B-52 Nuke Flyover: Screwup, Warning or Secret?
A few days ago a B-52 flew six nuclear weapons over the United States. Oops!
Was the nuclear flyover a genuine screwup, violating nearly 40 years of US special weapons policy and treaty obligations, is Bush sending a warning to Iran -- we will bury you -- or did someone inside the military let out a secret?
Perhaps the US staging nukes for war with Iran?
No Quarter
Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in Minot, North Dakota and subsequently landing at a B-52 base in Barksdale, Louisiana? That’s like getting excited if you see a postal worker in uniform walking out of a post office. And how does someone watching a B-52 land identify the cruise missiles as nukes?Mmmk. But maybe not. How about...
So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. My buddy reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.
Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can’t imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?
His final point was to observe that someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.
Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran?
The Advance Cruse Missile is being decommissioned. While normally the missile is broken apart at a base in New Mexico, Barksdale is one of two bases the ACM is normally stored. Nothing wrong with moving nukes to Barksdale. Technically. If you ignore all the history.
What smells is:
a) The system does not break down. There are enormous safeguards built into command and control, among others: special weapons are painted red, constantly wired into alarm systems, only moved under armed escort, signed for at each step in the chain, electronically monitored at all times, and are physically heavier than non-nuclear devices. Plus the flight controls would tell the crew what they had loaded. It simply boggles my understanding that a flight crew could fly six special weapons without knowing they did so. No. Not gonna fly.
b) All 400 nuclear-armed ACMs are being disassembled (to fulfill our treaty obligations with Russia) in Kirtland Air Force Base, NM. Barksdale is also shipping its ACMs to Kirtland for decommissioning. It is remotely possible weapons needed to go temporarily from Minot, North Dakota to Barksdale, Louisiana instead of directly to Kirtland AFB, New Mexico. Perhaps Minot got ahead of schedule or Kirtland fell behind. It could be. If the King had a vagina he'd be Queen.
"When you hear hoof beats outside your window, think of horses, not zebras." If this was a scheduling problem, why wouldn't the military just say so instead of making up a fancy schmancy story about an unprecedented screwup in C&C. So naw, that's not it either.
c) Transport of special weapons -- okay, nukes. Special weapons is a term used by active military folk to distance themselves from what they're doing, setting up to kill hundreds of thousands of people at once.
Transport of nuclear bombs normally is done under heightened security in special cargo planes in special containers. It is NOT done under the wings of bombers. You fly nukes under B-52s when you're sending a message.
Who do we want to send a message to right now? Iran. Good reader. Have a cookie.
But a US nuclear warning also targets Russia. Who in August resumed conducting long-range strategic bomber patrols aggressively aimed at United States interests (this means energy: oil and natural gas; strategic metals; weapon sales; and most important of all, water) in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific.
Sound familiar? Much like the Cold War? Yep... But the excuse of communism is over. Now it's a straight fight for energy and precious resources, backed up with raw power. Russia and China against the US for sure. And the more the Bush Administration keeps pissing everyone else off, the more the rest of the world will line up against the United States. Not a good time for us to blow off a nuke and get the rest of the world lined up against us.
APFlying nuclear bombs on the wing of a bomber (not in containers of a cargo plane) is an unfriendly act. Very unfriendly. It could be an accident. And pigs could fly.
President Vladimir Putin placed strategic bombers back on long-range patrol for the first time since the Soviet breakup, sending a tough message to the United States hours after a major Russian military exercise with China.
Putin reviewed the first Russian-Chinese joint exercise on Russian soil before announcing that 20 strategic bombers had been sent far over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans — showing off Moscow's muscular new posture and its growing military ties with Beijing.
"Starting today, such tours of duty will be conducted regularly and on the strategic scale," Putin said. "Our pilots have been grounded for too long. They are happy to start a new life."
"I have made a decision to resume regular flights of Russian strategic aviation," Putin said in nationally televised remarks. "We proceed from the assumption that our partners will view the resumption of flights of Russia's strategic aviation with understanding."
Soviet bombers routinely flew missions to areas where nuclear-tipped cruise missiles could be launched at the United States. They stopped in the post-Soviet economic meltdown. Booming oil prices have allowed Russia to sharply increase its military spending.
Russian Air Force spokesman Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky said that Friday's exercise involved Tu-160, Tu-95 and Tu-22M bombers, tanker aircraft and air radars. NATO jets were scrambled to escort the Russian aircraft over the oceans, he said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Eleven Russian military planes — including strategic bombers and fighter jets — carried out maneuvers west of NATO member Norway on Friday, a military official said.
Norway sent F-16 fighter jets to observe and photograph the Russian planes, which rounded the northern tip of Norway and flew south over the Norwegian Sea toward the Faeroe Islands before turning back, said Brig. Gen. Ole Asak, chief of the Norwegian Joint Air Operations Center.
A pair of Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers approached the Pacific Island of Guam — home to a major U.S. military base — this month for the first time since the Cold War.
Last month, two similar bombers briefly entered British air space but turned back after British fighter jets intercepted them. Norwegian F-16s were also scrambled when the Tu-95s headed south along the Norwegian coast in international air space.
"This is a significant change of posture of Russian strategic forces," Alexander Pikayev, a senior military analyst with the Moscow-based Institute for World Economy and International Relations, told The Associated Press. "It's a response to the relocation of NATO forces closer to Russia's western border."
The United States, Russia and China are locked in a tense rivalry for influence in Central Asia, the site of vast hydrocarbon resources. Washington supports plans for pipelines that would carry oil and gas to the West and bypass Russia, while Moscow has maneuvered to control exports. China also has shown a growing appetite for energy to power its booming economy.
Putin, Chinese leader Hu Jintao and other leaders of the SCO nations attended the joint exercise, which followed their summit Thursday in Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek.
The summit concluded with a communique that sounded like a thinly veiled warning to the United States to stay away from the region: "Stability and security in Central Asia are best ensured primarily through efforts taken by the nations of the region on the basis of the existing regional associations."
d) Finally we come to war. Barksdale, Louisiana is a major AF staging area for the middle east.
If President Bush has indeed given the order to hit Iran this fall as seems increasingly likely, the weapons will flow through Barksdale enroute overseas.
Is the United States about to be the only country in the world to use nuclear weapons in anger -- a third time? Did our tests of non-nuclear options not go BOOM enough, are the chicken-hawks trying to prove they have big enough balls to push the button, or yet once again, is anything outside of them not truly real for these two war criminals?
Are President Bush & Vice President Cheney truly so insane (yes; I could just stop right there) as to believe poisoning the soil of Iran for decades to come will cause Iranians to embrace the Great Satan?
Does the administration think Americans believe their lies or support a new war? Seriously? There would be riots in the streets, not that they don't have that planed for. Can you say Blackwater guarded internment camp?
Does the military recognize criminal orders, war crimes, or remember their oaths are to the constitution and not the President or Vice? WAKE UP!
e) The Air Force has ordered a full stand-down September 14. A widely publicized date. Can you say "smoke screen?" If we really are hitting Iran, one week from today, Friday September 14 would be a good day for the three-day blitz, during the stand-down.
Of course... It truly all could just be a massive mistake. So says Josh Marshall's sources.
Disinformation or truth? *smiles*
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