[T-Bird45]

How can you mistakenly draw six weapons from storage, transport them to the flight line, load them on an airplane, fly them to a different base, then let them sit for 10 hours? All told, I would guess they were unaccounted for for at least 15 hours.

Former Army tactical missile nuke guy here with questions on USAF procedures:

1. Are ACMs always mated with warheads, whether HE or nuke?

2. Is it normal USAF procedure to bring out the nukes for anything other than an elevated DEFCON setting? Given the satellite abilities of most of our enemies, I would think that evidence of weapons being drawn from the Special Weapons bunkers (which are obviously different than regular bunkers due to the exclusion areas) would lead to excitement by the Russians, etc. From my Army experience in Germany during the Cold War, we were only admitted to the war stock storage area once for a practice upload of missile motors but not for warheads -- we were never given access inside the exclusion area.

3. Why would the pilots fly this load? Were they not required to sign for the weapons in order to know to maintain the two-man rule?

This whole matter just smells...

[Pistolshot]

Nukes for the AF and some for the Navy don't have the 'physics' package loaded on them, so you might have the entire explosives blocks without the plutonium.

Remember these were going for dismantling and most likely had no package loaded. Those have a huge amount of security around them.