Air Force Was Midway Through Nuclear Decommissioning Program Before Accidental Transfer

The U.S. Air Force’s mistaken August flight of nuclear weapons came at the midway point of a program to remove one type of delivery vehicle from the U.S. nuclear arsenal, the Air Force secretary said yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 24).

The United States has announced plans to decommission the Advanced Cruise Missile, a weapon stored at two U.S. air bases and flown on B-52 strategic bombers (see GSN, March 7).  The Air Force had been removing the warheads from the missiles stored at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., and flying the inert missiles to Barksdale Air Force Base, La.

“This was the sixth of 12 planned flights to comply with the decommissioning aspects of the Moscow Treaty,” Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday.

The treaty, formally called the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, calls on the United States and Russia to cut the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to less than 2,200 each by the end of 2012 (see GSN July 3).

Following the unauthorized flight of armed missiles, however, all such operations at Minot have been suspended, according to the Washington Post (Greg Webb, Global Security Newswire, Oct. 25).

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