Pentagon: Over 1000 Nuclear Weapon Parts Missing?

This doesn't happen overnight. Part of the problem is that nuclear weapons are, from a military and professional standpoint, not that attractive or useful or career enhancing. In other words, today's miltary is not focused on being prepared to fight an all out nuclear war with the Soviets.

The nuclear weapons that are stored and deployed in airforce bases, depots and in missile silos in various parts of the country are the unexciting part of the military today and that reality, I believe, has led the airforce to neglect some of the essential duties in properly accounting for and handling the infrastructure that's related to this part of our arsenal, the most deadly part of our arsenal.

"or armored personal carriers and attack helicopters. That's what's being used today. If you are a high ranking senior officer and you are looking at how to defend the United States and fight a war, nuclear weapons are pretty much the furthest thing from your mind. These weapons are pretty much unusable. They are a weapon of mass destruction. You can't these on any of the battlefields that the United states is fighting on today. They are just wholly inappropriate for any mission today. Their only purpose is to deter the use of nuclear weapons by some other country. ....Nuclear weapons are out of style and they are not career enhancers if you have something to do with them in the military today. That's part of the underlying reason the lax culture of accounting and safety have crept into some elements.

Most of the people, I should add, dealing with this part of the arsenal are extremely serious and professional and they do their job, but obviously we have holes and gaps in the human and the institutions that surround these weapons and their related parts.

I"m just raising the question, which is, if the pentagon cannot account for thousands of sensitive items related to nuclear weapons delivery systems or the weapons themselves, that raises to me the question about whether someone inside the pentagon system of accounting could manipulate the system for personal gain. I"m not saying it has happened, but if the Air Force does not know where these parts are, I think the problem is pretty obvious.

Someone may have changed the label, sent a box with sensitive items somewhere else. That's a theoretical possibility. And that's another reason why this is extremely troubling to me.

I don't think they would disclose it if it happened. I don't think they wanted Demitri Sevastopoulos Financial Times report revealing that there are additional parts that are not accounted for.

The issue of how nuclear weapons are handled is a very tightly held issue and there's not a lot of public access or scrutiny... We'll be encouraging Capitol Hill to take another look at the situation in light of the fact that the Taiwan incidents may not be only incidents. There are potentially thousands of other parts that are not accounted for. So, they have


I think what's important to ask is, what actual steps are the pentagon taking, systematically, to address the problems, beyond removing key senior leaders of the Air Force. That's the question the pentagon needs to be forthcoming about in order to restore public confidence and to be sure that they are doing the things that need to be done."

"I'm not going to comment of the specifics of a classified report.

That said, during the life-cycle of any weapons program decisions are made with respect to how to manage, control, inventory, destroy and demilitarize components. Record-keeping of component parts was identified as a weakness.

There is a difference between missing items and not having a full and complete auditable paper trail for every component.

As we said at the time the review was completed, the investigation did not find anything that would affect the health and safety of the public or our men and women in uniform or call into question the safety, security and reliability of our nuclear arsenal.

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