WaPo : Six of Our Nukes Went Missing -- But Don't Worry

Six of Our Nukes Went Missing -- But Don't Worry

William Arkin | September 6, 2007

An Air Force B-52 bomber flew over the heartland last week with six nuclear-armed cruise missiles attached to its wings. The pilots and crew evidently had no clue what they were carrying. Nor did the munitions crew that accidentally loaded the missiles. No one noticed that six nuclear warheads were missing for more than 12 hours. And of course the American public didn't know what was happening until now.

All of which raises the question: How worried should we be? More worried than the Pentagon says we should be, certainly -- but not as worried as some of its critics want us to be.

This incident has followed the usual pattern: a small leak in the Military Times newspapers, followed by mainstream media attention, followed by lame statements from the military, followed by angry remarks from members of Congress and apocalyptic statements by anti-nuclear groups. And finally it becomes tabloid fodder: "A BUNCH OF 'NUKE'LEHEADS," screams the headline in the New York Post.

Air Force chief of staff Gen. Michael T. ("Buzz") Moseley has been providing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates personal briefings about the incident daily. (I'm sure that this is not the kind of face time Moseley wants with the boss.) President Bush has been receiving daily briefings as well.

The Air Force now assures that the stealthy Advanced Cruise Missiles with their W80 Mod 1 warheads were never armed in flight and posed no threat to the public. The missiles themselves are slated to be retired from the U.S. nuclear weapons inventory, but it is unclear whether the movement from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana was actually a consolidation of assets. Officially, the military neither confirms nor denies the presence of nuclear weapons at any location, and the Pentagon uses tortured language to avoid using the word "nuclear."

Despite the huffing and puffing of the professional concerned, the danger to the good people of the United States from the B-52 crashing or a missile spontaneously exploding was probably infinitesimal. Still, the reality is that six nuclear warheads were removed from their bunkers in North Dakota, loaded onto a bomber, flown across the United States for three and a half hours, and then left on a parking apron for another 10 hours -- and no one noticed.

"The weapons were always in our custody," an Air Force spokesman assures. Of course they were in Air Force custody, at least as far as the paperwork goes. That doesn't mean a group of terrorists, aided by people on the base, couldn't have stolen the weapons from the North Dakota bunker.

There is no explanation for this incident other than gross incompetence on the part of the munitions and flight crews. This has nothing at all to do with the Bush administration's commitment to arms control, the military's attention being focused elsewhere or the fact that we have too many nuclear weapons in too many places.

Still, I would wager that if Congress wants to push the issue, we are going to find out that there have been hundreds of similar incidents over the years. (Although I wonder if records are even kept on them, at least in one place.) The Pentagon's "neither confirm nor deny" policy shields those records, and its out-of-sight-out-of-mind attitude about nukes falsely calms the public.