Washington – Just after 9 a.m. Aug. 29, a group of U.S. airmen entered a sod-covered bunker on North Dakota’s Minot Air Force Base with orders to collect a set of unarmed cruise missiles bound for a weapons graveyard. They quickly pulled out a dozen cylinders, all of which appeared identical from a cursory glance, and hauled them along Bomber Boulevard to a waiting B-52 bomber.
The airmen attached the missiles to the plane’s wings, six on each side. After eyeballing the missiles on the right side, a flight officer signed a manifest that listed a dozen unarmed AGM-129 missiles. The officer did not notice that the six on the left contained nuclear warheads, each with the destructive power of up to 10 Hiroshima bombs.
That detail would escape notice for 36 hours, during which the missiles were flown to a Louisiana air base that had no idea nuclear warheads were coming. It was the first known flight by a nuclear-armed bomber over U.S. airspace, without special high-level authorization, in nearly 40 years.
The episode, serious enough to trigger a rare “Bent Spear” nuclear incident report that raced through the chain of command to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Bush, provoked new questions inside and outside the Pentagon about the adequacy of U.S. nuclear weapons safeguards while the military’s attention and resources are devoted to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The warheads were attached to the plane in Minot without special guard for more than 15 hours, and they remained on the plane in Louisiana for nearly nine hours more before being discovered. In total, the warheads slipped from the Air Force’s nuclear safety net for more than a day without anyone’s knowledge.
“I have been in the nuclear business since 1966 and am not aware of any incident more disturbing,” said retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, who served as U.S. Strategic Command chief from 1996 to 1998.
A simple error in a missile storage room led to missteps at every turn, as ground crews failed to notice the warheads, and as security teams and flight crew members failed to provide adequate oversight and check the cargo thoroughly.
The incident came on the heels of multiple warnings – some of which went to the highest levels of the Bush administration, including the National Security Council – of security problems at Air Force installations where nuclear weapons are kept. The risks are not that warheads might be accidentally detonated but that sloppy procedures could lead to theft or damage to a warhead, disseminating toxic nuclear materials.
A former National Security Council staff member described the event as something that people in the White House “have been assured never could happen.”
What occurred Aug. 29-30, the former official said, was “a breakdown at a number of levels involving flight crew, munitions, storage and tracking procedures – faults that never were to line up on a single day.”
Once the errant warheads were discovered, Air Force officers in Louisiana were alarmed enough to immediately notify the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center, which serves as the nerve center for U.S. nuclear war planning.
Such “Bent Spear” events are ranked second in seriousness only to “Broken Arrow” incidents, which involve the loss, destruction or accidental detonation of a nuclear weapon.
The Air Force decided at first to keep the mishap under wraps, in part because of policies that prohibit the confirmation of any details about the storage or movement of nuclear weapons. No public acknowledgment was made until service members leaked the story to the Military Times, which published a brief account Sept. 5.
Officials familiar with the Bent Spear report say Air Force officials apparently did not anticipate that the episode would cause public concern. One passage in the report contains these words: “No press interest anticipated.”
Military officers, nuclear weapons analysts and lawmakers have expressed concern that it was not just a fluke, but a symptom of deeper problems in the handling of nuclear weapons now that Cold War anxieties have abated.
The Air Force has sought to offer assurances that its security system is working. Within days, the service relieved one Minot officer of his command and disciplined several airmen, while assigning a major general to head an investigation that has already been extended for extra weeks.
At the same time, Defense Department officials have announced that a Pentagon- appointed scientific advisory board will study the mishap as part of a larger review of procedures for handling nuclear weapons.
