Posted on 11/14/2010 4:26:26 PM PST by bronxville
The Atlantic (and now Wired) is reporting that an entire squadron of nuclear missiles unexpectedly dropped into a "launch facility down" status on Saturday morning, taking a sizable portion of America's nuclear deterrent offline:
President Obama was briefed this morning on a power failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that took 50 nuclear ICBMs, one ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline on Saturday.
The base is a main locus of the United States' strategic nuclear forces. The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. They're on full-time alert and housed in a variety of bunkers across the base.
On Saturday morning, according to people briefed on what happened, a squadron of ICBMs suddenly dropped down into what's known as "LF Down" status, meaning that the missileers in their bunkers no longer could communicate with the missiles themselves. LF Down status also means that various security protocols built into the missile delivery system, like intrusion alarms and warhead separation alarms, were offline.
The White House response to the incident has been jaw dropping. When pressed on the critical security lapse, an unnamed official told Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic (emphasis mine): "to make too much out of this would be to sensationalize it. It's not that big of a deal. Everything worked as planned."
According to Ambinder's report, during the period that the squadron went offline, the 90th Missile Wing had absolutely no communication with 50 nuclear weapons. There was no security available to protect the affected sites, nor was there any way of monitoring if the missiles sprung a leak, had their targeting data wiped, or suffered a mechanical breakdown. This is one of the most concerning and significant lapses in nuclear command and control in memory.
This could have a significant impact on START ratification. Cutting our nuclear arsenal was predicated on the functionality and health of the current strategic arsenal. Republican lawmakers, led by Senator Jon Kyl, have been understandably reluctant to ratify START until their concerns about aging nuclear warheads were answered and mitigated by the Obama sdministration. With this enormous breach in command and control functionality, the condition of our ancient fleet of delivery systems -subs that are 30 years old, missiles that are 40, and bombers that are 50- will have to be closely examined.
When new START hits the Senate floor during the lame-duck session of Congress, lawmakers should make extra certain that there are plans -and resources- on the books to upgrade both our archaic nuclear stockpile as well as our submarines, bombers, and ICBMs.
I'll invoke my own experience as a nuclear launch officer here, having pulled several "alerts" in the affected squadron: nothing worked "as planned." But over the course of four years on Minuteman III missile crew, I saw maybe only three or four incidents where a single missile dropped offline. And having an entire launch-facility down condition is rare, unexpected, and gravely serious. An entire squadron dropping offline is beyond significant. Indeed, the chief of staff and secretary of the Air Force were both fired for less.
Bump and Ping
This also happened a few months ago.
BACKGROUND
Wahid Hamid (Wahid was Obama’s room-mate at college) served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Development at PepsiCo, Inc. Mr. Hamid served as a Member of the Board at Pepsi Americas. While at PepsiCo, he served as the Chief Financial Officer of PepsiCo Americas Foods. In these roles, he was responsible for developing and implementing innovative corporate and business unit strategies, new ventures and alliances and for all M+A activities in conjunction with the divisions and sectors.
As Chief Financial Officer of PepsiCo Americas Foods he was also responsible for all sector financial planning and control activities and for facilitating best practices sharing among the individual business units.
He joined PepsiCo from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where he spent 15 years in a wide variety of roles and led engagements advising Fortune 100 Companies on developing and implementing growth strategies as well as on large-scale reengineering and transformation programs and ultimately served as Senior Partner and Managing Director in their New York office. He led BCG’s consumer goods and retail practice across Asia Pacific for a number of years and led large-scale engagements in Japan, China, South Korea, and India. He served on the firm’s Global People and US Partner Selection Committees.
He was also the co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of a successful venture funded IT services business in China. (who was his partner?)
He serves as a Board Member at Defense Business Board.
He holds dual undergraduate degrees from the California Institute of Technology (with honors) and Occidental College (cum laude) and also holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=31047849&ticker=PEP:US&previousCapId=4392731&previousTitle=Columbus%20Zoo%20and%20Aquarium
Hillary and Wahid (Wahids reward?) -
http://www.americanpakistan.org/aboutus.php
http://www.americanpakistan.org/board_of_directors.php
Wahid’s government bio -
http://dbb.defense.gov/bios/wahid_hamid.html
Wahid’s company in China (couldn’t find much on it) -
Sept. 2001 ~ Nov. 2003, ERP [project ‘211’] consultant, HAND Enterprise Solutions Co., Ltd. P. R. China”
http://www.ise.ufl.edu/pardalos/visitors/CV_of_tao_zhang.pdf
Wahiid or whoever named the company - “HAND...” reminded me of this -
“China Hands,” were leftists from the State Department’s Asian division.
China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia
by James Lilley with Jeffrey Lilley
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/china-hands-by-james-lilley-9946
When the Chinese Communists declared victory in 1949, an immediate outcry asked “Who lost China?” John T. Flynn, Louis F. Budenz, Freda Utley were among the many who charged that China Hands had undermined Chiang Kai-shek, misled the American public and lost China either through naive ignorance of the true nature of Marxism or even allegiance to the Soviet Union. John Service, they pointed out, had admitted that before he went to Yan’an he had not read the basic texts of Marxism, and the other China Hands were no better informed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Hands
He worked at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Consulting_Group
https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS10F0475N/GS10F0475N_online.htm
BCG have very interesting board members - CFR’s, Pepsi head -(?gave Wahid his big position and board membership), Trilateral Commission people, Paulsen, Israel PM, media, finance, industry, IT, government, etc (don’t see Romney but I read somewhere he had a stake in this company - don’t have time to check it out at the moment) -
http://www.nndb.com/company/092/000124717/
BCG is only a bil dollar company yet it appears to be a very important outfit...
Wahid - PepsiAmericas VP – he got on the huge plum board of PepsiAmericas pretty fast - during the candidate Obamas period - which opened the door for his entry into the Defense Business Board. (One wonders if he laundered Muslim money for Obama’s campaign via Pepsi Americas. He got millions from Asia. The Chandoo brothers also raised big bucks. The Tides Foundation also launders money via the Tides Center. Pepsi Americas and Obama appear to be a team...even down to the logo - remember the Defense site logo?)Wahid plays golf with Obama - saves noted visits - it’s probably why he plays golf so much...
Anyway it could all be perfectly innocent. I just happened to have the info and the latest stuff in the sky reminded me of Wahid’s trip to China and the, HAND IT company, he and his partner started with the help of one of one of China’s prestigious university professors. I previously wrote about it here -
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2514423/posts
Project 211-
http://www.edu.cn/20010101/21852.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Project_211
Why EPA 211?
USA - What is the National 211 Initiative?
In 1997, United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta successfully established a local 211 project. Since then, they have helped over 250,000 callers needing information about resources in their community.
United Way of America and the Alliance of Information & Referral Systems (AIRS) have formed a national 211 partner-ship so that this valuable ser-vice can be offered throughout the country. In May 1998, they filed a petition with the FCC to designate 211 as the universal access number for community services information.
http://211us.org/status.htm
http://www.211ohio.net/
bing search - 2-1-1uk brought me to this -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_legislation
bing search - 211uk brought me to auto/tel laser stuff
Wahid’s EPA 211 trip (2001) -
(The major ERP vendors are - SAP, Oracle (PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards), SSA Global (Baan) and Microsoft. Lawson Software specializes in back-end processing that integrates with another vendor’s manufacturing system. See CRM, SAP, PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, Baan, Microsoft Dynamics, sales force automation, supply chain management and NRP.)
This leads us to the US EPA – enter Clinton (visited China in 1998) Gore, “killer trees” Bill Chaneides (visited China ?date), Browner, Udalls, ...and so on and on and on...
Bottomline – was Wahid and his partners new company HAND... really the implementation of a global EPA 211 or access to our defense intelligence – or both?
Stupid? Maybe but who knows. The environment is now worse in rural areas (at least the land we’ve got left and isn’t conserved) per Chaneides which means they’re looking to herd us all into their Metro-cities when their building projects are finished, and if that doesn’t work there’ll be some sort of missile mishaps and we’ll be rounded there for our own protection, those who won’t go, well there’s the camps...
Now removing my tinfoil hat.
And, of course, they got it completely wrong. This tells me there is no need to read further.
No problem SengirV. Anyway I just needed an excuse to post my weird stuff and you gave it to me. :)
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One oooops got away from sub near San Diego???
Hmmmmmmm
thx.
I didn’t think it was hacked but thought perhaps they were given it freely.
Why build up China? Why are we building up India/Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq/Eastern Europe/Africa...?
I have another crazy thought. :)
Sign me up please.
Hard to not think of the 2 incidents being related. I mean, it takes some work. Stuxnet, Warren, Catalina...... ????
Probably a IBEW union related issue.
Add me to yer list if ya have time !
As an old SAC trained killer myself. Events such as this makes me wonder if ole Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay is rolling over in his grave about now with all the recent errors.......
Just 13 days into the new command and this happens, Crazy.
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123224563
>>Not seemingly connected but makes me go Hmmm.<<
What makes me go Hmmm is the fact there is millions of Moslems in the USA. For a moment allow me to blow a cool, refreshing breeze up your skirt.
Of the millions of Moslems in the USA, what percentage of them are what a very pro Moslem person such as “Elie Rekhess (Ph.D. Tel Aviv University) Crown Professor of Middle East Studies” would call radicals? Perhaps 1 percent? That would be 10,000. Oh Dear! That’s too many to admit to. Shall we say .5 percent? That would be 5,000. How about one quarter of one percent? That would be 2,500. Alright, let’s be realistic and say one tenth of one percent of them are radicals. (The rest are what the news agencies would describe as Moderates. LOL)
Yes, that means that there’s a good possibility of terrorists living next door to you and your family. Right?
Yup, 1,000 pig screwing, terrorist minded, America hating Muslims are spread out across America wanting to mess with our energy system which support our defense system. (I didn’t mean to include the guy in the WH but he qualifies.)
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! Be sure to wish them all a Merry Christmas!
Ping
>>with all the recent errors.......<<
I see them as possible test runs. Coincidences tend to keep me awake. I don’t believe in them.
Showing just how little the authors know about missiles. They're solid fueled. No leaks.
Weekly Standard is attempting to sensationalize.
Shhhh..... don't ruin their little game. It's like a slumber party for 6th grade girls, all trying to scare each other.
It is virtually impossible to hack anything strategic in the US.
EVERYTHING is a separate, physically inaccessible network...unless it came from the inside.
If it come from the inside they have already been caught.
This is nothing more than a mechanical failure...probably due to lack of maintenance.
Remember, this is only 9% of the MMIII force.
While on this subject, wouldn’t it be cool to have a ICBM webcams?
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