained resources?” he asked.
Fair warning 

But the problem is not new. A decade ago, security systems used to monitor nuclear weapons storage areas at bases such as Minot, Barksdale and Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., had exceeded their “useful life cycle” by 12 years and were in danger of failing, according to a partially declassified report, “History of Air Combat Command: 1 January — 31 December 1998.”

The Air Force installed the Advanced Entry Control System that year at all three bases, narrowly avoiding a dangerous sensor failure, ACC Security Forces officials said in the report.

Peyer said the service also is looking into procuring new technology to monitor its nuclear stockpile.

For example, portal monitors that can detect sources of radiation entering or leaving a weapons storage area are being considered. Such an advance could have prevented the mistake at Minot by warning airmen that radiological munitions were exiting the storage structure.

Peyer, a senior logistics officer, said she has seen technological advances used in the logistics field and would like to see them transferred to tracking nuclear weapons, especially an information system that could “tie together scheduling functions.”

Maj. Gen. Douglas Raaberg, ACC’s director of air and space operations, told senators three major scheduling mistakes by the 5th Bomb Wing led to the mix-up at Minot.

But, Peyer warned that technological upgrades can’t make up for airmen’s lack of expertise in handling nuclear munitions. Along with the loss of focus on the nuclear mission has come a waning experience level within the ranks.

“The decline is characterized by embedding nuclear mission forces in non-nuclear organizations, markedly reducing levels of leadership whose focus is the nuclear enterprise, and a general devaluation of the nuclear mission and those who perform the mission,” according to the report by the Defense Science Board task force led by Welch.

Interviews with B-52 crews showed they typically spend only 5 percent to 20 percent of their time on the nuclear mission. Air Force leaders understand that the conventional mission is still the primary role of most bomber units, but they stressed that airmen need to spend more time training.

“We need to look at our exercise and inspection programs,” Peyer said. “What you can’t get from practical experience you have to supplement through your training and your exercise program. We can’t go back to where we were in 1991. We don’t live in the same world.”

By acting on the 132 recommendations of the various reviewing agencies, Air Force leaders hope to rebuild the nation’s faith in its ability to secure nuclear weapons, but Thune and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., voiced the concern many people still have: How could the Air Force have ignored the warnings and let the program erode to this point?

“The sloppiness and the lack of discipline and the lack of respect for the process didn’t just happen overnight,” Nelson said.

The spotlight on the Air Force’s nuclear program will eventually dim, Thune warned.

“While I have every confidence in the system while this subject is very much at the forefront of our minds, my concern would be that as we get farther away from the time of this incident that we’ll have the same loss of focus and perhaps erosion of procedures,” he said.


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## geo (24 Feb 2008)

And for years we've criticized the former Soviet republics for their lack of security and foresight in safing their inventory of WMDs...... 

Hove everyone has had a good sleep last night - those for some time to come may be the source of your worst nightmare(s)


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## ark (31 May 2008)

> BISMARCK, North Dakota (AP) -- The Air Force wing blamed for a foul-up in which a bomber mistakenly flew to Louisiana armed with nuclear missiles will have to be retested after coming up short in an inspection.
> 
> The Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Air Force conducted a weeklong inspection of the Minot Air Force Base's 5th Bomb Wing beginning May 16, said a base spokeswoman, Maj. Elizabeth Ortiz.
> 
> ...



http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/30/nuclear.mistake.inspection.ap/index.html

Looks like they are not out of the woods yet.


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## lone bugler (31 May 2008)

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The nukes werent lying about, they were attached to a B52. I havent seen a soldier go to jail for leaving his rifle lying around.



are you sure about that, I know a solider who was serverly punished for leaving his rifle in the bush after an exercise, I believe they found it three days later and he got discharged. one more thing, can a rifle take out a major US city in a second? It might have been strapped to a B-52 but could have ended in a "broken arrow". The U.S. have lost at least half a dozen nuclear devices because they shouldn't be there, wasting the fuel of the plane until it potentially crashes...

can't believe this stuff keeps on happening, wasn't it a couple months ago that they shipped weapon control electronics to Taiwan by mistake?


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## MedTechStudent (31 May 2008)

Oh this is _obviously_ a cover up.  Its clear that John Travolta took them.   ;D


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## tomahawk6 (1 Jun 2008)

More bad news at Minot AFB. It seems that even with a new commander the wing still isnt following procedure.

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/05/airforce_minot_failure_053008w/

Minot’s 5th Bomb Wing flunks nuclear inspection

By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday May 31, 2008 7:38:55 EDT
   
The 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., has failed its much-anticipated defense nuclear surety inspection, according to a Defense Threat Reduction Agency report.

DRTA inspectors gave the wing an “unsatisfactory” grade Sunday after uncovering many crucial mistakes during the weeklong inspection, which began May 17. They attributed the errors primarily to lack of supervision and leadership among security forces.

Inspectors from Air Combat Command also participated, but the Air Force refused to provide specifics on their findings.

Security broke down on multiple levels during simulated attacks across the base, including against nuclear weapons storage areas, according to the DTRA report, a copy of which was obtained by Air Force Times.

Inspectors watched as a security forces airman played video games on his cell phone while standing guard at a “restricted area perimeter,” the DTRA report said. Meanwhile, another airman nearby was “unaware of her duties and responsibilities” during the exercise.

The lapses are baffling, given the high-level focus on Minot since last August, when 5th Bomb Wing airmen mistakenly loaded six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles onto a B-52 Stratofortress and flew them to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., where the plane sat on the flight line, unattended, for hours. That incident not only embarrassed the Air Force, but raised concerns worldwide about the deterioration in U.S. nuclear safety standards.

Col. Joel Westa took command of the 5th Bomb Wing following that fiasco. After it failed an initial nuclear surety inspection, or dry run, in December, Westa acknowledged this inspection was going to be the “most scrutinized inspection in the history of time.”

Even so, airmen were unprepared.

“Overall their assessment painted a picture of some things we need to work on in the areas of training and discipline,” Westa said in a statement.

His airmen are working diligently to correct deficiencies, he said.

Inspectors from Air Combat Command will now return to Minot in August to determine if the necessary improvements have been made. Eventually, the wing will have to pass a full defense nuclear surety inspection.

Although the wing failed, it will keep its certification to handle nuclear weapons and will carry on with training right up to the day ACC inspectors revisit the base, said Maj. Thomas Crosson, a command spokesman. The base lost its certification immediately after the incident last August and didn’t have it restored until March 31, after it passed a second dry run.

The wing will participate in both a Red Flag exercise this summer and a nuclear readiness operation exercise as it prepares for the inspectors’ next visit, Crosson said.

DTRA inspectors gave the wing passing grades in nine of 10 areas they examined, including safety and technical operations, but failed it for its nuclear security.

“The most serious failure is the one regarding security, which is exactly what the Minot incident was all about,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.

Litany of failure
The DRTA report highlighted an incredible number of gaffes:

* An internal security response team didn’t respond to its “pre-designated defensive fighting position” during an attack on the weapon storage area, leaving an entire side of the maintenance facility vulnerable to enemy fire.

* Security forces didn’t clear a building upon entering it, which allowed inspectors to “kill” three of those four airmen.

* Security forces failed to use the correct entry codes, issued that week, to allow certain personnel into restricted areas.

* Security forces airmen failed to properly check an emergency vehicle for unauthorized personnel when it arrived at a weapons storage area, or search it correctly once it left.

* While wing airmen simulated loading an aircraft with nuclear weapons, security forces airmen failed to investigate vulnerabilities on the route from the storage area to the flight line, and didn’t arm three SF airmen posted at traffic control points along that route.

* While on the aircraft, one flight of security forces airmen didn’t understand key nuclear surety terminology, including the “two-person concept” — the security mechanism that requires two people to arm a nuclear weapon in case the codes fall into the hands of an airman gone bad.

“Security forces’ level of knowledge, understanding of assigned duties, and response to unusual situations reflected a lack of adequate supervision,” wrote the DTRA team chief.

Security forces leaders rarely visited their airmen on post, and routine exercises “were neither robust nor taken to their logical conclusion,” according to the report.

After reviewing base records, inspectors found “leaders were unengaged [in] the proper supervision of SF airmen.”

“If the leadership is still unengaged after all that has happened with the warheads, the missing ballistic missile fuses and problems with the first inspection, then they’re not fit to have this mission,” Kristensen said. “It’s really frightening.”

Security forces errors made up the majority of the 14-page DTRA inspection report, but inspectors found fault with other parts of operations, including late status reports and major errors in the wing’s personnel reliability program, which dictates who can handle nukes.

While reviewing records, inspectors found one individual cleared to handle nukes had been “diagnosed for alcohol abuse” but was allowed to keep his certification, according to the report.

More fallout?
Immediately after the loss of control over the six nuclear warheads last August, the former 5th Bomb Wing commander was fired, along with three other high-ranking officers. Sixty-nine airmen temporarily lost their certification to handle nukes.

Crosson said there are no plans to fire any “key personnel” now. He did not rule out punitive actions for other airmen, however.

This latest setback comes shortly after Air Force officials announced plans to form a new B-52 squadron at Minot, which will allow one bomber squadron to focus solely on the nuclear mission. The move is largely in response to the findings of a blue ribbon panel, which told Congress the bomber force had lost sight of the nuclear mission due to the heavy demands of supporting troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Several of the senior [Defense Department] people interviewed believe that the decline in focus has been more pronounced than realized and too extreme to be acceptable,” according to a report written by a Defense Science Board task force headed by retired Air Force Gen. Larry Welch, a former chief of staff.

Considering the level of resources dedicated to ensuring the 5th Bomb Wing could meet standards — including the arrival of new senior noncommissioned officers from other bases — Kristensen said he worries about nuclear security not only at Minot but across the service.

“It makes you wonder what’s going on elsewhere, like the nuclear weapons stationed at bases overseas, and at Barksdale Air Force Base and Whiteman Air Force Base,” he said.

ACC officials said the command will continue to support the 5th Bomb Wing’s leadership and provide the manning to fix security problems.

“We take our responsibilities to protect and safeguard weapons with the utmost seriousness, and understand there is zero tolerance for errors,” according to an ACC statement.

Airmen with the 5th Bomb Wing can expect more long hours ahead as the wing scrambles to fix its security holes before ACC inspectors return.

“They really need to drill their people to make sure this can’t happen,” Kristensen said.

It’s not the first time airmen at Minot have heard such warnings.


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