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Comment by cynwoody | Hacker News Reader

Have we ever had an Empty Quiver? Or come close?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_...

Not yet. The guarding of our nuclear stockpile was, during the Cold War, excellent. I don't know how it is now. I hear not-so-good things. Damn kids, get off my lawn.

Around 2008 the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff were fired due to a massive screw-up regarding the transport and handling of our nukes [1].

The summary that I got from the situation was that a plane heading through the heartland of America accidentally transported a nuke, when instead they thought it was just some other type of bomb which basically means a nuke was accidentally transported across the US without anyone controlling the shipment or noticing until much later.

The current chatter and inclinations are that things have improved due to more rigorous checks and inspections. For me this is very believable due to the amount of news that is made when one of the nuke squadrons fail a regular inspection due to minor mistakes [2].

[1] http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20080605/NEWS/806050301...

[2] http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20130819/NEWS/308190013...

> The summary that I got from the situation was that a plane heading through the heartland of America accidentally transported a nuke, when instead they thought it was just some other type of bomb which basically means a nuke was accidentally transported across the US without anyone controlling the shipment or noticing until much later.

I believe the 2008 actions were fallout from the 2007 Bent Spear involving six nuclear cruise missiles on a B52 (not a single bomb), described in the Wikipedia article cited upthread [1].

[1] here again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_...

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