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Lost ballistic fuses spark investigations

Secret fuses designed to trigger nuclear ballistic missiles were sent to Taiwan, where they spent more than 18 months unaccounted for under foreign control before U.S. officials found out March 20 what had been lost.

The gravity of the error was so great, President Bush had to admit the mistake to the Chinese government.

Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne announced at a March 25 news conference that in August 2006, the Defense Department mistakenly shipped to Taiwan four fuses designed to trigger Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, rather than batteries for Taiwanese UH-1 Huey helicopters the U.S. had intended to send.

Once the mistake was revealed, Defense Secretary Robert Gates immediately launched an investigation — led by a Navy admiral instead of an Air Force general — that comes just eight months after he ordered a similarly embarrassing investigation of an incident in which airmen accidentally ferried six nuclear warheads across the country on a B-52 Stratofortress.

Gates also ordered a Defense Department-wide inventory of nuclear weapons and related materials, telling the Air Force, Navy and Defense Logistics Agency to assess inventory control procedures for the materials and to submit a report within 60 days.

But the details as to who made the mistakes and when — leading to the 18-month gap in accountability — were murky at the news conference. Air Force Times has put together a rough timeline of events that led to discovery of the error March 20.

Airmen initially shipped the four fuses, encased in Mark-12 nose cones designed for ICBMs, from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., to the Defense Logistics Agency warehouse at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, in March 2005, Wynne said. F.E. Warren was overstocked with the fuses.

Instead of securing the fuses in classified storage areas, Wynne said, the fuses were stored at an unclassified site. It’s unclear if airmen or contractors placed the fuses in unclassified storage; since 2002, Hill has contracted out storage and distribution of aircraft and missile parts to EG&G, a private company. EG&G officials declined to comment to Air Force Times as to their responsibility in the matter.

More than a year later, in August 2006, the fuses stored in four drum-shaped packages were taken out of storage and shipped to Taiwan under the assumption the packages contained helicopter batteries, Wynne said. The Taiwanese military then placed the packaged fuses in storage.

Members of the Taiwanese military opened the four packages months later and reported the mistaken shipment to U.S. leaders. According to a Pentagon official who asked to remain anonymous because the incident is under investigation, American officials first asked Taiwan to destroy the equipment instead of returning it, assuming the Defense Department had simply shipped the wrong kind of batteries.

Taiwan reported back to the U.S. that it couldn’t destroy the equipment because the inside of the packaging contained secret classifications and markings that indicated doing so would be dangerous, the official said. On March 20, Defense Department officials asked the Taiwanese to read off the part numbers on the packaging, which is when they realized the equipment was, in fact, secret ballistic missile fuses.

U.S. officials asked Taiwan to immediately secure them so Americans could pick them up and return the fuses to the U.S. They now reside at an undisclosed Air Force base in the continental U.S., Defense Department spokesman Stewart Upton said.

The Defense Department briefed the president and defense secretary March 26 about the shipment. “I cannot emphasize forcefully enough how strong the secretary feels about this matter and how disconcerting it is to him,” Ryan Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, said March 25.

China, which has continually asked the U.S. to stop shipping military supplies to Taiwan, demanded the U.S. conduct an investigation into the matter in a statement posted on its Foreign Ministry Web site.

“We express our serious concern and strong dissatisfaction with this and have made solemn representations to the American side,” the statement read.

Bush spoke to Chinese President Hu Jintao about the incident March 26 during a phone call and explained the mistake. “It came up very briefly, and basically the president indicated that a mistake had been made,” said National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, who went on to say the discussion was brief.

While no nuclear material was shipped to Taiwan, the fuses connect directly to the nuclear warhead mounted on an ICBM, which arms the weapon during the re-entry phase of the missile’s path and detonates the warhead.

Taiwan also had access to examine the secret coating the U.S. uses to line the outside of its ICBM nose cones to allow ballistic missiles to survive re-entry from space.

“It’s a high-tech material, and we spent a lot of money developing this material to be thin and strong in order to sustain re-entry,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. “Getting your hands on material like this is an important step to creating a re-entry vehicle.”

Taiwan has a cruise missile program that started to take shape over the past few years, Kristensen said. A cruise missile capable of striking Shanghai or Hong Kong was successfully test fired in March 2007.

The Taiwanese military tried to develop a ballistic missile in the 1970s with the help of the Israelis, but those plans were scrapped by 1981. Taiwan continues to try to design a space launch vehicle but it has yet to demonstrate the capability, Kristensen said.

“The fact it was Taiwan is notable not just because of China, but Taiwan was once in pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the United States spent a great deal of political and diplomatic energy dissuading the Taiwanese from pursuing that path.”

Wynne said U.S. officials are looking into whether any treaties were violated by the mistaken shipment, but clarified that the transport of helicopter batteries fell under approved treaties.

“Our policy on Taiwan arm sales have not changed,” Henry said at the news conference. “This specific incident was an error in process only and is not indicative of our policies, which remain unchanged.”

The fuses are listed as Category 1 items under the Missile Technology Control Regime, an agreement signed by 34 countries, including the U.S. and China, to restrict the exportation of missiles and major subsystems.

However, since the U.S. has said this was a mistake and not an intentional shipment, it would not go against the agreement, said Darryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

Also, based on the knowledge the Defense Department has now, the shipment didn’t violate either START or the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, Upton said.

Gates launched an investigation March 25 headed by Adm. Kirkland Donald, director of naval nuclear propulsion, into who was responsible for the mistake and what caused it. In a memo, Gates specified he wanted an initial assessment by April 15 and a final report within the next 60 days.

The missing fuses should have been accounted for during quarterly inventories of the stockpiles at Hill Air Force Base, Wynne said. That process will be investigated by Donald’s team.

While U.S. officials say they have no reason to believe the fuses were tampered with while they were out of U.S. control, the investigation will also look at that.

“We are all taking this very seriously. And [although] it ... could not be construed as being nuclear material, it is a component for ... the fuse and the nose cone for a nuclear system,” Wynne said. “And so I would tell you that we are very concerned about it.”

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