Posted on 04/03/2023 10:50:02 AM PDT by McGruff
One of the US nuclear bombs stored at a Dutch air base may have been damaged in a recent accident, according to a report published on Monday, which comes at a time when a new generation of the weapons are due to arrive on the continent.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) discovered a photograph of a B61 bomb being inspected for damage by US soldiers, including two from an explosive ordnance disposal unit, and a civilian. The rear of the bomb appears to have been twisted by an impact and one of the tail fins is missing. There is pink sticky tape covering an apparent hole.
A FAS report on Monday said the picture was included in a 2022 presentation for student job applicants by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, one of the country’s nuclear weapons facilities, and it geolocated the image to the Volkel air force base in the Netherlands, one of six bases in five European countries where a total of 100 B61 nuclear gravity bombs are currently stored as part of a nuclear-sharing agreement with the US.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Wish I could post the whole article. Worth reading.
Don’t look like the warhead part. No biggie. Just don’t drop her again PLEEZE!!!
We used to load some variant of that (maybe the B60) on our carrier based attack aircraft back in the Seventies, and I was always struck by how...er...”Buck Rogers-ish” they looked with the polished aluminium skin and those futuristic fins!
It was almost funny to think that bomb that looked like the shape was created by an imaginative 5th grader, could kill millions of people.
Almost...
OOPS!.................
You better be careful or you’ll get demoted to Private Third Class
Define damaged ?
incredible!
I feel the pain.
My lawnmower was damaged last week in my garage when I pulled my snowblower in.
So I can understand what these guys are going through .
Ah, good to go then.
That’ll buff right out.
Not to worry. XiJinBiden will ensure it is fixed and given to his dancing poppet, Volodymyr. Add in a few F-15s and F-16s, just for fun!
The DoD even authorizing release of a picture of a "special weapon", particularly a damaged one, would be highly irregular unless it was a dummy or training device simulating the shape.
That opinion is also buried in the article, far beyond the reach of headline readers.
“There is pink sticky tape covering an apparent hole.”
Oh, well that should fix it. Pink duct tape.
From the article:
Any damage to a nuclear weapon is known as a “bent spear” incident, and generally kept secret.
Did not know this.
s/b
'Arms control advocates have long been obsolete ...'
Ping
Ping.
In the old days. A dummy weapon or training shape was to be handled exactly like the real thing. Damage a training shape required a “Bent Spear” report as if it had been a real special weapon.
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