Real Live Nukes. Film at 11.
I originally posted this as a comment on gmskarka's blog entry on the same topic, but I might as well repost it here in my own domain...
I grew up in the Air Force. My father, who at 70 is still the hardest working man I have ever known, was a flight mechanic and crew chief who worked primarily on B-52's and the KC-135's that refueled them. I spent my boyhood on those aircraft and among the men and women who worked on them, and so have some thoughts on this event -
While Bush is certainly evil, stupid, and crazy enough to, as some suspect, stage these for a strike against Iran, I'm inclined to suspect that what really happened here is something far more mundane - and potentially more terrifying.
Nuclear weapon systems are stored in bunkers just off the flight line in three classes - delivery systems, nuclear warheads, and delivery systems with nuclear warheads attached. The weapons are stored in separate bays for each type and tracked by an inventory control system. A cruise missile or bomb without a warhead attached looks identical to one that is armed; the bomb is mounted inside. The only way that you can tell which is which is by disassembling the forward casing - or by checking the inventory logs, which the munitions dump staff typically have every reason to trust. Our armed forces have a history of being - despite some very real warts, blemishes, and even occasional running sores - the most capable and professional in the history of the world...
Of the many grotesque ways the Bushnevik Regime has been attacking all that is good and decent in America, one the most fundamental and obvious - but least talked about - has been its guerilla war against competence. Over and over we've seen smart and capable and competent professionals replaced with ideologically pure drooling idiots. This may or may not be deliberate in and of itself (some very smart people, such as David Brin, fear that it is) but either way an overall reduction in competence at all levels of our civilization is an inevitable result.
In the handling of nuclear weapons systems you don't have to be actually incompetent to create a problem, you just need to slip a little. And that's reason to worry. If the weapons are tagged improperly and stored in the wrong bay then they could easily be loaded onto a bomber without anyone realizing they were armed (the missiles in question were supposed to be transported for disposal after being superseded by more modern designs; loading such munitions aboard aircraft being rotated to a different base assignment is a common practice). Historically, we've been very good at either preventing such inventory errors or catching them before so much as a single piece of equipment is moved. Honestly, the operational record here has always been one to be tremendously proud of.
I certainly don't dismiss out of hand the possibility that this was deliberate, but if this truly was an accident... then all of our nuclear inventory statistics are suspect, and that means that we may have effectively lost control of our nuclear arsenal.
I know some other ex-Air Force people, and the scuttlebutt right now is that not only have the ground crew and inventory staff at Minot been completely decertified (which is HUGE) but the entire Bomb Wing they support might follow them shortly (Minot AFB and Barksdale AFB are the only two bases that still maintain operational B-52 squadrons). There is no way to overstate the magnitude of this. There is no one in the world more paranoid about nuclear weapons than the people who handle them for a living, and for something like this to happen throws everyone into disarray. Things like this simply don't happen. Ever.
If this was deliberate, then it is sinister. If it was an accident, then it is symptomatic of a level of systemic incompetence that is so far beyond unacceptable as to be ludicrous. And the carelessness of a few - or even one - will end, in varying degrees of disgrace, the careers of many honest and hard-working people who deserve the respect and gratitude of us all...and clear spaces for the drooling ideologues to fill with more of their own.
I grew up in the Air Force. My father, who at 70 is still the hardest working man I have ever known, was a flight mechanic and crew chief who worked primarily on B-52's and the KC-135's that refueled them. I spent my boyhood on those aircraft and among the men and women who worked on them, and so have some thoughts on this event -
While Bush is certainly evil, stupid, and crazy enough to, as some suspect, stage these for a strike against Iran, I'm inclined to suspect that what really happened here is something far more mundane - and potentially more terrifying.
Nuclear weapon systems are stored in bunkers just off the flight line in three classes - delivery systems, nuclear warheads, and delivery systems with nuclear warheads attached. The weapons are stored in separate bays for each type and tracked by an inventory control system. A cruise missile or bomb without a warhead attached looks identical to one that is armed; the bomb is mounted inside. The only way that you can tell which is which is by disassembling the forward casing - or by checking the inventory logs, which the munitions dump staff typically have every reason to trust. Our armed forces have a history of being - despite some very real warts, blemishes, and even occasional running sores - the most capable and professional in the history of the world...
Of the many grotesque ways the Bushnevik Regime has been attacking all that is good and decent in America, one the most fundamental and obvious - but least talked about - has been its guerilla war against competence. Over and over we've seen smart and capable and competent professionals replaced with ideologically pure drooling idiots. This may or may not be deliberate in and of itself (some very smart people, such as David Brin, fear that it is) but either way an overall reduction in competence at all levels of our civilization is an inevitable result.
In the handling of nuclear weapons systems you don't have to be actually incompetent to create a problem, you just need to slip a little. And that's reason to worry. If the weapons are tagged improperly and stored in the wrong bay then they could easily be loaded onto a bomber without anyone realizing they were armed (the missiles in question were supposed to be transported for disposal after being superseded by more modern designs; loading such munitions aboard aircraft being rotated to a different base assignment is a common practice). Historically, we've been very good at either preventing such inventory errors or catching them before so much as a single piece of equipment is moved. Honestly, the operational record here has always been one to be tremendously proud of.
I certainly don't dismiss out of hand the possibility that this was deliberate, but if this truly was an accident... then all of our nuclear inventory statistics are suspect, and that means that we may have effectively lost control of our nuclear arsenal.
I know some other ex-Air Force people, and the scuttlebutt right now is that not only have the ground crew and inventory staff at Minot been completely decertified (which is HUGE) but the entire Bomb Wing they support might follow them shortly (Minot AFB and Barksdale AFB are the only two bases that still maintain operational B-52 squadrons). There is no way to overstate the magnitude of this. There is no one in the world more paranoid about nuclear weapons than the people who handle them for a living, and for something like this to happen throws everyone into disarray. Things like this simply don't happen. Ever.
If this was deliberate, then it is sinister. If it was an accident, then it is symptomatic of a level of systemic incompetence that is so far beyond unacceptable as to be ludicrous. And the carelessness of a few - or even one - will end, in varying degrees of disgrace, the careers of many honest and hard-working people who deserve the respect and gratitude of us all...and clear spaces for the drooling ideologues to fill with more of their own.