Reply #33: agreed re: stinkage

[Snazzy]

Read those comments and the ones at Navy Times (who have updated story, http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/09/airforce_nuclear_warhead_070905/ Currently good link but screwy website, keeps moving stuff, try front page if broken later).

More details added and corrected to 6 nukes. But the linked discussion from service ppl most interesting. Too many steps to go wrong. Also some discuss neo-nazi infiltration of the military, also scary, as had such a plane crashed it wouldn't have been a Broken Arrow event.

From updated:

“It’s not like they had nuclear ACMs and conventional ACMs right next to each other and they just happened to load one with a nuclear warhead,” Kristensen (FAS) said.

The Defense Department uses a computerized tracking program to keep tabs on each one of its nuclear warheads, he said. For the six warheads to make it onto the B-52, each one would have had to be signed out of its storage bunker and transported to the bomber. Diligent safety protocols would then have had to been ignored to load the warheads onto the plane, Kristensen said.

All ACMs loaded with a nuclear warhead have distinct red signs distinguishing them from ACMs without a nuclear yield, he said. ACMs with nuclear warheads also weigh significantly more than missiles without them.

“I just can’t imagine how all of this happened,” said Philip Coyle, a senior adviser on nuclear weapons at the Center for Defense Information. “The procedures are so rigid; this is the last thing that’s supposed to happen.”

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