[Racehorse]

Never ever deviate from the checklist.

In addition to the three colonels listed in the excerpt, the munitions commander had previously been relieved of duty.

[DoughtyOne]

To me, this seemed very long on wind and very short of substantive information.

[SolitaryMan]

As someone with a little experience in this area, I find it amazing they could have failed so dramatically.

[xcamel]

Biggest, dumbest, AF “tempest in a teapot” ever.

Seems none of these airmen never visited Rome AFB when there were 36 B-52’s fully loaded with nukes sitting on the tarmac 24/7/365 - oh - and nothing ever happened there, either.

[gunnyg]

http://tinyurl.com/2jv24n
and
http://tinyurl.com/37gf35
?????

[SauronOfMordor]

In addition to the three colonels listed in the excerpt, the munitions commander had previously been relieved of duty.

In a case of such widespread incompetence, the commanding general should also be a candidate for early retirement, as well as anybody who had anything to do with the colonels being cleared for their positions

[djxu456]

nukes have a different paint job, or not?

how could this be missed?

[bannie]

During a war...if they handled it, they shouldn’t have to explain it to the world.

[OldMissileer]

As an ex Nuclear Surety Officer from the Cold War era I am still at a loss as to how this could have happened.

After the major stand-down of alert birds, missiles, and weapons in the early 1990’s, and the elimination of Strategic Air Command, the top brass at Air Combat Command, mostly fighter jocks, saw little political or monetary incentive to keep us on the “razor’s edge” regarding nuclear weapons and thus the culture of safety and security was greatly diminished.

This was an across-the-board failure of responsibility.

[Joe Brower]

More grist for the mill.

Sounds like a major coverup for I-dont-know-the-hell-what.

[theFIRMbss]

>nuclear weapons were loaded on a B-52 bomber at Minot Air Force Base and were flown to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, said Maj. Gen. Richard Newton, assistant deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements

Minot is sometimes
singled out as a 'troubled'
city when people

discuss 'fringe' issues
like wide-spread Satanism
and military

links to fringe issues
like organized drug running.
I wonder if more

might be happening
behind-the-scenes to prompt this
open admission.

[puppypusher]

Its time to reactivate SAC.SAC never would have allowed that to happen.That’s one of the reasons why I never could understand the DOD’s reasoning to get rid of a dedicated nuclear attack force and combine it into what is Now called the Air Combat Command.

Air Combat Command knew nothing about the Strategic Mission.It was previously known as the Tactical Air Command.

[DuncanWaring]

He said the incident began with the failure of airmen to conduct a required examination before the weapons were loaded on the B-52.

It seems to me that the incident began when the "Nuclear Weapons Custodial Officer" (or whatever the appropriate title is) failed to know exactly where every darned one of his (or her) warheads was.

[HawaiianGecko]

  According to on AP article that can be found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21382005/

"Some 65 airmen have been decertified from handling nuclear weapons. The certification process looks at a person's psychological profile, any medications they are taking and other factors in determining a person's reliability to handle weapons.m handling nuclear weapons."

When I was a 463 we had a program called HRP-99 that monitored us (HRP= Human Reliability Program).  For 65 airmen  to be netted at one time tells me the USAF has canned the program,  is grossly incompetent, or is being run by a bunch of San Francisco liberals on drugs themselves.

Same article says: "The airmen replaced the schedule with their own 'informal' system, he said, though he didn't say why they did that nor how long they had been doing it their own way."

The above statement is the scary part. I hate to agree with Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), chairwoman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, but when she said:  "These are not just rules that people dreamed up ... just so they could check off the boxes," she said. "This is fundamentally important to the security of the country and the world." she hit the nail square on the head.

We had a MSgt at Malmstrom in the early '70s that wanted to deviate from procedures when we were replacing the Minuteman IIs with Minuteman IIIs.  He was hell bent to win some speed-medals I guess, and he managed to get burned for it. 

[Travis McGee]

ping

[baclava]

I used to work at a nuke site - I did the interviews and paperwork needed to medically decert someone. Those guys had no room for error, and always walked on eggshells, I can’t see this happening unless the commander was a complete doofus.

Just removing an asset from the WSA to the flightline was a major protocol exercise.

[RightWingConspirator]

This incident reminds me of an occurrence back in the late 1960's while I was assigned to the Directorate of Munitions in Hq PACAF. The Director believed he was a superb judge of men and had developed his set of "fair-haired boys", most notable only for their obsequiousness and sycophancy, and, in the opinions of their peers, not necessarily the best qualified for the command positions he awarded them. One of the "fair-haired boys" was given command of a special weapons munitions maintenance squadron (MMS) at a base in the western Pacific in 1970. About six months later the unit failed an IG inspection. Our Director, seeing that one of his boys was about to be taken down, set up a Munitions Assistance and Standardization Team (MAST) headed by an LC from his staff, to travel to the unit and "help them back to health", as the Director put it. Rather than the unit getting back to health, within two days of the MAST's departure to the unit the MMS commander and all of his key officers were fired and shipped out, but this was kept all hush-hush by our Director.

During a TDY trip many months later the LC told me the story of what had happened at the MMS. The evening after his MAST had arrived at the unit the MMS commander threw a big party for them. The next day they had scheduled a weapons maintenance procedure that required disassembling a weapon and replacing a limited-life component. At noon the E-9 on the team came into the weapons bay and found the weapon open and one 1st Lt alone with it. The E-9 asked the 1st Lt where the other member of his two-man team was, since the Two-Man Policy required that no weapon was ever to be left in the custody of only one person. The 1st Lt blithely replied that he had let everyone off to go lunch because he didn't think they needed to follow the Two-Man Policy all of the time. The E-9 picked up the phone and called a seven-high, and a minute later the 1st Lt was spread-eagled, face-down on the floor of the weapons bay with a security policeman's M-16 stuck in his back. The PACAF and CINCPAC command posts were flashed, the wing commander immediately relieved the MMS commander, the MAST leader was appointed temporary commander, and the weapon was reassembled and secured.

[Sword_Svalbardt]

When the 5X7 card says do this...do this without ANY deviation.

[Eaker]

Pity sake.

If my employers issued orders to me to show up at our office building with pistols strapped, my AR-15 slung on my back and shotgun in my hands I would QUESTION them.

Being told to arm a plane with nukes should have raised a red flag.

Something is weird here.

[RightWhale]

Something like 70 personnel are in line for some kind of demotion. However, this did not happen. The count of first five then six is suspicious. One dial-yield nuke is loose out there somewhere.