WASHINGTON — The U.S. military mistakenly shipped parts from a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile to Taiwan, Pentagon officials announced Tuesday in the second incident to come to light in recent months in which nuclear weapons were mishandled.
Pentagon officials said the material sent to Taiwan consisted of four electrical fuses for the ICBM nose cones. The fuses, used to trigger nuclear weapons, do not contain nuclear material.
But experts on nuclear security said the mistaken transfer showed a serious deterioration in the safeguards and controls that the U.S. military has over its nuclear warheads.
"This is really unbelievable," said Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which advocates reducing the number of nuclear weapons. "If the Russians had shipped triggers to Tehran, we would be going nuts right now."
U.S. officials anxiously notified China of the error, but experts did not expect Beijing to react with alarm because of long-standing U.S. policies against arming Taiwan with nuclear weapons.
Tuesday's disclosure came on the heels of an incident last year in which six nuclear warheads were mistakenly flown across the country on a B-52.
Cirincione, a longtime congressional military expert, said the new incident suggests nuclear weapons have become less important to the military than during the Cold War. However, he said, thousands of weapons still must be protected and maintained. "We don't need these weapons anymore, and if you leave them lying around, bad things are going to happen," he said.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, after being notified Friday about the shipment, ordered an investigation. An earlier query ordered by Gates into the mislaid warheads criticized the military for losing its focus on its nuclear weapons mission.
The Pentagon learned last week of the improper shipment -- which occurred about August 2006 -- from the Taiwanese government, officials said.
Taiwan had purchased spare batteries for helicopters. The Defense Logistics Agency sent four shipping containers that officials thought contained the batteries, but that actually held the fuses. The Air Force shipped the fuses in 2005 from F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming to a Utah warehouse operated by the logistics agency, a separate government unit. Officials said they did not know whether the triggers had been mislabeled by the Air Force or improperly stored in an unclassified warehouse by the logistics agency.
