February theme: Aviation securityDiminished strategic focus caused lax Air Force nuclear security

The Air Force mistakenly flew nuclear weapons across the United States last year as a result of eroding discipline spawned by a diminished strategic focus on nuclear weapons, officials said yesterday. A panel of Air Force and independent investigators told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the increased importance of conventional combat missions since the 1991 Gulf War has undermined nuclear-related training and experience. “The turning point of this diminished focus began when aircraft came off nuclear alert status,” three Air Force officers headed by deputy Air Force chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Daniel Darnell, said in a written report to the panel. “Training in nuclear procedures became less frequent without the daily activity required by nuclear alert conditions coupled with the expanded commitments of dual-tasked units,” they said.

In one of the U.S. military’s worst nuclear mix-ups, six nuclear missiles were mistakenly loaded on an Air Force B-52 and flown 1,400 miles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. “No one knew where they were, or even missed them, for over 36 hours,” Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan), the committee’s chairman, said at a public hearing on Air Force nuclear security. The Air Force says the war heads were not armed and were never in danger of detonating. Levin, however, disputed assertions by the Air Force and his Republican colleagues that the weapons posed no danger to the public, saying a crash could have caused a plutonium leak like one that occurred during a B-52 crash in Spain in the 1960s. “This is a very significant failure, the likes of which we don’t think ever occurred before and hopefully will never occur again.”

As a result of the mix-up, four Air Force officers — three colonels and a lieutenant colonel — were removed from their posts while 65 other Air Force members lost permission to handle nuclear weapons. Three official investigations showed problems at both bases, saying well-established nuclear checks and balances were either ignored or disregarded. Darnell assured the Senate panel that Air Force policies are sound and the nuclear mission strong. He said the military service is implementing more than 120 improvements recommended by investigators. Retired Gen. Larry Welch, an independent investigator with the Institute for Defense Analyses, told lawmakers that the Air Force nuclear mission faces a status problem caused by the end of the cold war arms race against the Soviet Union. He reported a “perception at all levels within the nuclear enterprise that the nation and its leadership do not value the nuclear mission and the people who perform that mission.”

-See William Arkin’s discussion in the Washington Post.