Ok a state trooper buddy of mine just told me there was a “stand down” tomorrow 9/14, he mentioned the airforce would be grounding all planes and an oversight committee would be looking at the procedural mis-steps that happened when the plane with live nukes flew over US soil. cite
Anyone know anything about this? Does anyone know anything about a missing Nuke? Did I miss something on NPR or the national news that talks of some missing nuke or is this conspiracy theory BS? I’m not even sure what to think of what my buddy said, I think he’s been working too many nights…
Anyone know anything about this blather?
Also, apparently there are no flights from Israel to NYC from the 13th-15th…
My BS meter is flying off the charts. Anyone want to correct it?
My coworkers brother is one of the nuclear bomb handlers at Barksdale, the base that received the loaded B-52. The day of the big screwup, he was put on alert. Because of his job, this is a BIG DEAL. So my coworker knew that something big was on. His borther had to run home after showing up in duty uniform in order to put on his dress uniform. There was a veritable galaxy of shoulder stars at that base, all of them yelling. The Barksdale personnel had the comfort of knowing that they weren’t the ones who screwed up, but it was still an excrutiating day being interrogated by every officer in the air force. It takes an army of signatures and permissions just to be able to go into a room storing a nuke. And that’s for the guys who are supposed to go in there. For the bombs to be loaded into the plane means that there are now A LOT of vacant positions at Minot.
I can’t tell you anything about any missing nuke. But you just know that it’s probably permanently enshrined in conspiracy dogma by now.
I’m thinking that’s because it’s Rosh Hashanah, not because of any big conspiracy. Also, check out El Al’s website, they don’t have flights on Saturdays either.
Yup, I’ll vouch. It’s what we call a “Safety Day”.
I saw an article online earlier this morning, but now I can’t find it. Basically General Moseley decided to stand down all non-mission essential operations, and have everyone go over the safety/mission regulations as a ‘retraining’ measure.
It’s common practice on a unit level after an accident: everyone takes a day to review the procedures just to make sure they can identify the steps to accomplish. Why the entire Air Force? Why not! They ‘lost’ six nuclear weapons (a Pinnacle-series event) for a brief time–IIRC, an “Empty Quiver”.
Is it accurate to describe the missiles as “lost”? IIRC, they were never lost but were briefly unaccounted for because the people who were ferrying them around didn’t know what they were carrying. After all, the things don’t have signs on them saying “Hi, my name is NUKE”!
Also, if a missile is being carried externally on a B52, would it be standard procedure to take the warhead off of it? Doesn’t that create drag and mess with airflow?
They are described as “live” weapons but that doesn’t seem accurate either. Wouldn’t the guys in the cockpit need a special control panel to actually make use of them? It’s not like they’re just going to fall off the wings in the form of mushroom clouds… they kinda have to be armed first. So how were they “live”?
This whole situation reminds me of the beginning of “The Sum of All Fears” when the Israeli pilot loses a nuke because he doesn’t know what it is (he thinks it’s a fuel tank) and he gets shot down. Did the same sort of thing happen here? The crew was told “take these weapons from point A to point B” and they didn’t speculate too deeply on what their underwing cargo was? Are people’s careers actually going in the toilet for what seems to be a honest mistake?
For what it’s worth, my squadron hasn’t had any planes in the air since this happened.
Of course, my squadron doesn’t have any planes. <g>
If my experience pulling night-time Entry Controller shifts in basic Training is any indication, accountability is a BIG deal in the Air Force. Losing accountability of six thermonuclear warheads is presumably even a bigger deal than losing accountability of a couple of trainees at Lackland, and they made that into a pretty big event when it happened.
They can’t arm the nukes in flight on the B-52s anymore (they removed that capability a while back), but they can make a big mess without exploding. A long while back, a B-52 collided with a KC-135 over Spain and they had three nukes splatter themselves on the Spanish countryside. Really big involved cleanup for that one.
Air Combat Command (ACC) is only one of the 9 MAJCOMs, and there are a lot of airplanes that aren’t US-based fighters and bombers. I’m sure that Air Mobility Command will still be hauling cargo, Space Command will still be sitting silo duty, and AFSOC will still be eating snakes and slitting throats at midnight. PACAF and USAFE will still be flying missions over the Pacific and Europe.
That said, a command-wide safety day is still a big deal, and it’s probably the right move.
They don’t? I’m under the impression that the weapons are clearly marked. For example, blue markings indicate an inert weapon, yellow is high explosive, red is incindiary. Isn’t there a colour code for nuclear? Beside that don’t the carry nomenclature (such as ‘B-83’ or whatever), and wouldn’t they be readily identifyablejust by their shape? (Although I could understand not noticing if a nuclear-tipped AGM-86 was where a conventional one was just by the shape.)
You don’t just eyeball a stack of bombs and say, “Yep, there are . . . uh six of them.”
You sign in and sign out just to walk by the building where they are. There is a list of who can do that, and who can’t. Lots of very powerful people can’t. Actually moving one out of a building requires orders. The list of people who are authorized to give those orders is fairly short, and very specific.
“Uh, Sir, you have to sign for that.”
Someone has blundered. It is very unlikely that only one someone has blundered.
The someones who have blundered are, of necessity the exact someones who we depend on for the security of the most dangerous weapons in the world.
I think a day of training falls far short of the type of remedy I want, upon finding that any nuclear weapons are ever unaccounted for, for any length of time. Clusterfuck doesn’t even begin to describe it. Assuming stupidity is sufficient to account for the incident, we need a far more stringent level of accountability. If that is not the case, we need a whole new command structure, and perhaps parallel accountability all the way up, and down the chain of command. How many guards does it take to guard a bomb. It takes two, and I would prefer if they were not allowed to even know each other’s names.
Yes… I am not a PRP specialist, but I do know the program and am soon to be certified in it. Given the sensitive nature of nuclear weapons, yer damned straight that when positive control is lost on a nuclear weapon, it is considered ‘unsecured’ and “lost”. A “lost weapon” (nuclear) is a dread thing to anyone, because it can and will be traced back.
Jurph, I am Air Force, and and know we all stood down all non-mission essential flights to review procedures. I got the message and had to pass it onto the boss (an O-7). Wasn’t just ACC. CENTAF, AFRC, ANG . . . friggin’ everyone “got the memo”. . .
And I tell you that the pilot’s head will probably be on a platter too, dead0man. PRP includes the aircraft commander and aircrew. If they don’t know they’re carrying a nuke, they weren’t briefed correctly. The Personnel Reliability Program mandates that everyone knows the gravity of the situation. Besides, the pilot has to sign for the weapon and the aircraft on ‘delivery’. It’d be different if we were on nuclear alert (which we stood down in '91), but we ain’t so he’s gotta know–unless someone seriously fuXX0rs up, which is my suspicion.
Wasn’t it the nuclear warheads that were attached to them (and not supposed to be) that were “lost”?
If hazardous waste in a doctor’s office has to be labelled, something makes me think that a nuclear warhead might have an indicator of some kind.
I’m sure what happened at Chernobyl was also an honest mistake. Some kinds of honest mistakes are so egregious that they can’t be allowed to happen without very serious consequences. Otherwise, the job won’t be taken seriously.
I am curious. What would have happened if the plane carrying the warheads had crashed?
How is it that we even know about this? I’m genuinely surprised.
It would be exceedingly unlikely that the warhead(s) would have detonated, because doing so requires very precise timing. Still, if the conventional explosives had detonated, it would have spread plutonium over a wide area, and made quite a mess.
I wish I could find better info on this. For instance, half the stories say that the missiles were mistakenly loaded on the plane, but then I found this:
Which implies the error was in not removing them. So would they usually always be loaded on these planes? Are the B-52s still on alert?