Nukes Over Our Heads.

He said at least four officers have been relieved of command, including the commander of the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and two other colonels, in the wake of the August 30 incident. Six nuclear armed cruise missiles on a pylon were loaded onto the wing of a B-52 bomber that was supposed to ferry other cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana for decommissioning. The nuclear weapons were discovered nearly 36 hours later when they were unloaded at Barksdale, according to a timeline provided by Newton. An intensive six-week investigation concluded that the unauthorized transfer resulted from "a series of procedural breakdowns and human errors," Newton said. He said there also was "an erosion in adherence to weapons handling standards" at both air force bases that had resulted in a lack of attention to detail. "It was a lack of effective supervision, a lack of effective leadership, and the fact that they were not following, nor did they adhere to these very strict checklist guideline procedures," Newton said. At the root of the chain of errors was the failure of weapons maintenance crews to remove the nuclear warheads from the cruise missiles in preparation for transfer to Barksdale, he said. http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20071020/twl-us-military-nuclear-7e07afd.html [Proofreader’s note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on October 22, 2007]

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