page_title: 2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident
section_title: Incident
hierarchical_section_title: 2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident / Incident
caption_attribution_description: General T. Michael Moseley, Chief of Staff AF since 09/2005
context_page_description: On 29 August 2007, six AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles, each loaded with a W80-1 variable yield nuclear warhead, were mistakenly loaded onto a United States Air Force B-52H heavy bomber at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and transported to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The nuclear warheads in the missiles were supposed to have been removed before the missiles were taken from their storage bunker. The missiles with the nuclear warheads were not reported missing, and remained mounted to the aircraft at both Minot and Barksdale for 36 hours. During this period, the warheads were not protected by the various mandatory security precautions for nuclear weapons.
  The incident was reported to the top levels of the United States military and referred to by observers as a Bent Spear incident, which indicates "an unexpected occurrence involving nuclear weapons or nuclear components that does not fall under the NUCFLASH or BROKEN ARROW categories" or "a nuclear incident involving a nuclear weapon/warhead or nuclear component. In the Army and Air Force, this term includes a 'significant incident' as defined in DoD Directive 5100.52".
context_section_description: Between 0800 and 0900 (local time) on 29 August 2007, a group of USAF airmen, called the breakout crew, entered one of the weapons storage bunkers at Minot to prepare AGM-129 missiles for transport to Barksdale.  That day's missile transport, the sixth of twelve planned ferry missions, was to have consisted of twelve AGM-129s, installed with training warheads, with six missiles per pylon and one pylon mounted under each wing of a Barksdale-assigned, 2nd Bomb Wing B-52 aircraft. When the airmen entered the bunker, six live warheads were still installed on their missiles, as opposed to having been replaced with the dummy training warheads. A later investigation found that the reason for the error was that the electronic production system for tracking the missiles "had been subverted in favor of an informal process that did not identify the pylon as prepared for the flight." The airmen assigned to handle the missiles used outdated materials that contained incorrect information on the status of the missiles. The missiles originally planned for movement had been replaced by missiles closer to expiration dates for limited life components, which was standard procedure. The change in missiles had been reflected on the movement plan but not in the documents used for internal work coordination processes in the bunker.
  Although the breakout crew in the weapons storage began to inspect the missiles, an early-arriving transport crew hooked up the pylons and towed them away without inspecting or ensuring that the missiles had been inspected or cleared for removal. The munitions control center failed to verify that the pylon had received proper clearance and inspection and approved the pylon for loading on the B-52 at 0925. After taking eight hours to attach the pylons, the aircraft with the missiles loaded then remained parked overnight at Minot for 15 hours without the special guard required for nuclear weapons.
  On the morning of 30 August one of the transport aircraft's flight officers, a Barksdale-assigned B-52 instructor radar navigator, closely inspected the six missiles on the right wing only, which were all properly loaded with training warheads. The B-52 command pilot did not do a final verification check, before signing the manifest listing the cargo as a dozen unarmed AGM-129 missiles to depart Minot.
  The B-52 departed Minot at 0840 and landed at Barksdale at 1123 (local times) on 30 August. The aircraft remained parked and without special guard until 2030, when a munitions team arrived to remove the missiles. After a member of the munitions crew noticed something unusual about some of the missiles, at 2200 a "skeptical" supervisor determined that nuclear warheads were present and ordered them secured and the incident reported, 36 hours after the missiles were removed from the bunker at Minot.
  The incident was reported to the National Military Command Center as a Bent Spear incident. General T. Michael Moseley, Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, quickly called United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, on 31 August to inform him about the incident. Gates requested daily updates regarding the investigation and informed President Bush about the incident. The USAF has yet to officially designate what type of incident actually occurred, Bent Spear or otherwise. The incident was the first of its kind in 40 years in the United States and was later described by the media as "one of the worst breaches in U.S. nuclear weapons security in decades".
caption: General T. Michael Moseley, USAF chief of staff at the time of the incident
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