Reply #12: No, your understanding is wrong. [View All]

As others mentioned, the crew knew the weapons were onboard, and they were SUPPOSED to be onboard, but the warheads should have been removed. The crew is NOT authorized to open the bombs up and check either.

I heard it mentioned that the missiles should have been tagged to indicate their warhead status, but I haven't yet heard what the tags were. It's possible that the missiles were tagged as inert when they weren't, and it's also possible that they were tagged as active and nobody noticed. That particular detail hasn't come out yet.

If the missiles WERE tagged as active and the manifest said they should be inert, then the flight crew should have caught it. According to my MIL (AF until retirement), most pilots simply trust that the ground crew has loaded the proper weapons onboard. When they do their walkaround, they're usually looking for loose or mismounted weapons, and don't typically verify the types of weapons themselves.