SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Defense Science Board Report of Barksdale NUCWEPS incident released

First of all a few caveats. Anyone familiar with me knows my background and the qualifications I bring to my critique of this report. This critique will confine itself to the substance of the report itself. It will not address any of the political issues and ramifications. I also note that, as long as we possess nuclear weapons in the arsenal, They must be maintained and prepared for use at all times in order for the deterrent to be effective. I apologize to the moderators if this post seems long. I will strive for brevity as much as possible.

First of all, to put things in perspective. From the report:

Quote:

Beginning with the implementation of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty(START) and accelerated by the end of the Cold War, the Department of Defense has focused on reducing nuclear forces and nuclear weapons with the goal of moving from over 9.000 deployed strategic nuclear warheads in the late 1980s to no more than 2,200 in 2012

So we are actually dealing with less than a quarter of the number of deployed warheads that existed in 1980. This is a good thing. However, as the report points out, with the reduction of weapons numbers, the focus on nuclear training and safety has been degraded.

For those unfamiliar with the story a brief recap. On August 30, 2007, two pylons of six supposedly inert(no warhead) Air-Launched Cruise Missles were to be transported to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana for decommissioning and dismantling there. These missles are multi-role and capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear payloads. This class of missle had been slotted for decom for some time and many other flights had taken place without incident. The missles themselves are decommed and dismantled at Barksdale. The nuclear warheads themselves are flown on specially designed ferry aircraft to Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque before being ferried overland to Amarillo, Tx for decommissioning at the PANTEX plant there. From the report:

Quote:

The movement plan identified two pylons of nuclear-inert missles to be transported by tactical ferry on 30 August 2007. Subsequently, personnel of the Minot Munitions Maintenance Squadron changed the plan to prepare and transport a pylon of missles closer to expiration dates for limited life components in lieu of one of the planned pylons of missles.That change was reflexted on the movement plan but not in the documents produced from the internal work coordination process at Minot.The documents produced from this process are used in daily operation and they continued to list the originally scheduled pylons of weapons. As a consequence, one of the originally scheduled pylons of cruise missles had not been prepared for tactical ferry. When the breakout crew accessed the storage facility, they did not properly verify the status of the weapons in the facility as required by established procedure and they failed to note that the missles on one of the pylons on their internal work document still contained nuclear warheads.

The process and procedure of movement for Bomber weapons requires a total of five separate inspections and checks between the weapons storage areas and the actual flight takeoff itself. While the load preparation team would have overall responsibility for verification of the weapons, the storage facility has PRIMARY responsibility for visual inspection and verification that any nuclear-inert load is indeed nuclear-inert and ensuring that corrections are made before removal from the storage facility. The breakout crew failed to do this and apparently so did the convoy crew, crew chief and aircrew during their preflight inspection. Due to the fact that the breakout crew had listed the wapons as inert, the proper security detail that should guard any actual nuclear weapons during convoy and loading were also not called in. As a result, the convoy crew, crew chief and aircrew were operating under the erroneous impression that all weapons loaded for ferry were inert. This does not excuse them of their responsibility to visually inspect any weapons being loaded to verify the payloads, but the ultimate responsibility and error lies with the breakout crew.

Quote:

Current guidance permits storing nuclear training, test or inert devices in the same storage facility with nuclear weapons. Since there is no externally apparent difference between cruise missles with these various payloads, to preclude confusion with such intermingling, pylons of missles with nuclear training. test, or inert devices are required to be physically identified by readily visible means

While I can understand the confusion brought about by this setup, as one who has had to deal with both conventional and nuclear weapons in the same magazine, the general rule of thumb in the US Navy was to treat all practice and test nuclear warheads as if they were real with the attendant safety and security procedures mapped out and implemented.

According to the report, the degradation of nuclear weapons processes and procedures was confined to the Bomber force as both the Air Force ICBM forces and the Navy's Strategic Systems Programs still showed a high degree of readiness and attention to nuclear safety and storage procedures. The Bomber Force procedural degradation was due primarily to the shifting of mission focus towards increasing conventional arms missions.

Quote:

The resulting decline was graphically illustrated when the responsible command stopped Nuclear Operational Readiness Inspections for a period of Three years

This is totally unsatisfactory. Any military enterprise involved in the nuclear mission MUST be subject, not only to Certification inspections, but also to annual and random surprise inspections so the nuclear mission can be maintained at the highest degree of readiness. All operating personnel MUST be aware of the special needs of the program and fully engaged in the safety, security and operational requirements needed to sustain that readiness. The fact that, for the past 63 years, there has never been an accidental nuclear detonation gives evidence that the procedures themselves are sound. In this case, those procedures were not followed to the letter and this result was predictable.

Copies of the actual report are available here:

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/news/govinfo.php?p=5381&more=1