Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
fas.org
fas.org
> Did the U.S. Air Force suffer a nuclear weapons accident at an airbase in Europe a few years back? [Update: After USAFE and LANL initially declined to comment on the picture, a Pentagon spokesperson later clarified that the image is not of an actual nuclear weapons accident but of a training exercise, as cautioned in the second paragraph below. The spokesperson declined to comment on the main conclusion of this article, however, that the image appears to be from inside an aircraft shelter at Volkel Air Base.]
So: no.
Gimlet-eyed viewers may have concluded the same thing independently, by noticing that there a couple people standing around in the background looking bored, one of them holding what may as well be a clipboard.
Seeing that this is a blog post (and one of many) and not a FAS report or article, it's also different in that particular way: Maybe it's written through more of an exploratory / human interest angle and meant less as a scientific publication.
This seems especially relevant given the updates posted on the blog post; somebody is trying to keep on top of it, at least...
If these are the doomsday clock people then that level of bending over backwards to be kind is unwarranted. If you consistently err in one direction it’s because you want to. If your organisation is consistently alarmist it’s a policy decision not an accident.
Eh, seems like it could also be a lack of skill or experience, despite best intentions. Esp. wrt scientists & public communications.
No, that's the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.[0]
This isn't to say that there was an incident of course, I am just pointing out a rather absurd aspect of our culture.
Not necessarily. Those 50 comments may have come before the update.
I think many if not most of them did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
Beside the fact that a classified photo isn't going to be in a student handbook, this has all the hallmarks of a training session. Like you said, a bored instructor that's done this 100 times, student sitting cross-legged (next to a damaged nuke? ok), students simulating the checklist actions by just touching stuff, and some guy watching for some reason. (edit: not to mention, no personal protective equipment whatsoever)
This is from a powerpoint filled with stock images and this article is absurd.
I'd be more concerned about the truck explosion image (https://i.imgur.com/zUWLf4B.png) next to this one in the handbook. Is that how Transformers are created? Is FAS.org covering something up?
Still, such open-ended questions, by their very raising, suggest something occurred that may not have, essentially contributing to misinformation and uncertainty. Without a person expending the time to go to the site and read the post's content, the uncertainty remains, and one may go on thinking "maybe" something happened, that didn't. Considering the article in question is published by "Federation of American Scientists", a group I'd expect to have a high standard of quality and factual precision, I'm surprised they permit such a lazy and irresponsible article title.
Actually, I clicked into the article so I can find out who the author is, so I can ask them to revise the article title. Whether they do or not, I figure I might as well contact them, since I already spent so long writing this comment :P
BTW, I saw this HN article hours ago and basically just spent all day thinking there was a US nuclear accident at a Dutch air base, because I saw the headline and didn't click through to the article at the time.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...
I'm pretty sure most of it is unclassified, but some of it might not be public. The flashcards for security guard/MP stuff has some generic stuff like gate runner procedures, but they also have base-specific things such as where Department of Energy OST convoys carrying Special Nuclear Material or weapons would park on base during a Safe Haven unscheduled stop. There used to be one with an old sign/countersign I think.
The IT ones have information about where certain undersea cables and satellite ground stations are. The most sensitive stuff seems to be locations of infrastructure within a base. One of them mentions something about Building NH-95 at the Hampton Roads Naval base as being a critical site in the TS/SCI-classified network. Some of them also have the names of the officers responsible for certain programs that could be compromise targets.
https://quizlet.com/463959814/scif-flash-cards/
https://quizlet.com/547051333/knowperform-doe-vansafe-haven-...
https://quizlet.com/773174649/spec-op-flash-cards/
https://quizlet.com/761500482/isec-osi-308-310-flash-cards/
https://quizlet.com/519052943/setup-and-operate-the-kg-175d-...
Info: https://pdfhost.io/v/lMHgMiGTc_Joe_Mazzulla_scouting_notes_f...
Discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/zn3149/joe_mazzulla_ha...
- EOD nuclear procedures are classified Secret Critical Nuclear Design Information. They will not allow someone to take pictures, nor allow civilians to watch.
- USAF EOD does use three person teams for nuclear operations, two workers and one supervisor. Normally there are two people on incident response teams.
- Some USAF tactical fighter wings do train to drop tactical nuclear weapons, even if they do not have such weapons themselves (for contingency/war plans).
- Some nuclear weapon trainers have some explosives, so it is possibly a real EOD response. However, even if the procedures in this case were not classified, I doubt EOD would allow any pictures of an actual operation.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...
I know these human mistakes are inevitable in a large organization, but it's still sobering seeing that a soldier would post nuclear vault release code locations and more online. I guess it's easy to be careless in the daily grind whether it's PII or nuclear secrets...
Sometimes this kind of thing needs to be explained even to very senior people, not just lowly troops. I knew of a four-star general asking a few years ago why we didn't use Signal for stuff instead of Teams (O365 tenant hosted in Microsoft's Government Community Cloud), because he "heard that it's so secure that even the NSA can't break it." The answer is that there's a difference between a system being "secure" and being accredited for classified information or even unclassified information that the government owns.
Edited to add: Another very senior DoD person actually got in trouble for using Signal for official business a couple years ago because, among other reasons, there's no way for the government comply with FOIA when someone is using a personal account on a commercial application like that.
Do you have any additional information on the punishment? The precedence has been set that “no reasonable prosecutor “ would prosecute someone over using personal servers/apps/out band communication to subvert FOIA and National Security.
> Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
> Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-dir...
> there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
is not the same thing as
> using personal servers/apps/out band communication to subvert FOIA
He stepped down, and my quick search doesn't show him actually facing punishment. And his case was different, as some members of staff did believe he was encouraging use of Signal to prevent FOIA strikes.
Per his LinkedIn page, he went straight to what is probably a cushy job at Vanderbilt University. Interesting career path, by the way. He was "Director of IT at OpenTable" for seven years, and then did four years as a "Police Officer" in the Chicago PD before going back to IT stuff there.
“Negligence” and “strict liability” are different standards, you can’t treat one with the other.
> So if you "could have" caused a leak, it's still treated like a leak.
That’s very much not how the Espionage Act works, even just on the statute and beforr considering Supreme Court precedent limiting its application.
https://www.cyberdefensemagazine.com/data-spill-an-everyday/
This is a better summary. At the start, everyone's phones would likely be confiscated and, I would think, destroyed, if they were discovered to have classified data on them. However, if the data was in the cloud it would be an even bigger deal.
Was that your point?
Officially to this day this is all a Dutch state secret (can neither confirm nor deny bla bla bla). But there was an interview with ex prime minister Lubbers and he talked about the nukes. The poor man's mental faculties were already slipping.
If anyone is wondering according to NATO plans as I understand it the Dutch Airforce is supposed to be under US command dropping the bombs. A bit of a democratic cluster fuck that bypasses parliament to initiate nuclear Armageddon.
He wasn’t the only one. FTA:
“two former Dutch prime ministers and a defense minister in 2013 even acknowledged the presence of the weapons.”
> “If NATO was to conduct a nuclear mission in a conflict,” NATO says, “the B-61 [sic] weapons would be carried by certified Allied aircraft…However, a nuclear mission can only be undertaken after explicit political approval is given by NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) and authorisation is received from the US President and UK Prime Minister.” It is unclear why the U.K. Prime Minister would have to authorize employment of U.S. nuclear weapons, and unless NATO territory had been attacked with nuclear weapons first, it seems unlikely that the 29 countries in the NPG would be able to agree to approve of employment of non-strategic nuclear weapons from bases in Europe.
It is interesting that use of the weapons would require authorisation by the UK PM. In WW2 mutual consent was required due to the Quebec Agreement [2], but that requirement was included in later treaties.
[0] - https://fas.org/blogs/security/2022/10/steadfast-noon-exerci...
[1] - https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2022/2/pd...
Headline writer/editor: “Hold my beer”
My bet is most of the editors publishing this story called to ask if it was OK to publish first, and got a yes. They call it a "limited hangout". Better that a reputable source publicizes it with a ton of caveats about how unverified it is, than that someone more hostile finds it out first.
Above all: Don't lie.
The default is "neither confirm nor deny". For example: somebody asks if there were nukes on the plane that just crashed? Can't say. Even if you know there weren't, you can neither confirm nor deny.
You MAY deny if it would benefit safety. For example: someone started a rumor there was a nuke on a plane that crashed nearby and panic/riots are starting. An official statement saying there was no nuclear material involved could help settle things down.
You MUST confirm if there is a safety concern. For example: There really was a nuke on the plane that just crashed nearby and people need to evacuate ASAP. Get that confirmation out now and get people away from the situation.
In other words, when it comes to nuclear things with the US military, "no official confirmation" means exactly nothing, other than there is/was no public safety concern.
edit: I never looked at the regulations, this was just told to us in tech school. But I just looked it up and there actually is a reg for that:https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/do...
> The default is "neither confirm nor deny". For example: somebody asks if there were nukes on the plane that just crashed? Can't say. Even if you know there weren't, you can neither confirm nor deny.
"Can't say" is a lie (as it is physically possible to say). "I have been ordered to say 'Can't say', even though I actually do know the truth" would be not lying.
Not that it matters because no one really cares about fine-grained, actual truth, I'm just pointing out a neat part of our righteous, democratic culture.
> In other words, when it comes to nuclear things with the US military, "no official confirmation" means exactly nothing, other than there is/was no public safety concern.
If one was to pay attention to official US announcements over the years, one might realize that "no official confirmation" in the above could be replaced with anything and remain correct, due to their long, diverse track record of lying and getting caught.
Of course, everyone lies, it is a fundamental part of our culture and "getting things done", I'd just rather we stop representing ourselves as being something other than what we really are.
UA have a nice way of summarizing: its complicated. Also a white lie. Both are show stoppers, they don't encourage further dialog.
White lies are still lies.
>... its why the more diplomatic cannot confirm or deny is preferred.
This is an appealing story, but neither of us has a way of knowing the comprehensive truth of why our various public officials lie, in fact. A substantial amount of propaganda has been written that seems to have rendered us unable to realize this, but it is objectively true, for what should be obvious reasons.
> OP refers to lying as saying A while its nowhere near the truth. For example, all that RU propaganda is an entire different league.
A substantial proportion of our communication is also in the forms of misinformative memes and catchphrases like "an entire different league". This can (or is almost guaranteed to) cause 3rd party readers to form incorrect beliefs about the relative quality and magnitude of American vs Russian propaganda. The fact of the matter is: not any one single person on the planet possesses this knowledge. So what do we do instead: we literally make things up. It is like we exist within a stage play, created by and starring us, where we write the script as we go along, but pretend that we are doing something else.
> UA have a nice way of summarizing: its complicated. Also a white lie.
It isn't complicated? What is "it" in this case?
>Both are show stoppers, they don't encourage further dialog.
Which I believe is the point of a lot of the popular memes that can now be seen in the wild: stop people from thinking, and cause them to form a confident, incorrect belief prematurely - basically, make the public hallucinate a virtual reality that has been designed for them.
The degree to which this "conspiracy theory" (gasp!) is true vs all of this being simple emergence, I can only speculate. But regardless, the problem is there, it can be understood, and it is physically possible to improve upon it, just as the enlightenment, the scientific method, etc demonstrated that it is possible for humanity to gain substantial control over the physical realm, if one can manage to find a way to try.
Pardon the vitriol, but this never-ending and never talked about situation really bugs me.
Even if it was at Volkel, and it is a real weapon, there's no confirmation that it contains a physics package, so there may be no "nuclear" risk, even if the weapon is badly damaged.
I suspect if the core was inside, and there was a chance of it being damaged, they'd all be wearing a lot more safety gear, as plutonium is quite toxic aside from the radioactive risk.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/03/us-nuclear-bom...
Nuclear warhead cores were routinely handled by hand. Not sure if they still are, but when intact and non-critical, they present very little radiation risk. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/after-wwii-scienti...
Myth. For example - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity
Is not exactly saying that it is not toxic. I tried looking for actually credible sources for toxicity, one Los Alamos publication claims:
> For example, the LD50(30) for dogs after intravenous injection of plutonium is about 0.32 milligram per kilogram of tissue.
Less than nerve gases, but still I'd classify as "quite toxic"
Nerve agents are very readily absorbed through the skin. Metallic plutonium is not. The context here is (at worst) people poking around the outside of slightly-damaged nuclear warhead.
Back in the day, I directly (metal-on-skin) handled lead totalling >1000X the human lethal dose...if administered via intravenous injection. No lethal effects were observed to occur.
(Also, don't let it hang out with its friends.)
At first a visor cover can be seen showing an orange-yellow mushroom cloud illustrating a nuclear explosion. However, when the video cuts and the commander turns to face the camera, the nuclear mushroom cloud cover is gone, presumably to avoid sending the wrong message to Russia
The idea that it's Volkel seems reasonably solid unless somebody has photographs known to be from somewhere else which look like that. We know Volkel's B61s are stored in a place exactly like that, we know most US airbases don't look exactly like that even in Europe.
So the biggest open question is: Did they prang a real bomb or is that a training unit. I mean, one reason you put so much work into training is that people do prang real bombs and it's important they don't freak out and instead follow procedure. So both are actually likely.
Consider that a state-level adversary would definitely want to plant “fake news” like this (done indirectly through third-parties, of course), for reasons including:
• bogging down our day-to-day operations as everyone “investigates” and “double-checks”
• observing who in our organization reacts and how, revealing personnel, command structures, and capabilities.
• undermine confidence in current leadership
To be clear I’m not saying this particular instance is fake or real, just that this is a technique that can be used to gather information or tie-up on an adversary.
The article in on the website of the Federation of American Scientists. Quote from their About page:
"The Federation of American Scientists is a nonprofit policy research and advocacy organization founded in 1945 to meet national security challenges with evidence-based, scientifically-driven, and nonpartisan policy, analysis, and research."
Hardly the "news media" or clickbait.
That'll buff right out.
If you’re in NL can you buy a Geiger meter and take a really long cycle ride and validate the hypothesis?
The map is pretty much as I expected, mostly near zero values (dark blue) everywhere but elevated values where I'd have expected to find them: