Nuclear and Nonnuclear Missiles Were Stored in Same Bunker, Lawmaker Says

The investigation unfolds as to how six nuclear-armed AGM-129 missiles were loaded onto a B-52 bomber and flown across the continent.

The six warheads each had an explosive power of more than 10 Hiroshima atomic bombs.

An Air Force decision to store nuclear-armed cruise missiles in the same North Dakota bunker as missiles containing dummy warheads played a key role in the unrecognized transport of six nuclear devices from North Dakota to Louisiana last month, according to the head of a congressional oversight committee.

Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic weapons, said the decision “created a mistake waiting to happen.”

“You can’t leave them in the same facility [as missiles with nuclear warheads] and expect people to tell the difference, . . . not from five feet away,” she said.

My recommendation; day-glo paint on all nuclear weapons that say “Danger! I’ll destroy the world and everything you love! Use with extreme caution!”.  Maybe then the difference will be easier to tell.

The most important person in the flight crew, she said, was the one assigned to look through a 5/8th -inch hole in each missile to determine whether the warhead inside was a dummy or a nuclear one.
Referring to the series of errors, Tauscher said: “We are lucky it didn’t happen before.”

Yes. We are so lucky that we’ve not let careless people and poor inventory skills create situations where we’ve allowed nukes to fly over our heads before. I’ve know people to be fired from the local grocery store for lessor inventory offenses.

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