Summary
Joe Sutter was on the treadmill at a fitness center near his home in Knoxville, TN, when a television news report so startled him that he nearly flew off the machine. It was early September 2007 when cable news outlets reported that days earlier, an Air Force B-52 crew unknowingly had flown nuclear bombs across the country. The incident sparked a series of internal and external investigations that revealed widespread erosion of nuclear expertise, discipline and capability across the service. The service's initial investigation, which remains classified, found an erosion of weapons-handling standards at both Minot and Barksdale. James Schlesinger, former secretary of Defense, was leading a task force of former Pentagon luminaries in an examination of nuclear management problems both within the Air Force and across the department. The Air Force's problems stem from a decision in 1992 to dissolve the Strategic Air Command, the organization responsible for ICBMs, bombers, strategic reconnaissance systems and the tanker force.
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Fallout
JOE SUTTER WAS ON THE TREADMILL AT A FITNESS center near his home in Knoxville, Tenn., when a television news report so startled him that he nearly flew off the machine. It was early September 2007 when cable news outlets reported that days earlier, an Air Force B-52 crew unknowingly had flown nuclear bombs across the country. To 5utter, a former nuclear missile wing commander who retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1997, the news was literally unbelievable. So strict are the procedures surrounding the handling of nuclear weapons that such an extraordinary mistake could have occurred only after failures at multiple levels in variou...
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