Loose Nukes in America

Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus have some good coverage on the Air Force's recent juggling of nuclear cruise missiles across the country. Evidently, they have a term for this - "Bent Spear" is a code-word for a nuclear weapons security failure, as "Broken Arrow" is a code word for a dropped or lost nuclear weapon. Not being a nuke guy, this is all news to me.

The plane, which had flown to Minot for the mission and was not certified to carry nuclear weapons, departed the next morning for Louisiana. When the bomber landed at Barksdale at 11:23 a.m., the air crew signed out and left for lunch, according to the probe.

It would be another nine hours -- until 8:30 p.m. -- before a Barksdale ground crew turned up at the parked aircraft to begin removing the missiles. At 8:45, 15 minutes into the task, a separate missile transport crew arrived in trucks. One of these airmen noticed something unusual about the missiles. Within an hour, a skeptical supervisor had examined them and ordered them secured.

By then it was 10 p.m., more than 36 hours after the warheads left their secure bunker in Minot.

Once the errant warheads were discovered, Air Force officers in Louisiana were alarmed enough to immediately notify the National Military Command Center, a highly secure area of the Pentagon that serves as the nerve center for U.S. nuclear war planning. Such "Bent Spear" events are ranked second in seriousness only to "Broken Arrow" incidents, which involve the loss, destruction or accidental detonation of a nuclear weapon.

The Air Force decided at first to keep the mishap under wraps, in part because of policies that prohibit the confirmation of any details about the storage or movement of nuclear weapons. No public acknowledgment was made until service members leaked the story to the Military Times, which published a brief account Sept. 5.

Officials familiar with the Bent Spear report say Air Force officials apparently did not anticipate that the episode would cause public concern. One passage in the report contains these four words:

"No press interest anticipated."

Many arms control proponents are really up in arms (pun intended) over this mistake, but most knowledgable people seem to agree that, while mistakes were made, there was never any real chance of the plane going "Dr. Strangelove" or having an accident that might cause a significant impact in the nation's psyche. The article gives some good background to what happened, but not why it happened or how it won't happen again. I'm sure that's all above our pay-grades, and why would we want to know all that heavy military stuff anyway...

A similar refrain has been voiced hundreds of times in blogs and chat rooms popular with former and current military members. On a Web site run by the Military Times, a former B-52 crew chief who did not give his name wrote: "What the hell happened here?"

A former Air Force senior master sergeant wrote separately that "mistakes were made at the lowest level of supervision and this snowballed into the one of the biggest mistakes in USAF history. I am still scratching my head wondering how this could [have] happened."

Well, except for YOU guys.

Comments

[CKR]

The article doesn't even give a good account of what happened. Some people went somewhere where something is stored, and nukes came out without notice and got attached to the plane.

If you're handling and storing nuclear weapons, there are all sorts of accountability measures. Or at least there are for the components. Multiple signoffs. Always multiple people involved, checking each other. And I wouldn't store dummies and the real thing in the same room, although who knows what makes sense to the military (sorry, J., I've seen some "security" at military bases that made my hair stand on end for its looseness compared to what I was accustomed to).

The arms-control problem (control, control!) is that the six nukes were outside someone's oversight for 36 hours. More than enough time for someone to walk off with one. Granted, that might have been noticed, but after the multiple failures of oversight that occurred, I'm not assuming that. The US continues to emote about the possibility of loose nukes in less "advanced" countries, although we're seeing less of that as funding for helping those countries out slips off the administration's radar screen.

[rmwarnick]

You never saw the movie "Broken Arrow" (1996) with John Travolta and Christian Slater?

[J.]

Well you never know if the movies are using accurate code names. But yes, I did see "Broken Arrow."

John Travolta, with clenched teeth: "Please stop shooting at the nuclear weapon."

[CKR]

I think the term "Broken Arrow" surfaced when we dropped a few on Palomares, Spain. Or that was when I think I first heard it.