Spain: "First time?"
Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
11–20 of 96 posts
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#12I remember hearing about bad OPSEC at Volkel. Something about how there was sensitive national security secrets indirectly being leaked bc soldiers didn’t set their Quizlet flashcards to private when studying for their exams.
Wow, I missed that one. I just looked it up.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...
I know these human mistakes are inevitable in a large organization, but it's still sobering seeing that a soldier would post nuclear vault release code locations and more online. I guess it's easy to be careless in the daily grind whether it's PII or nuclear secrets...
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#13It must be emphasized up front that there is no official confirmation that the image was taken at Volkel Air Base, that the bent B61 shape is a real weapon (versus a trainer), or that the damage was the result of an accident (versus a training simulation).
Exactly. Quite the chain of speculation built from a single image.
It's just that Finland joined NATO...
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#14When the headline is asking the audience, the answer is usually no.
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#15It must be emphasized up front that there is no official confirmation that the image was taken at Volkel Air Base, that the bent B61 shape is a real weapon (versus a trainer), or that the damage was the result of an accident (versus a training simulation).
Exactly. Quite the chain of speculation built from a single image.
To be fair, it is the news media… Reporters take nuggets of information, plus buckets of speculation, and spin it into something that you will click on.
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#16When the headline is asking the audience, the answer is usually no.
For reference, it's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#17I remember hearing about bad OPSEC at Volkel. Something about how there was sensitive national security secrets indirectly being leaked bc soldiers didn’t set their Quizlet flashcards to private when studying for their exams.
If someone puts classified information into Quizlet, that constitutes spillage whether they set it to private or not.
Sometimes this kind of thing needs to be explained even to very senior people, not just lowly troops. I knew of a four-star general asking a few years ago why we didn't use Signal for stuff instead of Teams (O365 tenant hosted in Microsoft's Government Community Cloud), because he "heard that it's so secure that even the NSA can't break it." The answer is that there's a difference between a system being "secure" and being accredited for classified information or even unclassified information that the government owns.
Edited to add: Another very senior DoD person actually got in trouble for using Signal for official business a couple years ago because, among other reasons, there's no way for the government comply with FOIA when someone is using a personal account on a commercial application like that.
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#18I remember hearing about bad OPSEC at Volkel. Something about how there was sensitive national security secrets indirectly being leaked bc soldiers didn’t set their Quizlet flashcards to private when studying for their exams.
uhm, setting the quizlet flashcards to private would have still resulted in a leak of sensitive data...
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#19When the headline is asking the audience, the answer is usually no.
Article: “It must be emphasized up front that there is no official confirmation that the image was taken at Volkel Air Base, that the bent B61 shape is a real weapon (versus a trainer), or that the damage was the result of an accident (versus a training simulation).”
Headline writer/editor: “Hold my beer”
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#20Would they be wearing protective gear if it was an actual accident? Also, the dude with the clip board doesn't look very concerned...
The damage is at the non-nuclear end of the bomb.