U.S. ties missile mix-up to reduced nuclear focus

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - 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 on Tuesday.

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," Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's Democratic 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.

But Levin 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.