Forum: Air Force Life

Salute!

Gotta go with Meathook on this one.

Heads will/should roll.

I am not a wimpy CYA type, never was. But this incident is beyond belief.

OPSEC is not a problem here. "no lone zone", two-man concept, security forces during transit, loading and such - all are common knowledge and should be.

Way back when the Earth was still cooling, there were incidents when an alert jet was put on the daily schedule with "live" weapons loaded. Not the nukes, but "warshot" A2A missiles. So we had an incident where a Deuce pilot shot down a T-33 "target" because the Deuce pilot didn't actually check his loadout and thought he was carrying a "weapon system evaluator missile". The troop who got shot down was in one of my classes at the altitude chamber deal we had to go thru every coupla years.

But to think that an entire organization, from the load crews, security forces, aircrew, etc. would allow a plane take off with real nukes without knowing it is unfathomable. BEAM ME UP!!!

That being said, the procedures and safeguards in place for employment of the nukes would have prevented them from actually being launched, or would they? Now I am getting scared. If the aircrew didn't know the missiles were real, and they made a practice run at some "scoring" site, well ....... Guess the mushroom cloud in Kansas would have gotten some attention, huh?

Sheesh,

Gums sends ...

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Thank you Gums...as you indicated, this one has me wondering...what in the world is happening within our USAF on this one.

I never would have thought to ever have heard of such an event....

Salute!

Like I said...its Air Force policy. I never said I agreed with it.

Forum Veteran Joined: Dec 15, 2006 - 12:28 AM Posts: 760

TJSmitty wrote:

I'm sorry, but I have to throw the BS flag on this one!!

I worked FB-111's at Pease until the base was closed in '90, had to be on PRP and the whole nine yards. We had nukes there loaded on planes, the only time I ever saw those planes move was during exercises, they would do the "Elephant Walk", get to EOR wait a few minutes then taxi back.

Nukes don't "accidently" get loaded onto an airplane.
Crew chiefs don't "accidently" pre-flight a jet and not realize there are nukes loaded up.
Aircrews don't "accidently" take off and fly with nukes onboard.

Something "smells" really fishy on this one.....

Smitty

Like with the USS Forestal fire or the Fairchild B-52 crash, the rules and policy don’t stay the same, and people don’t always fully understand or follow the rules and procedures or follow good sense.

I think as in the USS Forestall fire, Fairchild B-52 crash, and B-52 accidentally loaded with nukes; complacency was a major factor or cause. The rules and procedures were good/adequate and in place to prevent such mishaps, however the rules and procedures were ignored/overlooked/circumvented. There likely is no need for new rules or procedures, we just need to make sure they are being followed and review them once in a while. Make sure that personnel have a good understanding of why the procedures are in place. There are some rare cases to break the rules, but you have to have a very good reason and you still have to be knowingly and caringly safe.

Safety is not an accident.

Mishap of B-52 at Fairchild Air Force Base Washington
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQa4PpIkOZU

USS Forestal Mishap July 29, 1967
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chuiyXQKw3I

As always, I think the media and politicians are probably distorting the facts and hyping things; however I think there is reason to think the heart of the story is true.

If there is no truth to the story how come people are already being relieved of duty? How come there is no big denial from the military or Bush administration?

I guess you could believe it is all part of a cover story for an attack we cancelled on Iran. That is one of the conspiracy theories out there, however I doubt it. I doubt we would call off an attack like that unless we had real good reason.

If it was an accident the whistle blowers should probably get immunity. If it were a planned attacked on Iran, I would think it would be treason to leak the info, so I would think the whistle blower would be treated as such.

I doubt the danger of them being detonated by accident is nil, but after this it can shake your confidence.

I think this was just a case of compliancy (making assumptions and taking shortcuts and failures to communicate properly).

I think warheads were supposed to be removed before flight, some reason that didn’t happen. (Like they took ones by mistake that didn’t have the warheads removed, or they assumed the warheads were removed because it was after they were supposed to be removed…)

So I think they were suppose to load the nuk-E-Er missiles on the B-52. The screw up seems to be the missiles were not suppose to have the warheads on them. For some reason there was a foul-up that allowed it to happen.

I don’t think there was a threat of fission detonation, but if the plane crashed, it could have been a real mess to clean up, and a lot of people could have been unknowingly been exposed radiation risk.

I think it also is a political embarrassment to the US because I think the decommissioning and transport of nukes are supposed to be under protocol. I think several protocols were violated, and that is egg on our face. As much as we give the Russia a hard time for making mistakes on documenting their nukes, it can make us look a little hypocritical and silly. Granted this case is not as bad, but it is an embarrassment and should be a wakeup call.

It would be interesting to know all of what happened, but I doubt it will made fully public, the story will likely remain distorted by the media and politicians and conspiracy theorists. I think much of the pertinent info should not be public info. I think the procedures; identifications should be classified to the GP for national security. I suspect any military info on this incident will be highly redacted, and that will likely fuel nutty conspiracy theories.

I suspect most of us will not know what really happened, those that find out likely won’t be able to say. Wink

I don’t know anything about this incident other then what the media says. I know very little about the handling of nukes. I don’t even feel comfortable publicly talking about procedures or markings of nukes.

I suspect the fear of a fission detonation is unfounded. I doubt the crew even had the codes. I suspect the missiles were in a ferry configuration, not a combat configuration.

ATFS CRASH stated - I think the media and politicians are probably distorting the facts and hyping things:

I agree because there are far too many checks and balances built into the "system" to allow for such an event to occur, that is why this whole report is hard to believe...far too many things must take place before any such load could occur but this will be (as you mentioned) only known to those involved, we the public will never know what truly happened....nor should we but those of us that worked in this area, know what should have happened or how this never could have happened but it did...that is amazing to me (as we know it).

Later

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20926465/

"protected for 15 hours by only the base's exterior chain-link fence and roving security patrols"
--Yet more misinformation to fuel the fire.

"A secret 1998 history of the Air Combat Command warned"
--It wasn't secret.

"Brooks, who oversaw billions of dollars in U.S. spending to help Russia secure its nuclear stockpile, said the mishandling of U.S. warheads indicates that "something went seriously wrong."
--Hope we didn't have to pay him for his opinion on that!

This event happened for 3 reasons:
1. We are human.
2. Someone got complacent.
3. Maybe they shouldn't be stored together with unarmed munitions.

This was a harmless mistake and the munitions were never out of Air Force control or security. A few folks will have their career's vaporize and that will be the end of it.

what other security other than a chain link fence and patrols are there on an Air Force base?

Don't expect an answer but unless you know something I don't, I would say thats a pretty correct statement.

akruse21,

I'm a civilian (don't have specific knowledge) and wouldn't say anything to break OPSEC if I knew enough to, but I can think of one big time security item that was completely overlooked by the media and possibly by you - the weapons never left the jet. These missiles are 3500+ pounds each, 250" long, and were still attached to the wing of a B-52. Just getting one off the jet, especially without being noticed, would be a big challenge. Trying to get it off the flight line would be even more difficult. It may not be more security against getting to the weapons, but it's not like they were just left laying on a rack out by the base perimeter where someone could just cut through the fence or drive over it so that they could toss it in the back of a pickup truck and drive off.

I do agree that this never should have happened in the first place and that it is an incident of the most serious nature.

Sorry Akruse21...OPSEC issue...the statement was not correct.

Well I guess we'll just have to disagree as we can't really fight it out over the internet Smile

Maybe if your ever an SP you'll find out/understand...

I did about 300 days worth of SP duty at Tyndall. I know all about force protection.

[quote="checksixxThis event happened for 3 reasons:

I had to add one

1. We are human.
2. Someone got complacent.
3. Maybe they shouldn't be stored together with unarmed munitions.
4. WHO IS IN CHARGE? and WHY?

akruse21 wrote:

I did about 300 days worth of SP duty at Tyndall. I know all about force protection.

If thats true, then you should know there is more than just a fenceline and roving patrols...especially if the AFB has a flightline. No offense but 300 days at a stateside base? You've just skimmed the surface of force protection. Defense in depth...thats why these nukes were in no real danger of getting out in the open from one AF flightline to another. The fact that it happened is a whole separate issue...which of course it never should have happened.

Forum: Air Force Life

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