AF Investigates Missing Launch Devices

AF Investigates Missing Launch Devices
August 29, 2008
Associated Press

BISMARCK, N.D. - The Air Force has announced that two officers who worked at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., have been taken off the job while the military investigates allegations that they took home classified components used in underground launch control centers.

The officers were supposed to have destroyed the two devices and had signed documents stating that they had, Maj. Laurie A. Arellano, an Air Force spokeswoman, said Aug. 28. The Band-Aid-sized devices, now obsolete, were used on equipment inside the launch control center to detect equipment tampering.

"The material that was supposed to be destroyed was already superseded and had been replaced," she said. "There is no risk to the security of the weapon system, and no possibility of an inadvertent launch as a result of this being taken from the weapon facility."

The officers worked at the time at Minot's 91st Space Wing, now known as the 91st Missile Wing. They were among the crew members who work 90 feet underground behind huge blast doors, prepared to launch nuclear missiles.

The Air Force said one of the officers notified the military in May that he and the other officer had lied about destroying the components in July 2005. He turned one device over to the government but the other remains missing, Arellano said. She had no information on why the officers took the devices.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/af-investigates-missing-launch-devices.html?col=1186032310810

this Nukes incident. Something is definitely going on up in N.D. and it has the makings of a (no pun intended)explosive novel which will later become a movie staring Harrison Ford.