US military seeks perfect nuclear controls
Updated
The new chiefs of the US Air Force say they will restore the standard for the control of nuclear forces to perfection.
General Norton Schwartz, the Air Force Chief of Staff says anything less than perfection is not acceptable.
The new Air Force Secretary, Mike Donley, confirms the stance that comes in the wake of a series of embarassing blunders that cost their predecessors their jobs.
In March, the air force discovered that four fuses for nuclear weapons and nose cone assemblies for ballistic missiles were mistakenly shipped to Taiwan as helicopter batteries in August 2006, an error that went undetected for 18 months.
Mr Donley says a review into the accountability of generals and colonels singled out in an investigation of the Taiwan mis-shipment is expected to be completed in a couple of weeks.
A separate study is investigating and incident in September 2007, when nuclear armed cruise missiles were inadvertently loaded onto the wing of a B-52 bomber at Minot Air Force Base, in North Dakota, and flown to Barksdale Air Force Base, in Louisiana.
