Posted on 09/24/2007 8:00:15 PM PDT by Red Steel
WASHINGTON -- -- Just after 9 a.m. on Aug. 29, a group of U.S. airmen entered a sod-covered bunker on North Dakota's Minot Air Force Base with orders to collect a set of unarmed cruise missiles bound for a weapons graveyard. They quickly pulled out a dozen cylinders, all of which appeared identical from a cursory glance, and hauled them along Bomber Boulevard to a waiting B-52 bomber.
The airmen attached the gray missiles to the plane's wings, six on each side. After eyeballing the missiles on the right side, a flight officer signed a manifest that listed a dozen unarmed AGM-129 missiles. The officer did not notice that the six on the left contained nuclear warheads, each with the destructive power of up to 10 Hiroshima bombs.
That detail would escape notice for 36 hours, during which the missiles were flown to a Louisiana air base that had no idea nuclear warheads were coming. It was the first known flight by a nuclear-armed bomber over U.S. airspace, without special high-level authorization, in nearly 40 years.
The episode, serious enough to trigger a rare "Bent Spear" nuclear incident report that raced through the chain of command to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and President Bush, provoked new questions about the adequacy of U.S. nuclear weapons safeguards while the military's attention and resources are devoted to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Three weeks after word of the incident leaked to the public, new details obtained by the Washington Post point to security failures at multiple levels in North Dakota and Louisiana, according to interviews with current and former U.S. officials briefed on the initial results of an Air Force investigation.
The warheads were attached to the plane in Minot without special guard for more than 15 hours, and they remained on
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Why?
honestly, if you were nuked I don’t think you’d even notice, a big flash and you’re gone....
Nah.
The nuclear “big flash and you’re gone instantly” region is only a few miles radius.
The rest of us (not under the big flash, or the slightly larger “big fire but not as quick a death”, nor the even larger “lots of wind damage but no immediate fire”) just have to put up with the (left over) liberal democrats surrendering ....
Those that are not requiring a Congressional investigation and asking “why don’t we arrest them” questions.
Someone mentioned Israel's Syria raid as well, and there might have been a wee bit of a retaliatory deterrent there as well.
Who was rattling what saber on the 29th of August, when this happened?
(Of course, deterrents aren't worth squat if no one knows about them...so I reckon, even the apparent 'leak' was intentional, too.)
From the article: No acknowledgment was made until service members leaked the story to the Military Times, which published a brief account Sept. 5.
Hmmmm. They would know better, I think, unless it was intentional all the way.
(Where did the "I can neither confirm nor deny..." bit go all of a sudden?)
It will be interesting to see where the officer 'relieved of his command' ends up.
Even if these were completely live weapons, loaded with fresh physics packages, fuel, batteries et al, they were not loaded up as such on the wing, and therefore how could they have been targeted?
And then if someone were to attempt to steal or launch the missile, how far would the B-52 ever get if it diverted off the mainland?
I don’t see how making the world (and all our own Leftards especially) think that we’re careless with nuclear warheads sends any “message” that we want to send.....??
Maybe I’m dense but I don’t get that....
And while the islamonut-jobs may well get a nuke and hit us with it, this is why it will be all over for him after that.
Depending on who is POTUS, the islamonut will see a pattern of 6 to 12 mega-ton nukes going off over Tehran, at 5,8,12k’ or whatever works best to make things hot real hot for him
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