The unexplained "accident"

[LAK]

OK; I am way behind on this one - old news, and I apologize if it was already discussed. I recall hearing something on the radio about nukes being flown across the continental U.S. during a rather hectic week and am only just reading the "news" about it.

Anyway; some crucial facts remain obscurred, and exactly how it happened - or rather even how it could have happened - remains unexplained (emphasis mine in bold type in article body).

Now, I have never (knowingly) been involved in the protection of, regulation and SOPs for nukes. However, I have a good few years in the protection of, regulation of and SOPs regarding AF priority resources of the next lower category lower than nukes.

Anyone else doing some head scratching over this one?

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http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/06/airforce_moseleywynne_060508w/

Moseley and Wynne forced out
Staff report
Posted : Monday Jun 9, 2008 10:39:01 EDT
  
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and Secretary Michael W. Wynne were forced to resign Thursday during hastily arranged meetings with their Pentagon bosses.

Moseley was summoned from the Corona leadership summit at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, to an early morning meeting at the Pentagon with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss a report on the Air Force’s problems handling nuclear weapons.

The report, by Navy Adm. Kirkland Donald, director of naval nuclear propulsion, revealed widespread problems and convinced Defense Secretary Robert Gates that senior officials must be held accountable.

Multimedia:
Moseley-Wynne photos

Moseley resigned in response.

Later in the morning, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England was dispatched to Wright-Patterson to ask for Wynne’s resignation, sources said. Wynne resigned during the meeting.

At a Pentagon press briefing Thursday afternoon, Gates said his decision to seek their resignations was “based entirely” on the Donald report, which uncovered a “gradual erosion of nuclear standards and a lack of effective oversight by Air Force leadership.”

Gates, who began his career working nuclear security issues as an Air Force intelligence officer in the 1960s, also said a “substantial” number of Air Force general officers and colonels more immediately responsible for recent lapses could still be reprimanded or fired in the wake of the report.

It is not clear how quickly Wynne and Moseley will leave their positions. Moseley has requested retirement effective Aug. 1 and will take terminal leave before that, according to a memo from Moseley, but it is not clear when he will leave his position.

“I think the honorable thing to do is to step aside,” Moseley said in a statement released to the press. “After consulting with my family, I intend to submit my request for retirement to Secretary Gates.”

Gates is likely to recommend Michael B. Donley, the Pentagon’s director of administration and management to succeed Wynne, a senior defense official said Friday.

Donley was acting secretary of the Air Force for seven months in 1993 and served as the service’s top financial officer from 1989 to 1993.

Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Duncan McNabb will likely become acting chief of staff.

The stunning development follows a series of high-profile scandals and disagreements between Air Force leadership and Gates in the past year, during which both the Pentagon and congressional leadership have increasingly expressed frustration about the Air Force’s top bosses.

But a senior defense official said the nuclear report was the most significant factor. “Everything that preceded that is insignificant by comparison,” the official said.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, released a statement praising Gates’ decision.

“Secretary Gates’ focus on accountability is essential and had been absent from the Office of the Secretary of Defense for too long,” the statement says. “The safety and security of America’s nuclear weapons must receive the highest priority, just as it must in other countries. The Secretary took appropriate action following the reports of the Defense Science Board, the Air Force’s own internal review, and now most recently, the report of Admiral Donald.” Wynne became Air Force secretary in November 2005, and Moseley took office in September 2005. Moseley’s term was to expire in September 2009, and Wynne served at the pleasure of the president.

Moseley, a former fighter pilot, has been in the Air Force since 1972. Before becoming chief, he served as commander of U.S. Central Command Air Forces and then as vice chief of staff from August 2003 until September 2005.

Wynne served as an Air Force officer from 1966 until 1973 and then began a nearly 30-year career in the aerospace industry. He rose to become president of General Dynamics’ space division and general manager of space launch systems at Lockheed Martin. He re-entered government service in 2001 and served four years as principal deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics before becoming Air Force secretary.

While the simultaneous removal of a service’s top civilian and uniformed leaders is unprecedented, there has been speculation for months among defense insiders that Moseley, Wynne or both could be in trouble.

The Air Force has been rocked by a series of missteps during the past year, and Moseley and Wynne’s relationships with Gates, England and members of congressional defense committees have steadily eroded.

Both men are well-liked personally, but that apparently was not enough to make up for a perceived lack of leadership.

Loren Thompson, an analyst with the Lexington Institute in Fairfax, Va., said the writing has been on the wall for several months, and that Moseley’s demeanor has changed noticeably during that time.

“It was clear the relationship between the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Air Force was deteriorating,” Thompson said. “But it wasn’t clear what that would mean for Air Force leadership. … “This [is] the final chapter in a long list of grievances between OSD and the Air Force.”

Those grievances include criticism of the Air Force’s nuclear weapons handling, two major acquisitions programs that have been stalled by protests, the service’s inability to rush more surveillance drones to the war zones, apparent conflicts of interest of current and retired senior officials related to a $50 million contract to produce a multimedia show for the Thunderbirds, and repeated clashes with Pentagon leaders over the number of F-22s the Air Force will buy and other budget issues.

The most serious blow to the credibility of the Air Force and its leadership has been a scandal spawned by the service’s accidental transfer in August of six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La.

A B-52 from the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot was supposed to transfer unarmed air-launched cruise missiles to Barksdale to be decommissioned, but munitions loaders accidentally attached nuclear-armed missiles to the pylons. The missiles were flown to Barksdale and sat unguarded on the tarmac for several hours before anyone realized what happened, some 30 hours after the mistake was made.

The 5th Bomb Wing commander, two group commanders and the 5th Munitions Squadron commander were relieved of their commands.

Moseley ordered a service-wide review of the nuclear enterprise two months after the incident, resulting in 36 recommendations for improvements. The review report was presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee, members of which were highly critical of the Air Force’s nuclear weapons handling.

The 5th Bomb Wing in late May failed its defense nuclear surety inspection, despite having months to prepare and being under close scrutiny since the incident. Inspectors found glaring deficiencies in the wing’s ability to protect its nuclear stockpile.

Then, in March, it was discovered that the Air Force had mislabeled nuclear warhead fuses, which led to the classified components accidentally being shipped to Taiwan in 2006. Gates said the incident made him realize that problems with the Air Force’s nuclear weapons handling procedures were systemic rather than isolated.

“The Taiwan incident was clearly the trigger,” he said.

In response, Gates ordered a military-wide inventory of nuclear weapons and components. That report was recently submitted to Gates.

It is believed to contain damning conclusions about the Air Force’s nuclear weapons handling practices.

Without naming Wynne and Moseley, Gates said “individuals in command and leadership positions not only fell short in terms of specific actions, they failed to recognize systemic problems, to address those problems, or – where beyond their authority to act – to call the attention of superiors to those problems.”

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, said he agreed with Gates’ decision to relieve Wynne and Moseley in the wake of the nuclear problems.

“There is nothing more important than the security of nuclear weapons, and it appeared that the Air Force investigation was not thorough,” Murtha said.

[wmenorr67]

How it happened and why is probably classified so as the bad guys cannot do it on purpose.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

i suspect complacency and murphys law played a role

[Standing Wolf]

Both men are well-liked personally, but that apparently was not enough to make up for a perceived lack of leadership.

Being well liked and trying your best have excused anything and everything quite some while. Somewhere far beyond the grave, (on public display, in fact,) Lenin is laughing himself silly.

[HankB]

I would guess that with the increasing bureaucracy, the objective - actually protecting the nukes - was overshadowed by "more important" tasks like each individual making sure that his specific, narrowly-defined job (i.e., his paperwork) was filled out exactly in accordance with directives.

At some point, the paperwork probably stopped being a good match to the actual task at hand . . . but as it was the paperwork, not the objective, that the individuals were rated on, that's what got priority.

I've seen this in the corporate world . . . so I'm guessing it's at work in the military as well.

[ilbob]

I am glad to see that responsibility for this kind of thing is being forced on people at the top rather than bit players at lower levels. The bit players have to be dealt with too, but when you have systemic problems, the guys at the top have to take the fall.

[MechAg94]

There have been cases in industry where breathing air bottles have gotten rented out that were full of nitrogen.  People died as a result.  The particular case I am thinking of resulted from sloppy handling of cylinders, sloppy paperwork, and lack of testing all the way through.  I imagine this case with the nukes was similar in that it was a combination of errors and shortcuts that any alone would not have caused an incident, but together did.  More than likely the errors were not new and hadn't been corrected, leading me to think not enough oversight or effort was put out by higher ups to insure procedures were followed to the letter and errors corrected.

The incident I mentioned, a six pack of breathing air had nitrogen in it (they mixed pure O2 and N2 for breathing air).  It was discovered by someone and set aside without being tagged as bad.  Later on, a driver needed a six pack for delivery and grabbed it despite it having no paperwork at all.  The guys at the site using it didn't receive or bother with the paperwork and didn't check it themselves.  The guys with the air masks didn't bother to put the masks on outside, but just dragged them into the boiler they were working on and put them on inside.  By the time anyone realized they were out of communication, it was way too late.  It was a combination of failures all the way through.

[MechAg94]

I am glad to see that responsibility for this kind of thing is being forced on people at the top rather than bit players at lower levels. The bit players have to be dealt with too, but when you have systemic problems, the guys at the top have to take the fall.

Yes.  As with safety issues at chemical plants, if upper management puts that first and foremost, the local management is more likely to do it also and carry that down to the worker level.  Workers are always for safety in general, but shortcuts and compromises can be killer. 

[yesitsloaded]

Maybe it was to protect our precious bodily fluids.

[Manedwolf]

Maybe it was to protect our precious bodily fluids.

I think the pilots lost some of those when told what had been on their pylons without their knowledge.

[RoadKingLarry]

It may be different in the Air force but in the Navy there is no conceivably possible way to mistake a genuine nuclear weapon for a conventional or dummy weapon it just can't be done by anyone sentient enough  to breathe unassisted. I suspect that there is more to this story than we will ever likely hear and a couple of top end brass about ready retire anyway got to play scape goat.

[Hawkmoon]

It may be different in the Air force but in the Navy there is no conceivably possible way to mistake a genuine nuclear weapon for a conventional or dummy weapon it just can't be done by anyone sentient enough  to breathe unassisted. I suspect that there is more to this story than we will ever likely hear and a couple of top end brass about ready retire anyway got to play scape goat.

I recall reading the reports at the time of the incident. I think it was clear that the people who actually put the nukes on the plane knew they were nukes. In fact, I believe the pilots also knew they had nukes on board. The problem was -- they were supposed to be UNarmed weapons, being transported from one base to another for storage. Somewhere in the chain, somebody either loaded live weapons, or armed them after they were loaded on the plane. The pilots did NOT know the weapons were live. (IIRC, they were gigged because, it was argued, they should have known. HOW they should have known, if their orders were to fly unarmed nukes to another station, has not been explained.)

[The Annoyed Man]

I would guess that with the increasing bureaucracy, the objective - actually protecting the nukes - was overshadowed by "more important" tasks like each individual making sure that his specific, narrowly-defined job (i.e., his paperwork) was filled out exactly in accordance with directives.

At some point, the paperwork probably stopped being a good match to the actual task at hand . . . but as it was the paperwork, not the objective, that the individuals were rated on, that's what got priority.

I've seen this in the corporate world . . . so I'm guessing it's at work in the military as well.

Um, yeah, I've noticed your TPS report didn't have the right cover sheet. I'm going to need you to go ahead and move down into the basement. Oh yeah, and, um, come on in on Saturday.

[LAK]

Hawkmoon

I recall reading the reports at the time of the incident. I think it was clear that the people who actually put the nukes on the plane knew they were nukes. In fact, I believe the pilots also knew they had nukes on board. The problem was -- they were supposed to be UNarmed weapons, being transported from one base to another for storage. Somewhere in the chain, somebody either loaded live weapons, or armed them after they were loaded on the plane. The pilots did NOT know the weapons were live. (IIRC, they were gigged because, it was argued, they should have known. HOW they should have known, if their orders were to fly unarmed nukes to another station, has not been explained.)

On the surface, this might seem more plausible. However, even the regulation and SOPs for entering into the ready storage for live nukes is a process in itself. Some tangible explanation as to why they were being loaded for a flight mission would be expected at the next to highest level in the chain of command. And live nukes transported for any purpose other than a flight mission would be transported on regular transport aircraft.

Most experienced pilots I suspect know what a live nuke looks like (marked as such) as opposed to dummy ordnance for training missions. And I am certain that loading live nukes requires a protocol starting at a certain (and somewhat high) level in the chain of command.

Reading various articles (this and others from AFT etc) the impression is given that Sgt Mac just walked into a hangar and directed some airmen who "mistakenly" loaded the aircraft with weapons from the wrong trollies. ..

"NO! I said the yellow-tipped ones dummies!"

Now all interservice and AF jokes aside (and I have seen or heard of a few big blunders while I was in); a "mistake" does not sound remotely plausible when one considers the chain of command requirements, regulation, SOPs to load live nukes on a strategic bomber - and the fact that nukes are always under guard in separate facilities from dummy ordnance.

So the possibility that live nukes were loaded by "mistake" - even as the result of a series of errors and blunders - is not really plausible to me.

The "detonators to Taiwan" is another odd story. The air force is not in the business of shipping contract export military goods to foreign countries. If a foreign government wants helicopter batteries, it orders them through the appropriate channels from the contractor that makes them, and they are shipped on commercial ships or flights as special cargo. So the idea that the AF "mislabeled" some nuke detonators, thinking they were helo batteries, and sent them to Taiwan is also completely inplausible.

Unless, it was intentional and intended as a clandestine shipment of arms to Taiwan - and the wrong people stumbled upon it. But even in such a case, it is still likely a commercial front company would have shipped the items for them.