Protecting our arsenal

Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008 | 2:05 a.m.

Dozens of our allies around the globe rely on our nuclear weapons for protection from possible attack. Because we give them assurances that we can protect them, they have every right to expect that we can manage our arsenal properly.

Two embarrassing episodes cast doubt on whether we are capable of doing that.

The first incident occurred in August 2006 when the Defense Logistics Agency erroneously shipped nuclear missile fuses to Taiwan instead of batteries for military helicopters. This folly was compounded by the fact that the mistake wasn’t detected by the Defense Department until last March.

Then there was the B-52 bomber in August 2007 that unwittingly carried cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The warheads were not activated, but it was still an error of major proportion. The plane was supposed to have delivered the missiles without the warheads, and not until 10 hours after it landed was the mistake discovered.

Those mishaps led Defense Secretary Robert Gates to oust the Air Force’s top military and civilian leaders in June and to appoint a task force headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger to examine the nation’s oversight of its nuclear weapons.

On Friday the panel announced a recommendation to place responsibility for the nuclear arsenal under a unified Air Force Strategic Command.

This recommendation makes sense because the current arrangement, in which various aspects of the arsenal are controlled by separate commands within the Air Force and elsewhere in the military, clearly has suffered from a communication breakdown.

As the threat of terrorism spreads, adding to the uncertainty of life in the 21st century, it is imperative that we coordinate our management and use of nuclear weapons. Placing them under a vigilant unified command should correct the mistakes that have led our allies to question our stewardship of those weapons.