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Post by geaux4it on Sept 7, 2007 16:44:55 GMT -5
While on a small detour, to bad one did not fall off over East and South Central LA. Geaux
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Post by Elapid on Sept 7, 2007 18:34:36 GMT -5
Didn't I see something about the Air Force actually dropping a nuke over someplace on the East Coast? They said that it was down to the last safety or else it would have detonated. PJ or one of you military folks help me out here. I think this actually did happen, much worse that just flying around with one I would think.
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Post by USCGamecocks on Sept 7, 2007 18:36:48 GMT -5
As long as they launch it at Baton Rouge, Tuscaloosa, or Gainesville, I have no issues.
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Post by bcsbbad on Sept 7, 2007 19:33:54 GMT -5
Didn't I see something about the Air Force actually dropping a nuke over someplace on the East Coast? They said that it was down to the last safety or else it would have detonated. PJ or one of you military folks help me out here. I think this actually did happen, much worse that just flying around with one I would think. A B-58 Hustler (I think) dropped one off the coast of Spain back in the 60s - that's the only oops I can remember -
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Post by donaufan on Sept 7, 2007 19:37:36 GMT -5
Didn't I see something about the Air Force actually dropping a nuke over someplace on the East Coast? They said that it was down to the last safety or else it would have detonated. PJ or one of you military folks help me out here. I think this actually did happen, much worse that just flying around with one I would think. A B-58 Hustler (I think) dropped one off the coast of Spain back in the 60s - that's the only oops I can remember - Is that the one that the Navy Diver Carl Brashear found? The movie was Men of Honor based on the first black Master Diver.
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Post by bcsbbad on Sept 7, 2007 19:46:06 GMT -5
DanAUfan -
Sounds right to me - the dropped bomb happened - I'm not sure who found it but if it was Brashear - that's good with me.
Loved the movie btw.
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Post by donaufan on Sept 7, 2007 19:49:43 GMT -5
I just wasnt sure if they put that part in there to make the movie better or if he really found it.
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Post by Life's too short. on Sept 7, 2007 19:52:56 GMT -5
The military has the prerogative to fly nukes around. I think it's more hilarious how hysterical the media gets over something they don't need/deserve to know about anyway. Actually, no, the military DOESN'T have the prerogative to fly nukes around all the time. We've had a treaty with Russia for decades that nuclear warheads would not be transferred by air. As for the media getting hysterical, I'm not media and it absolutely chaffes me that the safeguards surrounding nuclear warheads were so easily disregarded such that it resulted in the accidental transport of half a dozen warheads. Me and Loadtoad were talking about this the other day as he used to load nukes on F-15s in exercises in the past. It's almost inconceivable that this kind of mistake could happen. It would require at minimum a dozen different people failing at their jobs in the most serious of tasks.
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Post by bcsbbad on Sept 7, 2007 20:01:10 GMT -5
I just wasnt sure if they put that part in there to make the movie better or if he really found it. If you believe wikpedia his accident happened during the search for the bomb - and now that I think about it that's how it happened in the movie - Guess I'll have to rent the movie and find out for sure -
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Post by whamil77 on Sept 7, 2007 20:52:07 GMT -5
First, I will say that heads are rolling as we type. Careers have ended. An investigation that would make a proctologist proud is ongoing. It was an egregious failure of a nuclear safeguard.
Having said that, I can also say that the number of safeguards present in any nuclear or nuclear related program is mind numbing. A single safeguard failed in this instance while dozens more that did not fail rendered the "incident" totally impotent. The airplane may as well have been carrying a bag of pixie dust in its bomb bay.
The safety of the public was not compromised one iota. This was an error of omission which, by design, can not deliver an armed weapon to an unintended target. Only multiple failures of pre-meditated commission, coupled with a widespread and treasonous conspiracy carried out by military personnel with the highest of security clearances supported by extensive background investigations could do that.
Further, you may be concerned about an unexploded nuke landing in your back yard. Again, it may as well be a bag of pixie dust. There is no radioactivity unless it's detonated.
The lesson here is that the U.S. Military has an excellent nuclear program complete with safeguards that are robust enough to overcome inevitable human error.
The same lesson should have been learned from the Three Mile Island meltdown. That is, the design of the system safeguards held the public safe from a mechanical fault compounded by human error which resulted in a worst case scenario, being core meltdown. Instead of concluding that America's civil nuclear power program was safe, the uneducated tree-huggers turned that success into failure by their frenzied spreading of disinformation against the nuclear program and not a single reactor has been built in this country since.
The number of people killed by a nuclear incident of any kind in this country is less than the number killed in the recent cave-in in the Utah coal mine. In fact, 47 coal miners have died in mines this year and no one has even been injured by anything nuclear. Why don't we hear any outrage about coal power?
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Post by Life's too short. on Sept 7, 2007 20:58:27 GMT -5
I don't think there was any risk, but the idea that even one person handling a nuclear weapon accidentally sends it somewhere makes my head want to explode. We obviously need better selection of personnel handling nuclear warheads. It's not like the guy was taking fries out of the fryer when the war head passed behind him unnoticed to the next guy. Maybe I'm naive, but I'd expect a nuclear warhead to have a guy's undivided attention from the moment it passed into his control until the moment it passed to the next guy. I'd also assume our safeguards to not rely on a single guy at any point in its storage or transfer.
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Post by bcsbbad on Sept 7, 2007 20:59:28 GMT -5
Ray - the military doesn't mine coal - if we did - well - more top stories.
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Post by Life's too short. on Sept 7, 2007 21:15:23 GMT -5
I'm sorry that you guys take this so lightly. I hardly think the handling of nuclear warheads and the operation of coal mines are similar levels of responsibility.
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Post by wareagleray on Sept 7, 2007 22:20:14 GMT -5
I don't take it lightly. But when the incident happens once (and yep, I already know the response, one time is too many), no one died, and people are being held responsible for it then what in the hell else can you do? Everything doesn't involve wholesale changes, Sadovin. Then again, we are nothing if not responsive to our bosses, the civilians. So if the public cries hard enough, and I actually don't mean that in a negative connotation, the public will get what they want. Ironically, OPSEC (Operational Security) will be more compromised than ever, but hey, at least Americans will be safe on the surface.
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Post by loadtoad on Sept 7, 2007 22:34:01 GMT -5
WTF? I just saw an ad at the top to meet gay miliatary men. Did someone us the word gay to kick that one off or just the word cassells?
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Post by Life's too short. on Sept 7, 2007 23:23:31 GMT -5
I don't take it lightly. But when the incident happens once (and yep, I already know the response, one time is too many), no one died, and people are being held responsible for it then what in the hell else can you do? Everything doesn't involve wholesale changes, Sadovin. Then again, we are nothing if not responsive to our bosses, the civilians. So if the public cries hard enough, and I actually don't mean that in a negative connotation, the public will get what they want. Ironically, OPSEC (Operational Security) will be more compromised than ever, but hey, at least Americans will be safe on the surface. I think everyone's over reacting on this on both sides, but at least on the board I think the most overreaction is in the form of being overly defensive. I'm not saying anyone died, or even that there was ever a risk. I'm just saying I'm tremendously disappointed in those personnel involved and that they could make such an amateur mistake. I expect more out of those who are put in such positions. I'm sure I'm no more disappointed than those in the military that are investigating this, so please don't make it out that I am. Heads will roll, and they should - probably more heads than were responsible. It's the total lack of professionalism by those that are directly responsible that depress me, not the whole military or even the entire unit involved. I can't imagine that there's enough movement of these types of weapons such that an "inevitable" mistake occurs. At some point, a guy or guys knew they had nuclear warheads in their position, then didn't bother to pass on that meaningless little nugget if information to the next guy.
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Post by LEE Fn TORSO on Sept 7, 2007 23:25:53 GMT -5
Personally...I think the military should fly around a bit more often with nukes "acccidentally" on board.
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Post by sooner711 on Sept 8, 2007 0:16:05 GMT -5
Yes, because that whole having sources and getting confirmation way of doing things for the last 100 years has really bred incesant lies huh? See Dan Rather...
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Post by wvuchihuahua on Sept 8, 2007 1:34:38 GMT -5
Ok someone erase this thread. Its completely pointless and it is too sensative to everyone involved.
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Post by wareagleray on Sept 8, 2007 3:30:11 GMT -5
I think it'll be ok, WVU.
Sadovin, I didn't infer that you were blaming the whole military or anything like that. Trust me, the military wouldn't dare take stuff like this lightly.
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Post by Pirate Joe on Sept 8, 2007 7:27:20 GMT -5
I don't think there was any risk, but the idea that even one person handling a nuclear weapon accidentally sends it somewhere makes my head want to explode. We obviously need better selection of personnel handling nuclear warheads. . The process that is in place for selecting people is extremely anal. The people who are involved in anything involving Nuclear Weapons is extremely painful and intrusive. I was responsible for a Nuclear Monitoring program in a sensitive area. We had to take evironmental samples quarterly and send them to a specific place at a specific time. Once when shipping it at the supply center they changed the shipping priority on getting it where it needed to go. They bumped it for other cargo to be shipped. Within 2 days of it not arriving on time I had a TEAM of Capt's from the CNO's office and CINCPACFLT crawling up my ass, in person, on the other side of my desk. Our entire program, process, individuals went under an extremely microscope and investigation that lasted about 10 days. Our entire program was rated as flawless but because the process failed we were ineffective. While not in any checklist we were told we should have ensured that the shipping priority was completely understood and complied with. As they left a JAG investigation was initiated to determine if any of my personnel or I should be brought up on any criminal charges. That process lasted for about 2 months. This was one of about 6 JAG investigations that somehow or another I was involved in and probably the closest to ending my career. The Navy had their opportunity to correct the wrong they had made by appointing me as an officer. They blew it. We were found not a fault, but if you had taken it from an initial media vantage point our heads should have rolled.
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Post by Life's too short. on Sept 8, 2007 13:23:10 GMT -5
I think some of the guys here weren't separating what I was saying from what the media was saying. The media has, as usual, tried to make a big deal out of aspects of it that were completely meaningless. The fact that they were flown over the United States doesn't mean squat by itself and that seems to be all they care about, as though one was accidentally going to be dropped and it would go off. Typical ignorant media stuff.
To me, I just care about the control of what's where at that level of significance and the violation of international agreements.
The comments by loadtoad and pirate joe show what I would expect of the process, and the fact that this STILL happened shows how bad somebody must have screwed up.
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Post by loadtoad on Sept 8, 2007 13:40:49 GMT -5
I talked to a buddy of mine at Minot AFB, ND, where the nukes came from, he could not tell me anything about what supposedly happened. He told me everything is hush and if anyone talks, they will be facing court martial and severe punishment. Like the article said, it was enough of a situation that Bush had to be informed due to the severity of it. Let's just hope other countries don't bring up the whole treaty violation issue.
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Post by blqntan on Sept 8, 2007 17:56:40 GMT -5
Good post Whamil.
I'm not saying people in the military can't or don't make mistakes. After all, they are people. But, I don't believe the military ought to have to answer to the media. The media ranks pretty low on the chain of command.
I'm satisfied with our military professionals, and they will get to the bottom of it. It's entirely possible that the people who normally handle those things were uninformed because of some special operation that superceded their need to know. Just because the "air force" doesn't officially know doesn't mean that everyone in the military did not know what occurred. What is regrettable is that someone decided to blab to someone else with no stake in it but ambition or a desire for publicity.
How can this be a "sensitive topic"? The public has an irrational paranoia of anything nuclear. I personally handle radioactive materials on a daily basis. There are safe ways of doing it. Even if I wanted to expose the uninformed public, it would be difficult to do something measurable at even a local scale. Weapons inherently have safeguards. They have to be intentionally armed, targeted, and released for radiation to endanger anyone's health. Even the crash of such a plane would not mimic the effects of a planned detonation.
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