(Gulfnews) Four Air Force colonels have been relieved of their commands and more than 65 lower-ranking officers and airmen have been disciplined over a series of errors that led to a B-52 flight from North Dakota to Louisiana with six nuclear-armed cruise missiles no one realised were under the plane's wing.
"This was an unacceptable error that resulted in an unprecedented string of procedural failures," Major General Richard Y. Newton III, assistant deputy chief of staff for operations, said on Friday in reporting the six-week Air Force probe.
"Our investigation found there has been an erosion of adherence to weapons handling standards" at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, where the flight began, and at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, Newton said.
Representative Ellen O. Tauscher, chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, said on Friday she is "satisfied" with the report and impressed Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates has asked the department's science board to take a wider view.
Newton said the problems began with a breakdown in the formal scheduling process used to prepare the AGM-129 cruise missiles in question for decommissioning.
The AGM-129 missiles carry nuclear weapons and have stealth capability. But in March, the Pentagon decided to retire it in favour of an older AGM-86, which can carry nuclear or conventional weapons.
Part of the preparation involved removing the W-80 nuclear warhead and replacing it with a steel dummy on missiles to be flown aboard B-52s to Barksdale for destruction.
An electronic scheduling system was employed to keep track of the missiles - using the identification numbers of racks containing six of them - so that crews knew which missiles had had their nuclear warheads removed and were ready to be shipped out, several sources said.
On the morning of August 29, the loading crew at Minot used a paper schedule that was out of date when they picked up 12 missiles from a guarded weapons storage hangar, six with dummy warheads and six they did not realise had nuclear warheads.