" BIG BROTHER BLUNDER "

[Deleted]

B-52 bomber, accidentally armed with warheads, went over several states

Air Force official fired after 6 nukes fly over U.S.
WASHINGTON - A B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads and flown for more than three hours across several states last week, prompting an Air Force investigation and the firing of one commander, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.
.Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called the mishandling of the weapons “deeply disturbing” and said the committee would press the military for details. Rep. Edward J. Markey, a senior member of the Homeland Security committee, said it was “absolutely inexcusable.”
.“Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible,” said Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the House task force on nonproliferation.
. The plane was carrying Advanced Cruise Missiles from Minot Air Force Base, N.D, to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug. 30, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a Defense Department policy not to confirm information on nuclear weapons.
.In addition to the munitions squadron commander who was relieved of his duties, crews involved with the mistaken load — including ground crew workers — have been temporarily decertified for handling munitions, one official said.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20427730/?GT1=10357

... My comment is that it's ok for them to fly over other countries .... JUST NOT THEIR OWN ?

[Deleted]

.... wiping egg off thier faces now ....


Though somebody had to be accountable , the top brass was fired and everyone else was demoted ... was that fair Where's the justice here , alot of fingers pointing and assuming guilty .

[Deleted]

The saga of a ‘Bent Spear’

6 nukes fly across U.S.; no one notices for 36 hours — how could it happen?

Just after 9 a.m. on Aug. 29, a group of U.S. airmen entered a sod-covered bunker on 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.

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.


www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20926465/

[sasquatch]

Yeah well that no fly reg for nukes was an attempt to generate safety and hopefully prevent an accident.

Back in the 40s a B47 had a whoops and a nuke fell out.

The TNT charge went off but the nuke didn't go nuke although the conventional explosives knock a house off it's footing 1/4 mile away.

Apparently 6 of the 7 failsafe devises failed but one held.

In this case, this was gross negligence. If you are hauling auto-parts, you must check every skid against your order sheet and not leave it to the moron loading.

In this case the flight officer did not check. And the armoury crew screwed up bigtime. The flight officer should have been checking the shackles anyhoo.

In my experience with the military, everything is clearly, blatantly colour-coded.

Funny thing is those war-head will now be loaded in an unmarked or unplacarded van-trailor and be driven back to Minot by a civilian, unbriefed driver. Need to know basis.
Except for GPS tracker/alarms and a discrete escort......nothing special. If you saw it on the super-slab, you would never know and that's the idea.