How can the US mistakenly send Taiwan four fuses in late 2006 and only discover the error last week?

The United States mistakenly sent Taiwan four fuses used to trigger nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles in late 2006 and only discovered the error last week, the Pentagon said Tuesday. Nose cone assemblies containing the fuses were recovered Monday from Taiwan where they had been held in storage after being shipped there as helicopter batteries, senior Pentagon officials said. How is this possible?

Public Comments

1. sounds like our enemies are within the pentagon...would you doubt it? just long enuf for them to copy prototypes and make a weapon to destroy or disable it... read this.. http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080326/NATION/840186493/1001
2. It's the government. Consider what's going on in the current administration. I'm not surprised at all. Disugsted but not surprised.
3. Simple. GWB Administration.
4. Thursday, September 6, 2007; Page A10 An Air Force B-52 bomber flew across the central United States last week with six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads that were mistakenly attached to the airplane's wing, defense officials said yesterday. The Stratofortress bomber, based at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, was transporting a dozen Advanced Cruise Missiles to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana on Aug. 30. But crews inadvertently loaded half of them with nuclear warheads attached.
5. I don't want to blame the administration. But maybe the Pentagon was so distracted by Iraq, and the political climate was so distatsteful to the military, that they stopped paying attention.
6. It happens, remember these are just fancy Blasting caps, they have no fissionable material whatsoever. It doesnt take Nuclear material to set off a Nuclear device, most operate under the "Gun" principle of detonation
7. Do you really believe this story ? Say it may be a warning to china that Taiwan has nuke weapons ?
8. With the Bush administration in office I'm only surprised they didn't send entire nuclear bombs. They were nuclear triggers that are classified top secret.
9. Actually the Pentagon didn't discover the error, Taiwan called the US Government after opening the boxes, which had been in storage for years. After working for the Feds for the last 30 years, I can tell you that anything and everything is possible. During the time I was in the Military, we would order parts for a certain vehicle and on occasion get parts from different services that went to a completely different type of system. It is more common than you would think.
10. Haven't upgraded the paper work since Bill Clinton sold guidance systems to China