China Thrilled, As You Might Imagine

Here's a story sure to provoke an interesting conversation in the VIP seats at the Summer Olympics. In the second embarrassment in a year for America's nuclear weapons managers, what was supposed to have been a shipment of helicopter batteries to Taiwan instead turned out to be four electrical fuses for Minuteman nuclear missile warheads.

To make matters worse, it took until last week for the error to be discovered... a year and a half after the erroneous shipment. Pentagon officials disclosed the mistake on Tuesday.

According to the New York Times, officials said the nose-cone fuses were similar in function to those used for non-nuclear weapons, but were designed specifically to send an electrical signal to the trigger of the MK-12 nuclear warhead as it was approaching the ground.

US arms sales to Taiwan are already a sore point between the US and China. The failure to track and account for nuclear warhead fuses sent to the island are sure to further inflame that debate. It may also prove inconvenient in future US attempts to slow nuclear proliferation.

Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall the next time US diplomats try to get tough with the Russians about losing track of old Soviet nuclear hardware?

Robert S. Litwak, an expert on proliferation at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, tells the Times the gaffe could widen international mistrust. “Though this will likely be chalked up to a bureaucratic snafu, the Chinese will view this through the prism of their own suspicions about US intentions.”

The paper reports President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates were informed of the discovery on Friday, and Mr. Gates immediately ordered an investigation, as well as a comprehensive review of all policies and procedures and a physical site inventory of all nuclear equipment.

Presumably, this inventory will be more thorough than the six quarterly inventories which already failed to account for the missing fuses.

The fuses sent by mistake to Taiwan have reportedly been returned to the US military.

FMI: www.pentagon.mil