OMG. In Supply, I had to account more closely for the winter field jackets than this. I wonder what they mean by fired in this context. Relieved of duty in this job? And shuffled off to another job? Put out of the service? Not as obscure as the meaning of "is" but open to interpretation.
I assume they mean pilots when they say officers. The bombs were under one wing. I would think the plane would fly differently and the pilot would notice.
I love the sentence int eh article that says this is the worst "known" incident in decades. It made me laugh. The only thing I bet these people did differently than SOP was they got caught. Doesn't make it right what happened... just saying I doubt they just ignored the rules and regulations for handling the weapons overnight, and this is probably a bigger issue than the military ever will give it credit for...
The only thing I bet these people did differently than SOP was they got caught.
I don't know what to think. I worked with a corporation that was involved in the management of the nuclear stockpile of one of our nato allies (thats Ill Im going to say but you could probably figure it out who and what country quite easily from google)
The beaurocracy surrounding that program was reached a level of anal-rententiveness that is nigh unimaginable, and really, I was just on the outside looking in, not dealing with anything nearly as sensitive as the actual 'physics package'...
To move these weapons around so haphazardly the personel would have had to willingly and conciously ignored not one but several (at LEAST 3) checks that are supposed to create immediate paper trails of such movement. There is no way this could have been just "an oversight". Not one, but a group of people had willfully blown off responsiblities that they knew they had... I can certainly sympathize, but their will be consequences..
First off, the BUFF most likely had the nuke's loaded interneally in the bomb bay, not the wings... This incident was purely camplaicency... Lot's of people should be held accountable for this to include the maintenance officers, the Sq commander, the weapons load crew, the pilots, the SF's who were supposed to be guarding the secure area holding the nuke's, and the ordinance crew and all of their shift supervision. Regardless of how bad it was, I'll bet it does not happen again...
Anybody remember the incident when the squadron(s) from Holliman AFB came back from an exercise in Germany and got caught smuggling wine? They fired everybody who made more than fifty cents an hour.
Originally posted by RT841: I assume they mean pilots when they say officers. The bombs were under one wing. I would think the plane would fly differently and the pilot would notice.
Nope, you're wrong. The pilots are actually in the clear because they signed for the missiles and not the warheads. From the outside, you can't tell. No, the officers they are talking about are the officers in the aircraft maintenance squadron, the co of the munitions squadron, the wing commander, the support group commander, the aircraft squadron commander, etc.
Awww, c'mon...it's not like they actually dropped them or something.
Seriously, I don't understand how this happens. I was in a Nuclear unit in Germany and access to the bunker that housed the warheads was very closely monitored & access was highly restricted.
I don't know how the missiles on this aircraft look, but on Pershing Nuclear Missiles the end of the missile is literally flat unless it is armed with the warhead. There are dummy warheads, but they were rarely used. Raising the missile with a live warhead was actually considered an act of war.
At our missile site in Germany there were 3 missile pads each with 3 missiles. Only one of the pads was called the "hot pad" meaning all 3 missiles were armed and ready for flight. Those missiles were never raised & we were constantly updated on which pad was the hot pad in case it changed. We could not even devulge to our batallion S-2 which one was hot when they came to inspect. I would think the Air Force would know how many ready to fly missiles they had and the precise location of each one. How the hell do you just load up a couple nukes and take them on a joy ride and no one notices?
Stop taking life so seriously, you're not getting out alive anyway.
I was an NCO from BAFB and I want to say that those firings should continue to Barksdale's leadership too. I saw personel whom do absolutely nothing to assess any situation and allow incidents to agravate even much worse. The TMO flight of the 2nd LRS squadron is plagued with a gang. As you know, only five of those six nukes were recovered but there's one still missing wich proves the level of incompetence that those B-52 units due to their complaciency. Now if those missiles were to be scrapped as dummy bombs, then the sixth nuke might be in the DRMO section between 2 LRS and the DRMO center in Texarkana. And for lastI'm proud to be in the USAF but I'm extremely ashamed to be assigned in Barksdale AFB.
There are more than just the officers that lost their job, I am sure. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that a few NCOs and lower enlisted went in front of the old man. While the enlisted will get a good amount of crap (the whole NJP schlaparooskie), those officer's careers are definitely over.
There should be in place a number of check and balances. Those weapons are not normally in an armed configuration and there should have been at least 2 or more coded verifications to authorize the arming and loading of those weapons. The flight crew also should have to verify weapon status condition before flight. I believe that there were more individuals that should be held accountable not just the 5 officers that have been found accountable as reported by the media. We cannot allow complacency of procedures of this or any potential catastrophic incident to go unchecked at any time. We must have in place and follow those strict procedures when positioning and arming aircraft weapon systems.
