Major Snafu Strikes Again: Taiwan Gets Nuclear Missile Parts

Oops.

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"

Dumb! Really dumb! Also embarrassing.

This looks like the work of Major Snafu. We should be glad it wasn't his superior officer, General Disaster.