Ah... Pentagon, you old joker...
From The Washington Post comes this delightful tidbit:
"The U.S. Air Force mistakenly shipped fuses that are used in nuclear weapons to Taiwan in 2006, believing the crates contained helicopter batteries, officials at the Pentagon announced this morning.
The error -- undetected by the United States until last week, despite repeated inquiries by Taiwan -- raises questions about how carefully the Pentagon safeguards its weapons systems..."
The article goes on to explain exactly what parts were shipped to Taiwain, and how they were surplus nose-cone pieces for a 40 year old missile system and wouldn't work on anything else anyway, etc. Also, "The nose cones... were declared excess in March 2005 and shipped to a warehouse on an Air Force base in Wyoming, officials said. It is unclear whether they were placed in a classified storage area or how they were eventually mistaken for crates of batteries."
A probe is going to investigate why it took until THIS WEEK... for us to identify what Taiwan told us the minute they got the crates 2 years ago... "Hey, this aint what we ordered."
Facepalm, anyone?
"The U.S. Air Force mistakenly shipped fuses that are used in nuclear weapons to Taiwan in 2006, believing the crates contained helicopter batteries, officials at the Pentagon announced this morning.
The error -- undetected by the United States until last week, despite repeated inquiries by Taiwan -- raises questions about how carefully the Pentagon safeguards its weapons systems..."
The article goes on to explain exactly what parts were shipped to Taiwain, and how they were surplus nose-cone pieces for a 40 year old missile system and wouldn't work on anything else anyway, etc. Also, "The nose cones... were declared excess in March 2005 and shipped to a warehouse on an Air Force base in Wyoming, officials said. It is unclear whether they were placed in a classified storage area or how they were eventually mistaken for crates of batteries."
A probe is going to investigate why it took until THIS WEEK... for us to identify what Taiwan told us the minute they got the crates 2 years ago... "Hey, this aint what we ordered."
Facepalm, anyone?