The US Air Force said on Friday that the incident of mishandling
nuclear warheads in August was an "unacceptable mistake" of a sort
that had never happened before.
Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne made the first explicit
confirmation on the incident at a Pentagon press conference, saying
that the military would "make all appropriate changes to ensure
this has a minimal chance of ever happening again."
In the Aug. 29-30 incident, six nuclear warheads on air-launched
cruise missiles were improperly handled and procedures were not
followed when they were loaded on a B-52 bomber and flown from
Minot Air Force Base, in the northern US state of North Dakota, to
Barksdale Air Force Base, in the southern state of Louisiana. The
incident is considered as the worst known violation of nuclear
security rules in decades.
Maj. Gen. Richard Newton, the Air Force deputy chief of staff
for operations, said at the press conference that the incident was
resulted from "unprecedented string of procedural errors."
The airmen failed to conduct a required inspection of the
missiles before they were loaded aboard the B-52 bomber, which "was
a failure to follow procedures, procedures that have proven to be
sound," Newton said.
After landing at Barksdale, the B-52 sat on a runway for hours
with the missiles but the breach was unnoticed. After 36 hours the
missiles were finally secured in a proper way.
"There has been an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling
standards at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base,"
Newton said.
The explanation for the incident was concluded after a six-week
Air Force investigation.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at a press conference on
Thursday that he also asked for an outside inquiry to determine
whether the incident exposes a larger security problem on weapon
transferring.
The Air Force has taken some remedy measures including ordering
a comprehensive review of procedures base by base and relieving
four military officers who were held accountable for the
incident.
(Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2007)
