I heard this from my family when I got in this afternoon but apparantly a day or so ago a B-52 took off from South Dakota carying 5 nuclear warheads attached to missiles on it's wings! Talk about OOOPS, we didn't check for the nuclear sticker. Apparantly the missiles were to be decomissioned at a classified plant but got mixed up with similar missiles that were carryig normal explosives instead of nuclear warheads.
The media has already started twisting everything, saying that the explosives had enough power to wipe out the entire nation. I call bull alert. The W80 Warheads have enough power to take out entire cities but not the entire country. As an Engineer, even if the missiles came seperated from the aircraft, they are designed not to explode despite being knocked up a bit. We have an old saying in the field of engineering- no communication no product. How W-80 warheads and normal missiles got mixed up- I have no idea. Maybe someone was sleeping on the job and didn't want to open the casing to look for a nuclear sticker. I am pretty sure these missiles are on their way back to the decomissioning plant (probably classified) and everything is back to normal: but it would be a BAD thing if this bomber made it over to Iraq/Kuwait/Middle East and the warheads got mixed into the arsenal =/. Thankfully not everyone in the Air Force is a bonehead and I am sure it won't happen again now that it is a problem to heavily focus on.
Any danger to the public? very unlikely. Again these things have safety features and can resist a pretty hard impact. I think it is more of a political problem than a national security issue as Congress will ravish the US Air Force and politicians will use this to critisize the president's handling of the nation's nuclear arsenal. I think this is one time that it actually isn't his fault ^^. Please numnuts: READ THE NUCLEAR SYMBOL PLEASE.
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