A few years ago, Taiwan's government asked for helicopter batteries. The American military sent them packages that the Taiwanese military stored in a warehouse.
Recently, someone broke open one of the packages. Surprise! Instead of helicopter batteries, they found four intercontinental ballistic missile nose-cone fuses.
- Good news:
There wasn't any fissile material - the stuff that provides the flash and boom of a nuclear bomb - in the packages - More Good News:
The missile parts are obsolete: 1960s tech made for Minuteman missiles. - Bad News:
This was a really big mistake: one that shouldn't have happened. Those missile parts might not be cutting-edge technology, but there is no way that somebody should have been able to mistake them for helicopter batteries and ship them overseas. - More Bad News:
If this sounds familiar, it should. It was August, 2007, when "a B-52 bomber mistakenly carried six nuclear warheads from North Dakota to Louisiana. A six-week investigation uncovered a 'lackadaisical' attention to detail in day-to-day operations at the air bases involved"
This looks like the work of Major Snafu. We should be glad it wasn't his superior officer, General Disaster.
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