Posted on 09/07/2007 12:39:51 PM PDT by chemical_boy
1) I've read on several sites that ALCMs and warheads are stored seperately. 2) Buffs haven't sat on the Tarmac loaded with Nuclear weapons ready to spank the russians/Chinese since the early 90s.
My question is could some idiot back then have neglected to take the warheads off the missiles and Armed ALCMs sat in storage with rest of the unarmed ALCMs for 16 years?
Highly unlikely.
Nukular warheads are inventoried at highly frequent intervals.
I hope it’s for propaganda purposes. I have no relevant response to your inquiry. Just wanted to say that.
Ok, thanks
I tend to agree with the theory that the story was an intentional release. Gives countries like Iran something to wonder about.
It reminded me of when Ronald Reagan got a rifle for a present during the time of the Iranian hostage situation, like day 400. He lifted the weapon and for all the world to see (particularly the Iranians), you could believe he would use the weapon.
If they did, the warheads would be fizzles by now as the tritium gas would have decayed, making a thermonuclear reaction either unlikely or very reduced in power. The fission trigger for the fusion bomb would still kick ass though.
Economy of expression lesson.
I was watching Drama Queen Shep Smith the other day. He made it seem like it was a mistake of unimaginable proportions. I guess he doesn’t know that an H bomb is nestled in the mud right off the Georgia coast. Shoot they use to fly with these things all the time during the cold war. Shep is such a metro!!
Munitions crews are required to load and unload the munitions on a frequent basis...to certify themselves....which I’d guess that attaching the nuclear “head” might be part of this test and practice. At some point, they must have been using a particular aircraft which was on standby (just my humble guess)...and the munitions guys didn’t schedule things correctly...and it was pulled for a training flight...with the operations scheduler left totally in the dark.
How does this all happen? Declining numbers throughout the Air Force...people trying to do more with less....technicians pulling various augmentation duties (even deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq in support of convoy duty there for the Army). Instead of having twelve people who could have stepped in to halt this from happening....you ended up with almost no one (either qualified or competent enough) to recognize the ongoing situation.
Don’t shake your heads....this is simply the first of many such episodes that you will start to notice every few weeks within the military.
I agree with the theory that this was deliberate to get the Iranians attention. We used to fly nukes around all the time. Remember the Buff that crashed in the ocean off Spain I think with 4 weapons. And another Buff that crashed in Greenland with nukes aboard.
No explosion, no nuclear leak. Instant sunshine packages are tougher than people think.
No.
I find it very hard to believe that this was accidental. Or at least an accident of the kind you theorize.
I worked on nuke alert in the 70's, and any movement of nukes was done with some pretty impressive security. The aircraft with weapons were in a storage area with double fences and guards all around like a high security prison. When the weapons were moved around, it was done in a caravan with vehicles carrying machine guns and guards with M-16s in front and back.
The only possible scenario I could think of was mixing up "shapes" (fake weapons that appear completely real - no "blue" color coding like fake conventional weapons) with the real deal. The same weapons handlers delt with both real weapons and shapes, and perhaps they were mixed.
I still prefer the option that we're just sending signals to Iran that we have lots of these things and they don't.
My guess would be more of a “Hey sorry Vlad, we, um, accidentally loaded nukes on a strategic bomber. By the way, what is with all this flying toward England lately?”
So they were flying with a load of nukes aboard, so what.
March 11, 1958, Florence, South Carolina
A B-47E accidentally jettisoned an unarmed nuclear weapon without its fissile core at 15,000 feet, which impacted in a sparsely populated area 6-1/2 miles east of Florence, South Carolina. The bomb’s high explosive material exploded on impact, causing property damage and several injuries. The aircraft, which was heading to an undisclosed overseas base, returned to Hunter Air Force Base in Georgia without further incident.
Numerous accounts of the accident describe the bomb falling in the garden of Mr. Walter Gregg in Mars Bluff, South Carolina. The high explosive detonation virtually destroyed his house, creating a crater 50-70 feet in diameter and 25-30 feet deep. It caused minor injuries to Mr. Gregg and five members of his family, and damaged five other houses as well as a church. Following the accident, Air Force crews were ordered to “lock in” their nuclear bombs, which reduced the possibility of accidental drops but increased the danger during a plane crash.
Don’t they store them without the tritium, and pump it in before use?
What is a “buff”? Military slang for bomb?
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