As if enduring the frustrations of the last two years here in the swamp is not enough, apparently last week the Air Force decided to give everyone in Louisiana a little unintended thrill. But we didn’t know about it until today.
The Army Times first broke the story, reporting that six nuclear warheads on air-launched cruise missiles were mistakenly carried on a flight from North Dakota to Louisiana last week, prompting a major investigation.
The plane flew the cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base outside of Shreveport, LA., for decommissioning last Thursday, the Air Force has confirmed.
Needless to say, the warheads should have been removed from the missiles before they were loaded on the B-52 bomber, according to military officials.
Not to mention the fact that according to treaties the U.S. agreed to years ago — flying nuclear weapons is prohibited. Instead, weapons that have to be broken down and decommissioned are transported by truck to the appropriate location. One of those locations being Amarillo, TX.
Nice going fly boys.
What I want to know is — how does something like this happen? I mean, really. How do you “mistakenly” put armed nuclear weapons on a plane and send it off into the wild blue yonder?
How soon they forget. At one time, it was standard practice for SAC to have a few Buffs on airborn alert carrying nukes. One was lost off Palomares, Spain in 1966, and another 2 years later somewhere else. After that, and with the new quick launch ICBMs operational, the process was discontinued. Still, one Combat Command wing commander is going to consider being the morale officer in Thule AB an excellent follow-on assignment.