A DRY RUN... THE TACTICAL ATOMIC BOMBS ARE BEING LOADED ONTO THE PLANES... WHERE WILL THEY FALL ? ....

Nuclear warheads mistakenly flown on B-52
By Michael Hoffman, Military Times

A B-52 bomber mistakenly loaded with at least five nuclear warheads flew from Minot Air Force Base, N.D, to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug. 30, resulting in an Air Force-wide investigation, according to three officers who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.


By ferey at 2007-01-20

The B-52 was loaded with Advanced Cruise Missiles, part of a Defense Department effort to decommission 400 of the ACMs. But the nuclear warheads should have been removed at Minot before being transported to Barksdale, the officers said. The missiles were mounted onto the pylons of the bomber's wings. Advanced Cruise Missiles carry a W80-1 warhead with a yield of 5 to 150 kilotons and are specifically designed for delivery by B-52 strategic bombers. Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Ed Thomas said the transfer was safely conducted and the weapons were in Air Force custody and control at all times. However, the mistake was not discovered until the B-52 landed at Barskdale, which left the warheads unaccounted for during the approximately 3-1/2 hour flight between the two bases, the officers said. "Air Force standards are very exacting when it comes to munitions handling," Thomas said.
"The weapons were always in our custody and there was never a danger to the American public." An investigation headed by Maj. Gen. Douglas Raaberg, director of Air and Space Operations at Air Combat Command Headquarters, was launched immediately to find the cause of the mistake and figure out how it could have been prevented, Thomas said. Air Force officials wouldn't officially specify whether nuclear weapons were involved, in accordance with long-standing Defense Department policy regarding nuclear munitions, Thomas said. However, the three officers close to the situation did confirm the warheads were nuclear. The crews involved with the mistaken load at the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot have been temporarily decertified from performing their duties involving munitions pending corrective actions or additional training, Thomas said. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the munitions squadron commander also was relieved of his duties. The AP also reported that the bomber was carring six nuclear warheads, not five as sources told the Military Times. Officials at Minot immediately conducted an inventory of its nuclear weapons after the oversight was discovered, and Thomas said he could confirm that all remaining nuclear weapons at Minot are accounted for. At no time was there a risk for a nuclear detonation, even if the B-52 crashed on its way to Barksdale, said Steve Fetter, a former Defense Department official who worked on nuclear weapons policy in 1993-94. A crash could ignite the high explosives associated with the warhead, and possibly cause a leak of the plutonium, but the warheads' elaborate safeguards would prevent a nuclear detonation from occurring, he said. "The main risk would have been the way the Air Force responded to any problems with the flight because they would have handled it much differently if they would have known nuclear warheads were onboard," he said. The risk of the warheads falling into the hands of rogue nations or terrorists was minimal since the weapons never left the United States, according to Fetter and Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an independent research and policy think tank in Washington, D.C. Air Combat Command will have a command-wide mission stand down Sept. 14 to review their procedures in response to this oversight, he said. "The Air Force takes its mission to safeguard weapons seriously," he said. "No effort will be spared to ensure that the matter is thoroughly and completely investigated."

US says wargames not aimed at China, Iran : 08 September 2007

ON BOARD THE USS KITTY HAWK : A top US navy commander involved in Indian Ocean wargames said Friday the exercises were not aimed at sending a message to either China or Iran. Seventh Fleet commander William Crowder was speaking aboard USS Kitty Hawk, the US navy's second largest supercarrier, as the six-day exercises hosted by India that began on Tuesday neared a close. "There is no connection between these manoeuvres and anything else," Crowder said in reply to reporters' questions over whether the wargames were intended to send signals to Tehran and Beijing. "The US has been jointly exercising with India since 1994 and the only thing new this time is that India has invited three more countries... This is not aimed against anyone," the fleet commander added. The movements of US carrier groups are being closely watched amid mounting tensions over Iran's nuclear programme, seen by Washington and its Western allies as a covert atomic weapons drive. The exercises involved 28 ships, one submarine and 160 warjets from the United States, Australia, Japan, Singapore and India. The nations staged the wargames 150 kilometres (90 miles) off India's Andaman island chain in the Bay of Bengal. The exercises, one of the biggest ever peacetime military events, also included super-carriers USS Nimitz, the nuclear-powered submarine USS Chicago and Indian aircraft carrier the INS Viraat. Crowder said the US Navy was not seeking an Indian Ocean base but was "looking for places to exercise with our allies." "We're really not in the business of setting up bases but we aim to boost cooperation with navies in areas such as disaster relief such as the tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean region in 2004," the vice admiral said. The Seventh Fleet is the largest of the forward-deployed US fleets, with some 50 ships, more than 200 of the latest warjets and 20,000 sailors and Marines assigned at any given time. "We have some close allies in the Asian region and we want to improve our ties," the admiral said on the deck of the 46-year-old Kitty Hawk, due to be decommissioned next year. India, which was on opposite sides of the fence from the United States during the Cold War, has also denied claims that the games were an attempt to intimidate neighbouring China, with which the country fought a brief, bitter border war in 1962. "It's completely an apolitical decision to hold the exercises off our eastern coasts in the Bay of Bengal," said Indian Navy rear admiral R.R. Suthan. "We look at the exercises as a professional interaction between the friendly navies and our allies," the Indian taskforce commander added aboard the US ship. The nuclear-armed Indian navy, which operates 137 ships, wants its supremacy in the Indian Ocean unchallenged. During the 2004 tsunami it rebuffed US offers of aid and sent out relief ships to ravaged Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

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