Bent Spear

The Washington Post provides an excellent report about the nuclear armed weapons mistakenly loaded on a B-52 aircraft three and a half weeks ago. What initially was reported as a loss of nuclear weapon accountability for the duration of the three-hour flight turned out to be a period of 36 hours.

In a previous post, I criticized the AP for failing to understand this story was one of accountability, not one of nukes flying on bombers. WaPo nails it here - the loss of accountablility is the core of their story. Additionally they hint that nuclear armed flights do occur abeit under special authority:

It was the first known flight by a nuclear-armed bomber over U.S. airspace, without special high-level authorization, in nearly 40 years. (Emphasis added)

WaPo did not learn how the munitions custodians failed to notice the wrong warheads despite multiple checks required of a munitions officer, a two man verification team, and a bomber pilot. Seems the check sheets were "pencil whipped" at several levels. This indicates a disturbing laxity in the care of our nuclear weaponry.

Originally posted in UNCoRRELATED Sept 22 2007