Nuclear warheads mistakenly flown on B-52

I think they were thinking....We're getting that war with Iraq-N even if we have to dropped a city on a nuke- mmm i mean nuke a city.....:rasta:

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 bomberâ??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 wouldnâ??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.

â??Air Force standards are very exacting when it comes to munitions handling,â?� he said. â??The weapons were always in our custody and there was never a danger to the American public.â?�

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 warheadsâ?? elaborate safeguards would prevent a nuclear detonation from occurring, he said.

â??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,â?� 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 Oâ??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.

â??The Air Force takes its mission to safeguard weapons seriously,â?� he said. â??No effort will be spared to ensure that the matter is thoroughly and completely investigated.â?�

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I don't know what the big deal is, you have a few thousand nukes laying around you are just gonna lose a few once and awhile. Which is a pretty good reason not to have a few thousand nukes laying around. Not that we have ever been exactly rational in our obsessive bomb building.

I agree, having thousands of nukes, enough to destroy the world a hundred times over is rediculous. Everyone knows we have the biggest and the best nukes and to fuck with us on a nuclear level would be their ultimate demise, Lets start a nuke destruction program for real, keep enough to say only destroy the world a couple a times, then maybe get serious about really banning ,nukes altogether.

Howdy medicinal,

Yup..we should git rid of all of our old nukes,then replace them with newer,more advanced nukes,just like the russians are doing,even as we speak.

As long as commies in russia and china,are building nukes,we should not make ourselves impotent,as for pakistan,we should have been paying attention and not allowed them to have nukes,which are now in danger of falling into the hands of AQ,then ya got north korea,they shouldn't have nukes either.

We should be building neutron bombs,they have a very short half-life,we should also be building RNEP's(robust nuclear earth penetrator),and start dropping em on Tora Bora,till we flatten the whole mountain.

Don't worry,it'll take a nuke or dirty bomb here,before we git riled up enuff to nuke them.

However,both the russians and chinese,are building huge underground NBC bunkers,capable of supporting up to 100,000 people at a time,they're preparing to survive an initial nuke attack and a secondary attack,shouldn't we have enuff nukes to keep attacking,until we git-r-done ?

Have a good one ...

Either that or live in peace with them like we did during most of the 20th century. Destroy the world or don't. Some choices are hard. Some aren't.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by andruejaysin

Either that or live in peace with them like we did during most of the 20th century. Destroy the world or don't. Some choices are hard. Some aren't.

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Howdy andruejaysin,

Our enemie's want peace too-the peace that comes when yer enemy is wiped out or subjugated..and they're perfectly willing to die for such,as doing so,brings them great honor and reward,from Allah.

It would be better if we could co-exist in peace,but the koran forbids such and demands that all non-muslim goverments be dissolved and that all infidels,Jews and People of the Book(Bible),be converted and subjugated or wiped out.

Have a good one ! :)

A very convicing arguement for starting a war with china and russia.

I think that this is totally unacceptable for our military to not know that nuclear weapons were on board that plane. The US military...the most powerful and technologically advanced military on the planet cannot even keep a full inventory of its most powerful and deadly weapons. You would think that these weapons have been on full watch since the 40s.

These weapons are n-u-c-l-e-a-r. Thats right. Nuclear. Do you know what nuclear means? It means its a pretty strong weapon!

And why in the world would you want to replace them? So they can kill more efficiently? Ridiculous.

Human beings should not even be messing with nukes. We may understand how it works partially, but when you go to use it against your fellow man, than I have a problem and an obligation to stop it. We can't even achieve world peace and we have the capability of destroying the planet many times over.

Save your nukes for an asteroid, not an asshole.

Fuck this government.