The US Air Force said on Friday that the incident of mishandling nuclear warheads in August was an "unacceptable mistake" of a sort that had never happened before.

 

Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne made the first explicit confirmation on the incident at a Pentagon press conference, saying that the military would "make all appropriate changes to ensure this has a minimal chance of ever happening again."

 

In the Aug. 29-30 incident, six nuclear warheads on air-launched cruise missiles were improperly handled and procedures were not followed when they were loaded on a B-52 bomber and flown from Minot Air Force Base, in the northern US state of North Dakota, to Barksdale Air Force Base, in the southern state of Louisiana. The incident is considered as the worst known violation of nuclear security rules in decades.

 

Maj. Gen. Richard Newton, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, said at the press conference that the incident was resulted from "unprecedented string of procedural errors."

 

The airmen failed to conduct a required inspection of the missiles before they were loaded aboard the B-52 bomber, which "was a failure to follow procedures, procedures that have proven to be sound," Newton said.

 

After landing at Barksdale, the B-52 sat on a runway for hours with the missiles but the breach was unnoticed. After 36 hours the missiles were finally secured in a proper way.

 

"There has been an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base," Newton said.

 

The explanation for the incident was concluded after a six-week Air Force investigation.

 

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at a press conference on Thursday that he also asked for an outside inquiry to determine whether the incident exposes a larger security problem on weapon transferring.

 

The Air Force has taken some remedy measures including ordering a comprehensive review of procedures base by base and relieving four military officers who were held accountable for the incident.

 

(Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2007)