B-52 ferries nukes across the US

[Beowulf]

It's more related to security. By removing the nuclear weapons, we no long need to secure the spaces they are in, and therefore also don't have to have the Marine complement to secure those spaces. You also don't have to have specially designed spaces on carriers (all the Nimitzes still have them, but the next carrier won't).

Additionally, the carrier can enter ports that it couldn't enter before.

Why have nuclear weapons on carriers?

[Flagg]

It's more related to security. By removing the nuclear weapons, we no long need to secure the spaces they are in, and therefore also don't have to have the Marine complement to secure those spaces. You also don't have to have specially designed spaces on carriers (all the Nimitzes still have them, but the next carrier won't).

Additionally, the carrier can enter ports that it couldn't enter before.

Makes sense.

Why have nuclear weapons on carriers?

Another platform of retaliation.

[phongn]

Another platform of retaliation.

Presumably if a major conflict were to heat up to that point we'd start putting them back.

[Stuart]

Once you have nuclear weapons on a ship, they must be carefully secured and then you must now carefully handle all weapons so you don't accidentally load a nuke on an airplane and send 'er off to bomb some poor target.

That's exactly right; once we have nuclearw eapons on a ship, we have to treat every weapon in that magazine as if its nuclear. It's a major tactical limitation - the nuclear ASROC rounds were a real pain in the posterior because of that.

Imagine the sequence if somebody made a mistake sometime during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"And now we have live footage of a precision guided strike on the Iraqi Defense Ministry."

(long pause)

"Ooops."

[Adrian Laguna]

Imagine the sequence if somebody made a mistake sometime during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"And now we have live footage of a precision guided strike on the Iraqi Defense Ministry."

(long pause)

"Ooops."

Worse, it could get one of our pilots killed as the blast he thought had no chance of getting to him suddenly does.

[Szass Tam]

Worse, it could get one of our pilots killed as the blast he thought had no chance of getting to him suddenly does.

Y...you're...you're... This is a case of text being bad at conveying sarcasm, right?

[Flagg]

Worse, it could get one of our pilots killed as the blast he thought had no chance of getting to him suddenly does.

Y...you're...you're... This is a case of text being bad at conveying sarcasm, right?

He's not a certain other member of the board, so I'd guess that he was in fact being sarcastic.

[Howedar]

That's exactly right; once we have nuclearw eapons on a ship, we have to treat every weapon in that magazine as if its nuclear. It's a major tactical limitation - the nuclear ASROC rounds were a real pain in the posterior because of that.

Imagine the sequence if somebody made a mistake sometime during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"And now we have live footage of a precision guided strike on the Iraqi Defense Ministry."

(long pause)

"Ooops."

Speaking as a layman, I think I'd take quite a different stance - it's a major political limitation. As you yourself are so fond of saying, a nuclear weapon isn't some kind of magic, it's just an unnaturally effective explosive for its mass (especially in the case of something like ASROC). It's certainly a semantic squabble, but I think it's worth noting. The limitations are based on the nation's and the world's perceptions of nuclear weapons - they're not intrinsic to the devices themselves.

[Sea Skimmer]

It's more related to security. By removing the nuclear weapons, we no long need to secure the spaces they are in, and therefore also don't have to have the Marine complement to secure those spaces. You also don't have to have specially designed spaces on carriers (all the Nimitzes still have them, but the next carrier won't).

Additionally, the carrier can enter ports that it couldn't enter before.

Actually the USN had a trick to get around that with its carriers, simply disassemble the devices before steaming into port. The ship then only contains ‘nuclear components’ rather then ‘nuclear weapons’. Smaller warships with nuclear ASROC or nuclear SAMs didn’t have the facilities to do that.

As for removing them totally, nuclear gravity bombs on a 300 mile range F/A-18 aren’t exactly the most awesome deterrent weapon anyway. Once the A-6 and related tankers left the navy the carriers really ceased to have the ability to conduct a strategic nuclear attack. We don't need nukes for tactical targets.

[Stuart]

Speaking as a layman, I think I'd take quite a different stance - it's a major political limitation. As you yourself are so fond of saying, a nuclear weapon isn't some kind of magic, it's just an unnaturally effective explosive for its mass (especially in the case of something like ASROC). It's certainly a semantic squabble, but I think it's worth noting. The limitations are based on the nation's and the world's perceptions of nuclear weapons - they're not intrinsic to the devices themselves.

The tactical limitation is the power of these things. With ASROC, using a nuclear depth charge had pretty severe constraints imposed on it; for example, in-fighting against a submarine was definately not the desired operational scenario. Also, if we did a laydown with a tactical device when we thought we were dropping a 1,000 pound bomb, we're likely to find out that the safety distances etc are wholly inadequate. That makes using tactical nuclear weapons a very different animal from conventional high explosive.

Also, Adrian's quite right, the way nuclear devices are delivered and the techniques used for them are very different from the way conventional bombs are dropped. A plane that drops even a pony bomb when it thought it was dropping a Mark 84 has a very low chance of survival.

So, from a purely tactical point of view (how we use devices, where they are used, how we deliver them) its a very important issue. Havings aid all that, you're quite right to point out that there is a major political context to the problem as well. From a visible effect point of view (ie the complications caused), that would exceed the tactical problems although its the latter that would most concern people in the field.

Much simpler not to have the things on board.

[Adrian Laguna]

Y...you're...you're... This is a case of text being bad at conveying sarcasm, right?

He's not a certain other member of the board, so I'd guess that he was in fact being sarcastic.

Yes and no. I was pointing out another problem with confusing an atomic warhead with a conventional one while using irony for the purpose of humour and mocking myself.

We don't need nukes for tactical targets.

The very existence of such unwieldy monsters as the BLU-82 and MOAB says otherwise. We can do without tac-nukes, so in that sense we don't need them, but they'd be dammed useful if the US had not adopted a fear of using any sort of atomic weapon regardless of destructive power.

They'd be pretty useful for clearing out areas with no civilians in the vicinity. Conventional bombing might leave survivors, but airburst a half kiloton ER warhead and everything within a kilometre will simply drop dead.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Loose Nukes Looming Near
by Captain Eric H. May
Sunday Sep 9th, 2007 6:25 AM

Captain Eric H. May, the Internet intelligence writer, takes a much-needed look at the implications of the loose nukes story that has been reported (badly) by the mainstream media, and is still the focus of the cyber community.

Loose Nukes Looming Near

By Captain Eric H. May
Military Correspondent

This week we learned that on August 30 the United States Air Force flew a B-52, locked and loaded with nuclear warheads, from North Dakota to Louisiana. This broke a military policy going back to the 1960s against such flights.

"I just can't imagine how all of this happened," said Philip Coyle, a senior adviser on nuclear weapons at the Center for Defense Information. "The procedures are so rigid; this is the last thing that's supposed to happen."

But it did happen, and we would not know about it at all had it not been for three Air Force officers, speaking under condition of anonymity, who Informed The Military Times about the event. And of course, everyone is trying to "get to the bottom of it."

So says the White House, which has lied about everything from 9/11 to Iraq to lead us into a global war for which the Neocons were planning well before the presidency of George W. Bush.

So says the Air Force, which just violated 40 years of policy without explanation, and states that it had no idea of the nukes were in the air over the United States for the duration of their flight.

So says Congress. "These reports are deeply disturbing," said Congressman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "The American people, our friends, and our potential adversaries must be confident that the highest standards are in place when it comes to our nuclear arsenal." Everyone would be much more confident, I believe, if the Congress now promising to investigate the loose nukes were anything but the quislings that they have shown themselves to be, both before and after the Democratic election successes of 2006. They have made it apparent that there is really only one party in power: the War Party.

The presstitute media, to its credit, has not bothered to say that it will do look into, let alone report about, the loose nukes. In other columns I have explained that they are no longer even lapdogs, they are shameless lap dancers. They sit and squirm at the seat of power, proud to say that they have been embedded, ever willing to keep pulling tricks for treats.

So whom are we to trust from among the discredited list of our political, military and media leaders? If your answer to this question is "none of the above," then welcome to the Internet community of conspiracy theorists (like me) who aren't willing to accept official reassurances that all is well as airborne Armageddon takes flight over America for the length of the Mississippi River.

To take a single M-16 rifle from the arms room of a stateside military unit requires the permission of several military officials, along with numerous keys, combinations and codes. It is inconceivable to me, and to every other military veteran with whom I have spoken this week, that the loose nukes were a mere accident of oversight, or that the order to fly them came from any source other than the White House.

The official account of a slip up, parroted by the official media, is a transparent lie. The task for thoughtful and patriotic American citizens is to fathom the "why" behind the lie, and it comes down to a simple question: was the White House threatening to use the nukes or preparing to use the nukes?

Like all bullies, our King George likes to frighten others. The loose nukes may have been intended to bait the Russian bear, whose President Putin has been growling for a year that Neocon America reminds him of Nazi Germany. In response to our predatory Pax Americana, Russian bombers are now overflying foreign territory for the first time since the end of the Cold War; Russian nuclear facilities are ramping up for a new generation of production as their nation prepares to withdraw all from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1988; and Russian ground forces are now training alongside their Chinese counterparts in preparation for a Central Asian showdown with us.

It's ill advised, though, to suppose that the nuclear warheads flown across America were only a bluff, and not intended for use. There are two other sets of Bush opponents for whom the weapons could have been meant as either a demonstration -- or as an awful action.

Iran and Syria, defiant Middle Eastern nations, have been on the Bush target list since before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Israel is still in an un-ended war with Syria, and a few days ago sent its jets into Syrian territory, where they were fired upon by Syrian forces. As Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, recently pointed out, Israel was pushing for a US attack on Iran instead of Iraq as early as 2002. Washington insiders whisper that the Bush administration has promised an attack on Iran to its supporters in the Israel Lobby. AIPAC was instrumental in ensuring that the Democratic Congress did not take measures to repeal Bush's unilateral war making authority, given him by the War Powers Act of 2002.

There is a still more dreadful prospect though. Our "unitary executive" may be threatening or preparing a strike against US, the unruly and now war weary American People who are the greatest impediment to the Neocon New American Century plan. It used to be that only the 911 Truth community would entertain the idea that the next 911, the "911-2B" attack, could come from our own government. However, a recent spate of Bush administration pronouncements that we are due for such an attack has made it apparent to many other Americans that Bush would welcome a 911-2B event -- or might even arrange one

Six of my last seven columns have examined the prospect that a false flag nuclear attack may be in our near future, and this week's loose nuke story has not done anything to undermine my thesis. It's fine to wish that our own government were not such a threat to us, but anyone who thinks the loose nukes in our skies are not a threat to us is only engaging in wishful thinking.

# # #

Captain May is a former Army military intelligence and public affairs officer, as well as a former NBC editorial writer. His political and military analyses have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Houston Chronicle and Military Intelligence Magazine. For a list of his recent columns, refer to: http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/07/09/03/may.htm

(email) captainmay [at] prodigy.net
(at) Houston, Texas

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

This Was No Accident: Nuclear Weapons Are Different
Submitted by dlindorff on Mon, 2007-09-10 12:45. Iran

Nobody should fall for a story that those six (yeah, it was first reported as five, but now the original military whistleblowers have told Army Times it was six) nuclear-tipped cruise missiles that were flown in launch position on a B-52 from Minot, ND to Barksdale, LA, were put on there inadvertently.

I had some experience with the way nuclear weapons get handled, as compared to conventional weapons, and I can assure you that there is no way anyone would just “accidentally” pick up the wrong weapons.

Back in 1978, I was working as an investigative producer/reporter for the news program “28-Tonight” at KCET-TV in Los Angeles. I got word from some anti-nuke/peace organization that there were nuclear weapons being stored at the Seal Beach Naval Station south of Los Angeles. There was concern about this on two counts: first of all, it was a very densely populated urban area, and second, the weapons were allegedly being stored under the flight path of a busy civil airport, where a crash could easily happen.

Together with a cameraperson, I went down to the base. It was bisected by a highway. On either side of that two-lane road were big mesh wire fences. On the south side of the road, the fences were older, and topped with ordinary barbed wire. On the north side, there was a higher, new looking fence topped with coiled razor wire. There was then an interval of bare soil beyond which was a second fence, also topped with razor wire. Clearly, the security on the north side of the road was much greater.

Beyond the south fence were the weapons bunkers--long high mounds of earth, covered with parched sod. Each was perhaps 75 feet long, and 15 feet high. There was a concrete doorframe in the middle of each with an old iron door in the middle. No one was visible anywhere.

On the north side, however, where there were similar bunkers, but these mounds were bigger—perhaps 20 feet high and much longer. The piled up earth looked newer, and the entrances were much more solid looking. As well, the door to each had an armed guard standing in front of it.

Clearly whatever was being stored in the bunkers on the north side of the street were much more important than those on the south side.

We stopped our car and got out, and the photographer started snapping still photos of the scene.

Immediately there was commotion inside the compound. Within less than a minute, a jeep came roaring towards us, filled with marines who were armed to the teeth. Guns drawn they ordered us, from behind the fence, to stop photographing and to stand where we were. Moments later there were sirens, and more armed jeeps came towards us from both directions down the road. We were quickly surrounded by armed marines who asked us what we were doing.

We told them we were investigating the nuclear weapons storage at the base.

They told us we had to go to the base headquarters, and took the camera. (The photographer, a pro at this stuff, had already snapped a role and stashed it in her pocket, so when they later took out and exposed the roll of film in the camera, we still had our visual evidence).

At base headquarters, the commander grilled us. Our station was called, and after it was confirmed that we were indeed journalists, they took the film, chastised us for bothering them, and, refusing to comment on whether or not there were nukes on the base, sent us on our way.

My point in recounting this experience is to note that nuclear weapons and warheads are not stored together with conventional weapons. They are also guarded much more tightly than are conventional weapons. There is simply no way that a ground crew could accidentally stroll into a weapons storage center and pick up the wrong missiles. (There’s good reason for this, too, even aside from security issues: nuclear weapons have fail-safe triggers, and are not prone to just exploding on their own, but conventional weapons are different. They can and often do go off by accident, and if one were stored amidst nuclear weapons and this happened, it could shatter the nuke and spread dangerous nuclear material all over the place. As a result, whether at Seal Beach Naval Station or at Minot AFB, nuclear weapons are strictly segregated from other weapons materials.)

It’s clear that so far, no one in Congress or in the corporate media is asking the hard questions about this very disturbing incident.

I would say that the chances that those Advanced Cruise Missiles and their W80-1 nuclear warheads were loaded accidentally on that B-52 are exactly zero. So the question is: who ordered this flight, and why?

Until we have answers to those questions, we have to assume the worst—that this was deliberate, and thus sinister in the extreme—not the best.

[Jaepheth]

Um, it sounds like that reporter doesn't know what he's talking about.

...as part of a programme to take 400 missiles out of service...the nuclear warheads should have been removed before the missiles were mounted under the aircraft's wings...

warhead != the delivery system

They wanted to take the missiles out of service but didn't remove the warhead. Presumably they already have the clearance to take the weapons out of high security storage, but a paperwork snafu probably led to the warheads remaining in the missiles.

It's still a pretty big mistake, but not to the extent the alarmist who wrote the article above seems to think.

[Stuart]

I just can't imagine how all of this happened," said Philip Coyle, a senior adviser on nuclear weapons at the Center for Defense Information.

Once people start quoting CDI as a serious defense information source, we can safely ignore anything else they say. Be that as it may, both articles are nonsensical and tell us more about the people who wrote them than nuclear weapons handling practices. The second one is just a bunch of paranoid raving delusions.

The following was posted on HPCA by one of our members who was a SAC special weapons & ordnance specialist. It shows very neatly how this could have happened.

Okay - here's what I think happened.

First, let's take a look back at Minot's schedule for the last month or so. Was there an exercise within the last 30-45 days? I'll bet you the rent money there was.

Exercises in a B-52 unit are a remarkable thing - you start out fighting one kind of war and then switch to another for the big finish. There's one odd thing though about ACC exercises - they always run on a Monday-Friday schedule. Less damage to the schedule, don't ya know. In SAC, you had exercises any day of the week they damn well felt like tossing one, not to mention UNSCHEDULED ones on a regular basis, but I digress. In any event, what's involved in the Big Finish can be imagined. And since the end of the Cold War, there's only three reasons for pulling the Big Finish ingredients out of storage - maintenance, transport to/from depot, or...an exercise.

Now, stay with me. A B-52 exercise says you load EVERY flyable aircraft, and you use the REAL thing to do it with - its the only way to insure all the varied systems are functioning on the aircraft and the package. Trouble is, there aren't always enough packages to go around - you've got various components down for maintenance, or a trailer breaks (remember that). So sometimes you use the load trainers. There's nothing immoral, illegal or fattening about that - getting a trainer package ready to go to the line requires the same things you'd have to do on the live ones, and in the event of a real alert, you'd probably have to improvise adapt and overcome anyways.

So - last 24 hours of the exercise, and the CP has just decided we're going into what TSgt Dedmon gleefully refers to as 'instant sunrise' mode. The Ammo transport crews leap into action, only to have a trailer go bad during the prep. There's no way they can drop the pylon and get another trailer around it without busting the convoy times, and B-52 Ammo crews would sooner commit hari-kari than screw up a convoy...so somebody says grab the dummy package and roll, NOW.

Little known but true fact: packages are tracked by TRAILER number.

I hear the gears turning now.

The dummy package goes out to the line, where the loaders put it on a bird and the the trailer goes back to the WSA trailer ready line. In the meantime, trailer maintenance has gotten to the first trailer and gotten it away from the pylon. once repaired, it too goes to the trailer ready line.

And up at Munitions Control, some clod has forgotten to erase a little grease pencil notation.

When everything comes down on Friday night, the first trailer ends up being put under the dummy pylon, and the second trailer - which held the dummies in the first place - is put under the real thing. Hilarity ensues.

This happened at least 4-5 times I can remember at Wurtsmith and Kunsan. The big difference here is that it never, ever got outside of the bomb dump. The Minot crews who hauled the live package out stand guilty of not doing the most basic checks on the missiles and pylons. Had they done so, this incident would have remained safely behind triple-strand razor wire.

Old principle applies, never bother with a conspiracy when a cock-up will do just as well.

[Jadeite]

Once people start quoting CDI as a serious defense information source, we can safely ignore anything else they say. Be that as it may, both articles are nonsensical and tell us more about the people who wrote them than nuclear weapons handling practices. The second one is just a bunch of paranoid raving delusions.

Einhander has a long history, almost a tradition really, of finding the most nutjob leftist sides possible. My personal favorite was posting an article about Bush plotting to be an actual dictator, written by a site that considers it a shame that North Korea lost to UN forces.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

I just can't imagine how all of this happened," said Philip Coyle, a senior adviser on nuclear weapons at the Center for Defense Information.

Once people start quoting CDI as a serious defense information source, we can safely ignore anything else they say. Be that as it may, both articles are nonsensical and tell us more about the people who wrote them than nuclear weapons handling practices. The second one is just a bunch of paranoid raving delusions.

Thanks for the tipoff about CDI. I posted these just to see just how badly they'd get shredded by people knowledgeable about the subject matter.

Einhander has a long history, almost a tradition really, of finding the most nutjob leftist sides possible. My personal favorite was posting an article about Bush plotting to be an actual dictator, written by a site that considers it a shame that North Korea lost to UN forces.

Fuck you too assface

[Beowulf]

The first article Ein posted having been busted, I'll proceed to bust the second:

ACMs are nuclear only. The article claims that conventional and nuclear weapons are stored separately, and that it's impossible to confuse one for the other. Which is all true, except that no such confusion is necessary. It's merely necessary to confuse a de-warheaded ACM with one that still has one.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Oh god let's all point and laugh...

ATS Premium: Barksdale Missile Number Six: The Stolen Nuclear Weapon

Someone, operating under a special chain of command within the United States Air Force, just stole a nuclear weapon.

ATS Premium Article by Chuck Simpson


Some History

Barksdale Missile Number Six deserves far more public attention than it's received to date. Missile Number Six is potentially the major story of at least this year.

Until 1968 under the Airborne Alert Program, informally called Operation Chrome Dome, the Air Force routinely kept about a dozen strategic bombers with nuclear weapons flying at all times.

One predictable result was crashes and incidents. In 1968 the Department of Defense published a list of 13 serious nuclear weapons accidents that occurred between 1950 and 1968. In 1980 the list was revised to include 32 incidents through that year.

Notably, the Pentagon has not acknowledged any accidents since 1980. This alone highlights the importance the Pentagon is placing on the recent transportation of nuclear weapons from North Dakota to Louisiana.

Through 1968, several reported incidents involved plane crashes or malfunctions, beginning with the crash of a B-29 near Fairfield, California in August 1950. The resulting blast was felt 30 miles away.

In July 1950 a B-50 crashed near Lebanon, Ohio. The high-explosive trigger for the nuclear weapon detonated on impact. The blast was felt over 25 miles away.

In May 1957 a nuclear weapon fell from the bomb bay of a B-36 near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Parachutes malfunctioned and the weapon was destroyed on impact.

In October 1957 near Homestead, Florida a B-47 crashed. The nuclear weapon was burned.

In March 1958 a B-47 accidentally dropped a nuclear weapon near Florence, South Carolina. The high-explosive trigger detonated on impact.

In November 1958 a B-47 crashed near Abilene, Texas. The trigger of the nuclear weapon exploded upon impact.

In July 1959 a C-124 crashed near Bossier City, Louisiana. Both plane and nuclear weapon were destroyed.

In October 1959 a B-52 with two nuclear weapons was involved in a mid-air collision near Hardinsburg, Kentucky. One weapon partially burned.

In January 1961 a B-52 broke apart in mid-air near Goldsboro, North Carolina. Two nuclear weapons were released. The parachute on one weapon malfunctioned, and contamination was spread over a wide area. The uranium core was never recovered. Daniel Ellsberg reported that detonation was a very real risk because five of six safety devices failed.

In that month near Monticello, Idaho a B-52 carrying nuclear weapons exploded in mid-air. No information was made available as to the weapons.

In March 1961 a B-52 with two nuclear weapons crashed near Yuba City, California.

In January 1964 a B-52 carrying two nuclear weapons crashed near Cumberland, Maryland.

In January 1966 a B-52 carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed after a mid-air collision near Palomares, Spain. Two weapons exploded on impact, with resulting plutonium contamination. A months-long program was undertaken to locate and extract the other two weapons from the ocean. Major policy changes were taken under consideration.

In January 1968 a B-52 carrying four hydrogen weapons crashed and burned near Thule AFB in Greenland. Explosives in one bomb detonated, spreading plutonium contamination. Apparently, the other three weapons have never been accounted for.

Following large public protests Denmark, which owns Greenland and prohibits nuclear weapons on or over its territory, filed a strong protest. A few days later the Secretary of Defense ordered the removal of nuclear weapons from planes. After that order was issued, all aircraft armed with nuclear weapons were grounded but kept in a constant state of alert.

In 1991 by Presidential order, nuclear weapons were removed from all aircraft. Bomber nuclear ground alerts, during which nuclear weapons are loaded onto bombers during test and training exercises, were halted. After that time, all nuclear weapons to be delivered by plane were permanently maintained in secure storage facilities.


August 30, 2007

All of which makes the transport of nuclear weapons in combat position on a combat plane so newsworthy.

On August 30, for the first time since 1968, nuclear warheads in combat position were carried by an American bomber. Numerous international treaty provisions were violated in the process.

That Thursday, a B-52H Stratofortress flew from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana while carrying twelve cruise missiles. Either five or six of those missiles were armed with nuclear warheads.


Cruise Missiles

The missiles on the B-52 were AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile units, specifically designed to be launched from wing pods of B-52H planes.

A total of 460 units were manufactured by Raytheon. A total of 394 units are currently maintained by the Air Force. Apparently, 38 are to be modernized and upgraded in Fiscal Year 2008 and the other 356 are to be decommissioned pursuant to the 2002 Moscow treaty.

Raytheon has publicly announced the AGM-129 missiles are to be modified to accomplish a "classified cruise missile mission". This has widely been interpreted to mean conversion to bunker-busters, most likely for use in Iran. This widely accepted explanation is being used to explain why armed cruise missiles are being flown in American airspace.


Nuclear Warheads

The AGM-129 was specifically designed to deliver a W-80 nuclear warhead. The W-80 weapon has a variable yield capability, of 5 to 150 kilotons. For comparison purposes, the bomb used on Hiroshima was 13 to 15 kilotons, or equivalent to 13,000 to 15,000 tons of TNT explosive.


News Stories and Flawed Explanations

The story of the B-52 flight was first reported by Army Times, owned by Gannett, on Wednesday September 5. Gannett relied on information provided by "anonymous officers". The story was picked up by Yahoo Wednesday morning, published by USA Today and The Washington Pos, and then quickly spread.

In response, the Pentagon quickly spread an official explanation.

The Air Force admitted to an inadvertent error: The intent was to transport ACMs without weapons. According to military officers, the nuclear warheads should have been removed before the missiles were mounted on the pylons under the wings of the bomber.


In the words of the Pentagon:

"There was an error which occurred during a regularly scheduled transfer of weapons between two bases. The weapons were safe and remained in Air Force control and custody at all times."

For almost the first time in the history of the nation, the military has publicly and promptly admitted it "made a mistake". This in itself is truly astounding.

To reinforce the military's claim that a mistake was made, a system-wide stand-down was ordered for September 14.

That official explanation was quickly explained away. The mistake was made intentionally, so a "deliberate leak" of a secret operation could occur.

The CIA and the Office of Counter-Terrorism in the State Department explained that Barksdale AFB is a "jumping off point" for re-supply of the Middle East.

The "deliberate leak" was intended to serve as a veiled warning to Iran. This deliberately misleading explanation is evidently intended to lead the public or Iran or both to logically conclude the missiles are bound for Iran.

Bluntly, State and the CIA converted a whistleblower leak by true American patriots into a deliberate leak by official Washington, to scare Iran.

By this means Washington has led the public to forget or overlook the real issue.

To begin, the multiple official explanations reek to high heaven. They collectively read suspiciously like flimsy cover stories concocted in hasty desperation. And no amount of pretty lipstick will be able to make the official explanations pretty.


Transportation Violations

More conflicting explanations followed. These missiles are part of a group scheduled to be decommissioned. This would explain why they were shipped out of North Dakota.

But the missiles were not transported on their way to decommissioning. Missiles are normally decommissioned at Davis-Monthan AFB at Tucson. Nuclear weapons are decommissioned at the Department of Energy's Pantex facility near Amarillo, Texas, accessed through Kirkland AFB in New Mexico.

And military policy requires minimization of the number of flights made with nuclear weapons aboard. So the weapons should not have been mounted on the missiles, flown to Louisiana, un-mounted and flown to New Mexico.

The mode of transportation is also a major issue not defused by official explanations. Per standard operating procedures, or SOPs, both missiles and nuclear warheads are transported primarily by air, in specially modified C-130s or C-17s. Under no peacetime circumstances do military SOPs allow transport of nuclear weapons mounted in cruise missiles mounted in combat positions on combat planes.

Department of Defense Directive Number 4540.5, issued on February 4, 1998, regulates logistic transportation of nuclear weapons.

By delegation of Commanders of Combatant Commands, movement of nuclear weapons must be approved by commanders of major service commands.

Commanders of Combat Commands or service component commanders must evaluate, authorize and approve transport modes and movement routes for nuclear weapons in their custody.

The Air Force is required to maintain a Prime Nuclear Airlift Force capability to conduct the logistic transport of nuclear weapons.

Under SOPs, combat planes with combat-ready nuclear weapons can only be flown on the authority of the Commander in Chief, the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the National Military Command Authority.

All of these transportation regulations were flagrantly violated on August 30.


Handling Violations

Violations of regulations concerning handling of the nuclear weapons in North Dakota are worse.

A sophisticated computerized tracking system is used for nuclear weapons. Multiple sign-offs are required to remove the weapons from their storage bunkers.

The AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile was designed to carry nuclear weapons. No non-nuclear warhead is available for this missile. So the only possible error could have been loading nuclear warheads on the missiles instead of practice dummies.

The practice warheads have standard blue and yellow signs declaring "Inert, non-nuclear". The nuclear warheads have at least three distinctive red warning signs. This error is therefore highly improbable, absent tampering with signage.

Nuclear weapons are transported from the storage bunker to the aircraft in a caravan that routinely includes vehicles with machine guns front and rear and guards with M-16s. All steps in the process are done under the watchful eyes of armed military police.

Rules require that at least two people jointly control every step of the process. If one person loses sight of the other, both are forced to the ground face-down and temporarily "placed under arrest" by observant security forces. All progress stops until inspections are made to assure the weapons weren't tampered with.

All nuclear weapons are connected to sophisticated alarm systems to prevent removal or tampering. They could only be removed from the storage bunker by turning the alarm off. And the squad commander clearly would not have authority to turn off the alarm.


The Impossible Mistake

Bluntly, the mistake of loading nuclear weapons on a combat aircraft in combat-ready position is simply not possible to make. Safeguards are far too stringent and far too many people would be involved. Particularly given that the mounting was in violation of policy that's been in place without exception for almost 40 years.

No discipline is expected to be meted out. The New York Times tried to imply the commanding general had been fired. Actually, the squad commander in charge of munitions crews at Minot was "relieved of duty pending an investigation". He has not been removed from his position or disciplined. The crews involved have been "temporarily decertified pending corrective actions or additional training" but have not been disciplined. No mention has been made of the wing commander.

Note carefully: These actions amount to nothing at all. The wing and squad commanders are still in place and the crews can easily be re-certified.


Successful Confusion

Washington's efforts to confuse the public have been successful. Attention has shifted from the crucial issue.

This news has already become non-news. The August 14 stand-down will momentarily become news, followed by announcements of more stringent restrictions, improved safeguards and additional training. The public always has been and always will be safe.


One of the major issues will be avoided:

Someone in an irregular chain of Air Force command authorized loading and transport of nuclear weapons.

And that would never have been done without a reason. Given the magnitude of regulatory violations involved, the reason must be extremely important.

The paramount issue will be avoided, if necessary with repetition of the reassurance that the Air Force was in control at all times. The weapons were only missing during the 3.5-hour flight.

At Barksdale, the missiles were considered to be unarmed items headed for modernization or the scrap heap, and of no particular importance. They were left unguarded for almost ten hours.

According to one report, almost ten hours were required for airmen at Minot AFB to convince superiors that the nuclear weapons had disappeared. According to information provided to Congress, this time lapsed before airmen at Barksdale "noticed" the weapons were present. News reports will continue to overlook this fact also.

Even here the focus is on time. The number of missiles and warheads issue was overlooked.

Early news reports spoke of five nuclear warheads loaded onto the bomber. Apparently, this information was provided from Barksdale.

That number was later updated to six weapons missing from Minot, apparently based on anonymous tips provided to Military Times by people at Minot. This information has also been forgotten.


Conclusion

Six nuclear weapons disappeared from Minot AFB in North Dakota.

Five nuclear weapons were discovered at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.

Which leads to my chilling conclusion:

Someone, operating under a special chain of command within the United States Air Force, just stole a nuclear weapon.


What next?

The answer has been provided several times, most recently by CIA Director and General Michael Hayden. On September 7, dressed in full military uniform, Hayden told assembled members of the Council of Foreign Relations:

"Our analysts assess with high confidence that al-Qaida's central leadership is planning high-impact plots against the U. S. homeland."

"We assess with high confidence that al-Qaida is focusing on targets that would produce mass casualties, dramatic destruction and significant aftershocks."

An eye for an eye. Use of nukes will justify use of nukes. A perfect excuse to wage nuclear war against Iran.

I suspect Hayden is absolutely correct, except for his mistaken identification of the "central leadership" that is planning detonation of a nuclear weapon on American soil.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

More moonbats!

And a response by an AF captain

The following email was sent to CLG on 19 September, anonymously.

Hello there,
I’m a Staff Sergeant in the US Air Force. I do network security, so, that’s why I’m emailing anonymously, even though I really don’t feel it’s necessary. I’m just paranoid like that, which is why I’m pretty good at my job. Also, parts of what I’m putting in here are probably classified, which is the primary reason I’m sending this anonymously.
Anyway, I see a lot of people posting on Reddit about government conspiracies about nukes and things like this. It’s frustrating for me because it’s really very silly. Please, let me explain some background, to help you all understand what’s going on in the background for the Air Force:

Minot AFB is a dead-end base. It’s the abyss of the Air Force, the saying goes “Why not Minot?” They have major retainability problems there – people volunteer to go to Iraq, Korea, anywhere just to get out of there. Beside its location (middle-of-nowhere North Dakota), the base has very little real mission and spins its wheels forever in drills that all result in the end of the world since it’s a nuke base designed to fight the Cold War. But, there is no Cold War for them to fight (at least not one that Minot’s golden piece of real estate would be useful in fighting), so its people probably feel pretty worthless and tired of fighting the now non-existent Soviet Union. The base has already been re-aligned (more on that in a moment) and it’s probably going to be BRACed into a regional airport in a few decades. Ellison AFB in South Dakota has already had its closure decided.

One of the biggest problems with killing off Minot is its core mission – all of the nukes it has. Its weapons capability is moving to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana as the AF further consolidates after the Cold War and infrastructure budget cuts because of Iraq et al. Moving weapons capability to Barksdale, in real world terms, means moving the actual missiles that would deliver the nuclear warhead to Barksdale. No big deal, conventional weapons move all the time. Nuclear warheads, however, when transported for these reasons, are moved by the Department of Energy – a very time consuming, expensive, and burdensome process that someone else will have to figure out much later once they finally decide to close the base.

So, the Air Force’s solution is to move the missiles, and leave the warheads behind, to be dealt with one day when all of us are retired and don't have to worry about it. That’s what SHOULD have happened. So the mission itself was pretty normal otherwise. (It may actually be intentional to leave things this way, to prevent Congressional involvement, as whatever Senator is from ND is probably desperate to keep Minot around as long as possible; leaving the nukes, but operationally stripping the base serves both sides purposes).

The mistake, and the reason everyone now knows about this, is that the warheads weren’t removed from the missiles being moved to Barksdale. I bet the guys on the ground in Barksdale were sure as shit surprised when they cracked the payload open and saw a warhead.

I know as much as I do because I work with a cross-trainee whose last base was Barksdale as a munitions specialist. He was involved in this process there; along with the various other missions Barksdale has (it’s a pretty critical base in the AF). Anyway, you would think there would be a pretty clear checklist for all of this, but apparently no one even bothered. Doing what they do day-to-day, is pretty standard operating procedure. People get lazy when they do the same thing day after day, and there’s no less than a half dozen teams who would be transferring these weapons around from storage until they’re loaded. The idea of someone dropping the ball in the AF is not exactly unusual (quite common, actually, heh), especially when 4:30 rolls around and everyone wants to go home. If the next step is to hand it off to the guys who remove the warhead, and it’s 1630 on a Friday, hell, let’s just leave it until Monday, since the mission doesn’t fly until Tuesday anyway. Monday rolls around, someone else takes over, and doesn’t know the job wasn’t finished on Friday. There SHOULD be some paper trail for that kind of thing, but then, like I said, people are lazy. Oh, and Minot usually fails its nuclear operational readiness inspections. Sorry to kill your confidence in the military.

I’ve seen too much crazy stuff to believe in some massive conspiracy, there’s too many people involved. You’d have to kill like 50 people to “cover up” moving nukes to Barksdale. Plus, what would it achieve? There’s already more than enough nukes at Barksdale to blow the world up 3x over. Who needs 6 more? Seriously? Plus, more accidents occur with conventional than nukes, since nukes are computerized and designed to be super-duper safe. Conventional weapons are built by the lowest bidder. [Yikes!] I’d be more worried about a fully-loaded F16 flying around NYC after 9/11 sucking up a bird than a B52 with nukes flying around without anyone knowing it was loaded with nukes. The pilots couldn’t "secretly" be in on it and launch them, the interface wouldn’t be installed, the COMSEC material wouldn’t be available, etc. You’d have to kill half the base to hide the paper trail necessary to give the pilots the ability to launch.

Several people dying from Minot is bad, of course, but then, crazy stuff happens. Motorcycle accidents, mind you, are the #1 non-war cause of dead in the Air Force. The Captain who died wasn’t a pilot (he was Combat Weather, as evidenced by his pewter beret in the photo linked from your site). Captains are a dime a dozen, just like the Security Forces troop who died. Yes, a part of the Security Forces Squadron mission there would be do defend the nukes, but he’s not at all involved in any of the process. He stands outside the door and checks IDs. Seriously, that’s it. I have 5 cops (as they're generally called in the Air Force) I deal with every day where I work because I do computer stuff, and they have zero clue what’s happening behind the door. They spend most of the day on the phone chit chatting with friends at other security posts about the latest dorm gossip about who slept with whom.

So, to conclude, just chill out a bit about the conspiracy, it’s kinda silly. Plus, again, what would be the point? It’s not a big deal to authorize a nuke mission. After 9/11 the entire Barksdale arsenal was loaded and on the flightline ready to fly. I wouldn’t sweat 6 who someone forgot to unload.

Feel free to republish, maybe it'll educate a few people.

V/r

Anon or not, I'm more apt to believe the guy over some moonbats on Digg.