Air Force official rapped after nuclear flyover

NBC News ^ | 9-5-2007 | Jim Miklaszewski

[Westlander]

An Air Force squadron commander has been relieved of his command after five nuclear weapons were mistakenly loaded aboard a B-52 bomber and flown cross-country from North Dakota to Louisiana last week.

Five 150-kiloton warheads were attached to cruise missiles that were flown from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., to be dismantled, but the warheads should have been removed.

[Westlander]

Ooops.

[Ol' Sox]

Details, shmeetails.

[rwgal]

Maybe he was thinking ahead to that mission over Iran?

Meadow Muffin

[Obadiah]

Man I hate when they fly over the US and forget to remove the nuke warheads!

[El Sordo]

Hey, we’ve all done something like that ourselves at least once.

[ElkGroveDan]

OK so it was against policy, but BFD it’s not like there was any real danger. I’m more worried about passenger airline jets dropping 100-pound chunks of blue ice than a properly stowed and disarmed TNW flying over me.

[The Great RJ]

One would think that nukes are more closely scrutinized in how they are stored and handled. If this is how we do things imagine how Iran would handle its nukes.

[KarlInOhio]

How many Soviet/Russian nukes have been "misplaced" for a lot longer than three hours.

[Robert A Cook PE]

No, this was the right move. To relieve the AF officer, that is.

You DON’T screw with nukes. Too easy to get them anyway, we can’t afford errors like live weapon “loadout” mistakes - particularly when the missiles are going out of active duty into dismantling facilities.

Take it one step easier: A rack of conventional weapons, live warhead, live rocket motors, being on a fighter jet used to overfly a football stadium during the national anthem, with the flight path and plane timing being setup to simulate a coordinated “time-on-target” bomb drop ....

[Tijeras_Slim]

Boy have we become a bunch of bedwetters since Operations Head Start, Chrome Dome, Hard Head, Round Robin, and Giant Lance.

[johnny7]

[ASOC]

Further in the story we also see
“the Military Times said, quoting three officers who spoke on condition they remain anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss the incident...”

Seems like the Sqdn Commander should have some company in the unemployment line.

Why are we dismantling cruise missiles when we are so short as it is now

[Westlander]

'So what is the big deal?'

[silverleaf]

They were “not authorized to discuss the incident” (no kidding) so the cowardly self important snivelers called the Military Times.

[johnny7]

Hey, we’ve all done something like that ourselves at least once.

Live & learn!

[af_vet_rr]

OK so it was against policy, but BFD it’s not like there was any real danger.

People's careers will probably end over this. It is a huge deal. The Air Force does not like it when things like this happen, and so there will probably be people "retiring" early.

[patton]

oopies!

[af_vet_rr]

One would think that nukes are more closely scrutinized in how they are stored and handled.

They are, which is why I said some careers will probably end over this. There had to have been a couple of breakdowns somewhere in the process for this to happen. Chances are, the people who screwed up or had this happen under them will be quietly ushered out (we won't even realize they were basically forced to resign, it'll be that quiet) with maybe one or two publicly taking the blame.

[RightWhale]

There used to be thousands of nukes flying in the US airspace at any time. When they moved the nuke squadron from New Mexico to New Hampshire we got to see dozens of jet bomber contrails at any time for several years during the height of the nuke war scare.