Oops! Pentagon Admits Missile Mix-up
The Defense Department announced on Tuesday that it mistakenly shipped non-nuclear components for an intercontinental ballistic missile to Taiwan but has recovered them and launched an investigation.
At the Pentagon, CBS News National Security correspondent David Martin reports that although the U.S. is constantly wringing its hands about the nightmare scenario of loose nukes falling into the hands of terrorists, this was another egregious case of the Pentagon not being able to keep track of its own nuclear weapons.
In this case it was a fuse for a nuclear warhead -- the electrical component which starts the firing sequence for a nuclear explosion. Four of them were accidentally shipped to Taiwan in response to a request to buy batteries for helicopters.
The four fuses had been in storage at Hill Air Force Base in Utah and were shipped to Tawain in 2006. Two years elapsed before the U.S. learned of the mistake -- and then only because the Taiwanese asked why they never received the helicopter batteries.
The fuses are now back in U.S. custody, and, according to Pentagon officials, there is no evidence they were ever taken out of their shipping containers, which means no harm was done -- although mainland China will undoubtedly cry foul since official American policy is to sell only defensive weapons to Taiwan.
Coming on the heels of the fiasco in which nuclear armed cruise missiles were mistakenly loaded on a B-52 bomber and flown across the country without anybody realizing it, this latest incident makes it hard to resist the conclusion that in the post Cold War era, the Pentagon has become sloppy in its handling of nuclear weapons, Martin says.
At a Pentagon news conference, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said the misshipped items were four electrical fuses for nose cone assemblies for ICBMs. He also said they were delivered to Taiwan in 2006 and had been sent instead of helicopter batteries that had been ordered by Taiwan.
The fuses were manufactured for use on a Minuteman strategic nuclear missile but contain no nuclear materials.
``This could not be construed as being nuclear material. It is a component for the fuse in the nosecone for a nuclear system,'' Wynne said.
``We are very concerned about it.''
Wynne said the matter is under investigation. He said the Taiwanese authorities notified U.S. officials of the mistake. He said the fuses had been in a shipping container sent from one U.S. Air Force base to another in 2005 and then delivered to Taiwan in 2006.
Wynne said the matter is under investigation.
The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Taiwan official said Tuesday that the island's diplomats in Washington typically do not comment on Defense Department matters.
Ryan Henry, the No. 2 policy official in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, said President Bush was notified of the mistake and the actions to recover the items. Henry called the mistake "disconcerting" and intolerable. He said the Chinese government has been notified of the error.
U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are especially sensitive because China vehemently objects to U.S. defense assistance to the island that Beijing deems to be part of China.
The United States follows a "one China" policy that recognizes there is a single China and that self-ruled Taiwan is part of it. While Washington switched its recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, it remains the island's most important foreign backer, providing it with the means to defend itself against a possible Chinese attack.
China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949. Beijing continues to claim the island as part of its territory and has threatened to attack if Taiwan formalizes its de facto independence.