Pentagon: Over 1000 Nuclear Weapon Parts Missing?

"According to previously undisclosed details obtained by the FT, the investigation also concluded that the air force could not account for many sensitive components previously included in its nuclear inventory.

One official said the number of missing components was more than 1,000.

"'very significant and extremely troubling' because it meant the US could not establish the positive control referred to by Mr Gates.

'It raises a serious question about where else these unaccounted for warhead related parts may have gone,' said Mr Kimball. "I would not be surprised if the recent Taiwan incident is not the only one.'"

The cause of these incidents goes back to the lax culture that has developed within certain parts of the Air Force about the handling of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons related components. What's particularly disturbing to me this morning... (after learning of the Financial Times report) is that the pentagon's mistaken shipment of the fuses to Taiwan fairly recently may not be the only example of sensitive warhead or missile related parts or components winding up in the wrong place.

The fact that the pentagon does not have positive control, that is, full accounting of the whereabouts of these items, I think it's deeply disturbing because it doesn't necessarily mean that these parts are in the wrong hands, but at the very least suggests that the system as it has been run for the last several years makes that a possibility. It also makes it possible for someone inside the airforce who is handling these components to potentially manipulate the system for personal gain. People in the Air Force are good people but they are also human beings. The system of accounting is clearly broken and it has got to be fixed. Gates is to be commended for holding those at the top responsible, but much more is going to have to be done to address the severe shortcomings.

The other thing I should point out is that no matter hard the airforce tries or how good the Air force is, when you have a nuclear weapons arsenal that consists of about 10,000 nuclear warheads, and tens of thousands of more parts related to these warheads and their delivery systems, there is an inherent risk that they are going to be lost or missing and potentially in the wrong place. We need to recognize that there is always going to be an inherent risk of this sort of thing happening so long as we have this bloated nuclear weapons arsenal that we have today twenty years after the cold war ended.

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