Letters to the Editor
Retired Military Patriot
Published Letters: 2270 Editor's Choice: 11
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@ Chris Sinnard re: strike Iran plot
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]“So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let’s call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.
Then he told me something I had not heard before.
Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can’t imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?
His final point was to observe that someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.”
As a retired former Air Force 28-year public affairs officer, I was very disturbed by your posting. Not disturbed by you, but by the possibility that your insight may be correct. After reading a lot of stories on this, I have my doubts that Darth Cheney has involved my beloved service in his political machinations even though he is capable of anything.
The news story that revealed this incident came from the Military Times, a grouping of civilian newspapers that cater to each branch of our military services. Any airman at Minot or Barksdale air bases or in a military headquarters could have been the source of the initial leak. If this was just human error and not a Machiavellian plot, which I tend to believe it was, it was a gross one and many people deserve to be fired. It is doubtful that this magnitude of error would have escaped media attention because the motivation for leaking would be for the sake of holding people responsible and making sure there is no leniency in handling nuclear weapons. Of course, a lot of senior officers would have wanted to keep this quiet because of the size of the embarrassment to the Air Force.
The following excerpts from a follow-up story by the Air Force Times indicate that the unusual step of transporting nukes via B-52s was part of the operational plan of disposing of older weapons. The critics have a right to be skeptical. I hope promised congressional investigations consider the possibility that Darth Cheney was involved and do everything they can to find out if he was.
Commander disciplined for nuclear mistake, Air Force Times, By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Sep 7, 2007 11:12:31 EDT
The original plan was to transport non-nuclear Advanced Cruise Missiles, mounted on the wings of a B-52, to Barksdale as part of a Defense Department effort to decommission 400 of the ACMs. It was not discovered that the six missiles had nuclear warheads until the plane landed at Barksdale, leaving the warheads unaccounted for during the approximately 3 1/2 hour flight between the two bases, the officers said.
But few critics were placated Wednesday by the Air Force’s reassurances.
“Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible,” said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass, co-chair of the House Bi-partisan Task Force.
Non-proliferation treaty experts said the Air Force didn’t violate any international nuclear treaties by transporting the nuclear warheads on the B-52, but it was the first time since 1968 that it’s been known publicly that nuclear warheads were transported on a U.S. bomber.
After six nuclear-armed B-52s crashed from 1959-1968, the Defense Department ordered all bombers off nuclear airborne alert. The policy change occurred after a B-52 crashed in Greenland in January 1968, dropping three nuclear warheads on the island and one into the ocean.
As a gesture to Russia and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the first Bush administration took it one step farther in 1991 by ordering all bombers to halt nuclear ground alerts, which allowed bomber crews to practice loading a nuclear warhead, but never taking off with one.
The Defense Department does transport nuclear warheads by air, but instead of bombers it uses C-17 or C-130 cargo aircraft.
“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 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.”
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/09/airforce_nuclear_warhead_070905/
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@ Chris Sinnard re: extremely partisan site
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ouch! Conservativeslayer just revealed you plagiarized. Just one of the partisan dummies you are so concerned about. It’s obvious that you have not been perusing this site for very long and reading the very intelligent and well informed Glenn commentariat. I usually read a lot of postings before I start commenting because I don’t want to say something stupid or reveal my poor knowledge or thinking. I hope you keep commenting, but be careful, these partisans are much sharper than you think and you won’t get away with much.