The Wall Street Journal broke the news that a US Hellfire missile sent to Europe for training purposes was accidentally shipped to Cuba in 2014, “a loss of sensitive military technology that ranks among the worst-known incidents of its kind.”
This is the missile we use every day to take out terrorist targets. The journal reports that “US officials worry that Cuba could share the sensors and targeting technology inside it with nations like China, North Korea or Russia.” Add to that list Iran, Hezbollah and a long litany of other US enemies.
This is, in military parlance, FUBAR.
Shutterstock.
But wait – the story actually gets worse.
So how, you may ask, did a piece of US military technology as sensitive as a Hellfire missile “accidentally” get sent to communist Cuba? After all, the country is under a US economic embargo. There is almost no trade between our countries. There are no US military flights to Cuba (save those to Guantanamo Bay) on which the missile could have accidentally been shipped.
So how did it magically land in the hands of the Castro brothers, like manna from heaven?
Answer: it got there on an Air France flight to Havana.
Seriously.
The Journal reports:
The people familiar with the case said the missile was sent to Spain and used in the military exercise. But for reasons that are still unclear, after it was packed up, it began a roundabout trip through Europe, was loaded onto a truck and eventually sent to Germany.
The missile was packaged in Rota, Spain, a US official said, where it was put into the truck belonging to another freight-shipping firm, known by officials who track such cargo as a “freight forwarder.” That trucking company released the missile to yet another shipping firm that was supposed to put the missile on a flight originating in Madrid. That flight was headed to Frankfurt, Germany, before it was to be placed on another flight bound for Florida.
At some point, officials loading the first flight realized the missile it expected to be loading onto the aircraft wasn’t among the cargo, the government official said. After tracing the cargo, officials realized that the missile had been loaded onto a truck operated by Air France, which took the missile to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. There, it was loaded onto a “mixed pallet” of cargo and placed on an Air France flight. By the time the freight-forwarding firm in Madrid tracked down the missile, it was on the Air France flight, headed to Havana.
Attempts to reach Air France were unsuccessful.
When the plane landed in Havana, a local official spotted the labeling on the shipping crate and seized it, people familiar with the case said. Around June 2014, Lockheed Martin officials realized the missile was missing, was likely in Cuba, and notified the State Department, said those familiar with the matter.
That’s right, folks, the missile was lost baggage misplaced by Air France.
What, you didn’t know that the US ships top secret military hardware in the baggage holds of foreign commercial aircraft?
So the combined incompetence of the US government and airline baggage handlers has put sensitive military technology in the hands of our enemies. It just beggars belief.
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