Nuclear Nose Cones Mistakenly Shipped to Taiwan 254
Reservoir Hill writes "The Pentagon announced that the United States had mistakenly shipped to Taiwan four electrical fuses designed for use on intercontinental ballistic missiles, but has since recovered them. The mistaken shipment to Taiwan did not include nuclear materials, although the fuses are linked to the triggering mechanism in the nose cone of a Minuteman nuclear missile. Taiwanese authorities notified U.S. officials of the mistake, but it was not clear when the notification was made. An examination of the site in Taiwan where the components had been stored after delivery indicated that they had not been tampered with. The fuses had been in four shipping containers sent in March 2005 from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., to a Defense Logisitics Agency warehouse at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. It was then in the logistics agency's control and was shipped to Taiwan "on or around" August 2006, according to a memo from Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordering Navy Adm. Kirkland H. Donald to investigate the incident."
Re:Nosecones? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nosecones? (Score:3, Informative)
Why is this reported? (Score:5, Informative)
I can't seem to figure out why it was being reported at all. The story as it's published is "nothing much happened, somebody filled out the shipping form wrong, we returned it all to sender." So in whose interest is this story being reported?
It would be a reasonable story to spread as cover if the shipment had been intentional and China found out about it (or if there had been, say, six fuses shipped and four returned); or it could be a useful story to ratchet up tensions with China before the Olympics (to whoever's benefit). Thing is, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I don't really buy that without it being more obvious whose interest it serves; but if it's just a "gotcha" story talking about how the US military screwed up, then the shots fired in the Suez [google.com] might be a more interesting one (especially since as of yesterday afternoon the USAF was denying that anybody got hurt).
So, in short, this nuke-fuse story is weird, and I can't figure out why it's getting reported.
(Full disclosure: I wish Taiwan had nukes, to make sure China stays polite and on its side of the Strait.)
They should have used the CIA (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/jan/05/energy.g2 [guardian.co.uk]
On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran's nuclear programme by sending Iran's weapons experts down the wrong technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs.
The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There is something wrong." His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the Russian's assertion that the blueprints didn't look quite right, but no one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either.
In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian's personal handler had been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA officer aside. "He wasn't supposed to know that," the CIA case officer told his superior. "He wasn't supposed to find a flaw."
"Don't worry," the senior CIA officer calmly replied. "It doesn't matter."
Re:Nosecones? (Score:3, Informative)
The editor that put this blatant sensationalism on the front page should be exposed to radioactive material to get the point across that calling something "Nuclear Nose Cones" when refering to an electric firing pin is not journalism and has a better place in checkout stand tabloids.
Re:Why is this reported? (Score:3, Informative)
The fact that any part of such a thing was mishandled is a big deal, because it validates the probability that the dangerous parts can be mishandled.
You think it was a couple of irrelevant parts. To the process involved in controlling them, this was an "escape" from the process, and the process has to be re-engineered to ensure such things can not happen at all, because next time it may not be the mundane stuff that gets lost in the mail.
It's no longer cool to be in the nuclear military (Score:5, Informative)
The US has been fighting conventionally ever since the first Gulf War - even after that war ended, there was quite a bit of combat activity to enforce Iraq's no-fly zone. With the current wars, this has resulted in military personnel regarding conventional fighting as the way to get ahead in the military.
Let me find you a link...
Re:Nosecones? (Score:5, Informative)
FTA:
"The fuses were manufactured for use on a Minuteman strategic nuclear missile and are linked to the triggering mechanism in the nose cone, but they contain no nuclear materials."
it was also in the summary if you even got that far.
Also in the same article:
"Four of the cone-shaped fuses were shipped to Taiwanese officials in fall 2006 instead of the helicopter batteries they had ordered."
These were not the "Nuclear Nose Cones" themselves but cone shaped fuses that are "linked" to the complex triggering system that makes up most of the nose cone volume. This is how CBS refers to them: "... four electrical fuses for nose cone assemblies for ICBMs" and if you take a second to look up the way these things work you will see that the majority of the system is not the fuses themselves but the triggering system.
Re:Nosecones? (Score:3, Informative)
What we sent Taiwan were electronic strings for nuclear bombs.
Re:Nosecones? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know the details of this particular weapon, but nuclear ignition fuses can be very sophisticated. In an implosion-style weapon, you've got a bunch of detonators arranged in a pattern on the outside of a sphere of high explosive. It's of utmost importance that the explosive shock wave hit the center of the sphere from all sides at pretty much exactly the same time, to maximize compression on the nuclear material. There are two things that have to happen for this to be the case:
1) Explosive lenses. As each detonator fires, it creates an expanding sphere of detonation throughout the high explosive. All of these spheres will meet in the middle as the entire explosive detonates, but it's a messy and irregular shock front. You instead want a perfectly spherical shock front to all hit the nuclear material (itself a sphere) simultaneously. The most straightforward way to do this is to have two different explosives which detonate at different velocities. Basically directly underneath each detonator (the point that the expanding spherical shock wave would naturally hit first), you've got to slow the explosion down by using a lower-velocity explosive, and in between the detonators (the point that the expanding spherical shock waves would naturally hit last), you've got to speed it up by using a higher-velocity explosive. By precisely calculating and machining the interface between the two types of explosives, you can control how long it takes the shock wave to reach the nuclear material at each point -- ideally, exactly simultaneously.
2) Precise detonation. If one of the detonators fires a couple of milliseconds late, you've got a lopsided shock wave which leads to much poorer compression of the nuclear material. Poor compression leads to low yield or even no nuclear ignition at all. But you've got perhaps dozens of detonators, and making them all go off within microseconds of each other is highly non-trivial. It takes quite a bit of sophistication to time dozens of explosions to all happen at more-or-less precisely the same time, and not only is it hard, nuclear bombs are pretty much the only case in which you ever have to time things this precisely. And that means that short of specialized research into this exact problem, you're not going to have the technology to do it.
The devices which were inappropriately shipped are a solution to problem #2. Problem #1 is actually quite a bit easier -- the underlying math and science is quite straightforward (as these things go). Solve #1 and #2, and you've got the ability to create a perfectly spherical shock wave. Put a an appropriate sphere of plutonium in the middle of a sufficiently powerful spherical shock wave, and you've got a nuclear bomb.
Re:Nosecones? (Score:2, Informative)
These parts are not simple percussion fuses; these are Permissive
Action Linked hardware.
PALs have been under constant development since the 1950s and ordnance
packages are regularly updated with refined PALs.
A PAL will, for example, generate a detonation signal only when barometric, aerodynamic and cryptographic parameters are fulfilled.
Fortunately, PALs are designed to be tamper-proof. Well, the first generation
wasn't overly robust ( along the lines of the old ``cut the red wire'' film
plot ) but contemporary ones ( Level 5? ) are very sophisticated pieces of kit.