The Day the U.S. Air Force Almost Nuked North Carolina

Hacker15e said:
If by "yet" you mean the entire future existence of the universe, then, sure. Given that amount of "nearly infinite" time, just about any combination of events can occur. But if we are measuring by normal human standards of time, then pretty much no.

Without getting into too much detail (and classification issues), there is precisely only one way to make a modern US-arsenal nuclear weapon achieve a nuclear yield: with deliberate procedure.

The scientists and engineers at the various National Labs did not ignore the accidents and incidents that occurred over the years (only a small fraction of which have been referenced in this thread) and current (say, last 30 years) designs/builds reflect these lessons learned. They are intricate beyond belief, and have a ridiculous number of events which have to occur in-order-and-sequence for the actual procedure to occur which causes a nuclear detonation which achieves a nuclear yield. Any deviation from that precise order and sequence means no yield. The variation in these steps ensures that natural phenomena and even misguided human intention cannot complete that Rube Goldberg machine to get to the nuclear yield.

Obviously anything man-made can fail and, theoretically, anything can happen, but the statistical probability of that happening is beyond tens of thousands of human lifetimes.
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Oh, sure. The System has worked great to date all things considered. There have been zero unauthorized full-yield detonations. And yes, the laboratories and various services have done a good job - after much prodding and alarms from within, mind - of cleaning up their safety act. But we have come very close—too close—to having one go off without being expressly asked, and the services and laboratories have not always been the most progressive in terms of designing the things to be safe (in the sense that they will not go off without being expressly asked).

The thing that really worries me is the Air Force (in particular) losing or misplacing one of them, or a bunch of them, which is a silly thing to have to worry about, but is apparently a thing that we have to worry about.
 
Autothrust Blue said:
Oh, sure. The System has worked great to date all things considered. There have been zero unauthorized full-yield detonations. And yes, the laboratories and various services have done a good job - after much prodding and alarms from within, mind - of cleaning up their safety act. But we have come very close—too close—to having one go off without being expressly asked, and the services and laboratories have not always been the most progressive in terms of designing the things to be safe (in the sense that they will not go off without being expressly asked).

The thing that really worries me is the Air Force (in particular) losing or misplacing one of them, or a bunch of them, which is a silly thing to have to worry about, but is apparently a thing that we have to worry about.
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Keep in mind that back in the Cold War, the prerogative was for the bomb to go off *more often than not*. They wanted more craters than duds, so there were far fewer safety mechanisms in place.

Now, we want the opposite. Different tool.
 
NewYorkophile said:
Keep in mind that back in the Cold War, the prerogative was for the bomb to go off *more often than not*. They wanted more craters than duds, so there were far fewer safety mechanisms in place.

Now, we want the opposite. Different tool.
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It's not unlike a magazine safety on a handgun.

Would you rather it go off when it shouldn't, or fail to go off when it really needs to?
 
Autothrust Blue said:
Oh, sure. The System has worked great to date all things considered. There have been zero unauthorized full-yield detonations. And yes, the laboratories and various services have done a good job - after much prodding and alarms from within, mind - of cleaning up their safety act. But we have come very close—too close—to having one go off without being expressly asked, and the services and laboratories have not always been the most progressive in terms of designing the things to be safe (in the sense that they will not go off without being expressly asked).

The thing that really worries me is the Air Force (in particular) losing or misplacing one of them, or a bunch of them, which is a silly thing to have to worry about, but is apparently a thing that we have to worry about.
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From what I read that A4 that fell off the carrier could have had it's weapons go off, but because of the depth of the ocean there we don't know if it happened or not because of the low yield.
 
Autothrust Blue said:
Would you rather it go off when it shouldn't, or fail to go off when it really needs to?
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I think you'll find that current weapons design focuses on both of those things: ensuring it ONLY goes off when intentionally triggered, as well as ensuring that they do go off when intentionally triggered.

Since nuclear weapons spend decades sitting "on the shelf", and are expected to work perfectly when it counts, a significant portion of both DoE and USAF ongoing test programs check the ability of long-dormant weapons to function in a realistic environment.

Here's me dropping one of two B61 Joint Test Assemblies (JTA) back in 2001. This particular pass was at the Tonopah Test Range Antelope Lake target, and the release was at 500' and supersonic (I was at 683 KCAS when I went through the traps).

Tonopah_4.jpg

79407710.gif

JTAs are essentially off-the-stockpile weapons that have their physics packages replaced with telemetry and sensors, and then are dropped from operational aircraft -- going through all of the real-world requirements to arm/drop it, and then afterward, technicians and scientists check to make sure everything functioned as designed.
 
MikeD said:
They call TUS a TRACON because it's FAA run, the only AF personnel there are the couple who come in to man the PAR scope during its operating hours. At other bases where the app/dep is AF run, they call the RAPCONs there.

I guess FAA radar controllers don't do PARs anymore? Only ASRs?
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Like I said, back when I was there it was known as a RAPCON because it was on an Air Force base. Later (sometime after I left) it took the TRACON name because it was in fact an FAA facility that just happened to be on an Air Force base. At least that's what I recall.

In addition to tower, I was also PAR qualified at DMA. As far as I know, there are no FAA PAR facilities. Here at ELP we do ASR approaches using the short-range surveillance radar, but most FAA facilities don't even do that anymore.
 
RDoug said:
Like I said, back when I was there it was known as a RAPCON because it was on an Air Force base. Later (sometime after I left) it took the TRACON name because it was in fact an FAA facility that just happened to be on an Air Force base. At least that's what I recall.

In addition to tower, I was also PAR qualified at DMA. As far as I know, there are no FAA PAR facilities. Here at ELP we do ASR approaches using the short-range surveillance radar, but most FAA facilities don't even do that anymore.
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Yeah, PARs are fast disappearing from CONUS USAF airfields. Only the USA/USN/USMC facilities really seem to keep them here. USN/USMC simply due to tactical aircraft incompatibility with ILS. Overseas they are far more prevelant with the USAF.
 
MikeD said:
Yeah, PARs are fast disappearing from CONUS USAF airfields. Only the USA/USN/USMC facilities really seem to keep them here. USN/USMC simply due to tactical aircraft incompatibility with ILS. Overseas they are far more prevelant with the USAF.
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Why don't tactical airplanes have ILS?
 
ppragman said:
Why don't tactical airplanes have ILS?
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Most [*Navy] don't, the Prowler does. I think that's it. Otherwise, carrier aircraft have ACLS and ICLS (as well as visual aids). The Navy is currently evaluating a GPS-based replacement for ACLS, JPALS.


*Edit
 
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ppragman said:
Why don't tactical airplanes have ILS?
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AF ones do. Most USN/USMC tactical jets don't have a compatibility with ILS, but the EA-6B does which it got through an upgrade, as well as USN trainers have them. But thats why most USN tac jets are TACAN/PAR only, has to do with their carrier capable items. Other USN aircraft have it, which is why PARs exist at nearly all USN/USMC installations, as well as ILS.

edit: PF beat me as I was writing my reply. :)
 
MikeD said:
AF ones do. Most USN/USMC tactical jets don't have a compatibility with ILS, but the EA-6B does which it got through an upgrade, as well as USN trainers have them. But thats why most USN tac jets are TACAN/PAR only, has to do with their carrier capable items. Other USN aircraft have it, which is why PARs exist at nearly all USN/USMC installations, as well as ILS.

edit: PF beat me as I was writing my reply. :)
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I forgot, there is one Hornet squadron that has ILS.
 
MikeD said:
AF ones do. Most USN/USMC tactical jets don't have a compatibility with ILS, but the EA-6B does which it got through an upgrade, as well as USN trainers have them. But thats why most USN tac jets are TACAN/PAR only, has to do with their carrier capable items. Other USN aircraft have it, which is why PARs exist at nearly all USN/USMC installations, as well as ILS.

edit: PF beat me as I was writing my reply. :)
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Back when the Marines had A-6s, the squadrons were designated VMA (AW). I was told that it stood for Marine fixed wing medium attack, all weather so therefore, those were the only pilots in the Marine Corps with an instrument rating since they were "all weather".
 
Proud Pilot said:
Back when the Marines had A-6s, the squadrons were designated VMA (AW). I was told that it stood for Marine fixed wing medium attack, all weather so therefore, those were the only pilots in the Marine Corps with an instrument rating since they were "all weather".
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Yup, VMA (AW) was the old all-weather attack squadrons, vice the "regular" VMAs with A-4s and AV-8s who are visual attackers. But they're all IFR certed. The A-6 just had the all-weather attack/strike capability.
 
MikeD said:
Yup, VMA (AW) was the old all-weather attack squadrons, vice the "regular" VMAs with A-4s and AV-8s who are visual attackers. But they're all IFR certed. The A-6 just had the all-weather attack/strike capability.
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Ratings? We don't need no stinkin' ratings.
 
CirrusMonkey said:
Not sure if this was posted yet but it was recently has been declassified. Very very very chilling.

http://www.unmuseum.org/goldsboro_bomb.htm

A good read. Here are some pieces from it:

The whole incident might have been simply an unfortunate, tragic, but not uncommon training accident if it hadn't been for what the B-52G had been carrying: Two Mark 39 nuclear bombs with a combined yield of around 8 megatons: the equivalent of 8 million tons of TNT that had more power than 500 Hiroshima-type bombs put together.

On the second bomb, however, the retardation parachute did deploy, indicating that the bomb went through at least part of its arming sequence. The device's parachute snagged on a tree and this left the bomb hanging with just the bottom 18 inches of the nose buried in the ground. Otherwise it was completely intact.

Obviously, since the bomb didn't detonate, it hadn't been completely armed. The fact that the bomb had even partly gone through its arming procedure, however, was alarming to USAF officials and the details of what actually happened inside the nuclear device became a closely-guarded secret.
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I skipped English 101 in college.
 
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