Pentagon: Equipment outage at Wyo. nuke site

[tombogan03884]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101027/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_power_outage_nuclear_missiles


By ANNE GEARAN and MICHELE SALCEDO, Associated Press Anne Gearan And Michele Salcedo, Associated Press – Tue Oct 26, 11:06 pm ET

WASHINGTON – An equipment failure disrupted communication between 50 nuclear missiles and the launch control center at Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming over the weekend, an Air Force spokesman said Tuesday.

Lt. Col. Todd Vician said the break occurred early Saturday and lasted less than one hour. The White House was briefed about the failure Tuesday morning.

There was no evidence of foul play, and the Air Force never lost the ability to launch the missiles, officials said.

The Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles are part of the 319th Missile Squadron stockpiled at Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, where 150 ICBMs are located. The failure affected 50 of them, or one-ninth of the U.S. arsenal. ICBMs at Air Force bases in Montana and North Dakota were not affected.

The equipment failure disrupted "communication between the control center and the missiles, but during that time they were still able to monitor the security of the affected missiles," Vician said. "The missiles were always protected. We have multiple redundancies and security features, and control features."

The launch control center computers communicate through an underground cable, but Vician could not confirm the cable was the source of the problem.

Vician said base personnel inspected all 50 missile sites and found no evidence of damage.

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[fightingquaker13]

This is the kind of stuff that scares the crap out of me about Pakistan and Iran and India where they spent all their Ruppees on the weapons and may or may not have the multiplre redundacies. Scarier still is Russia. They should have them, but god knows what kind of shape they are in. Half of their military seems to be rotting away.
FQ13