UNBELIEVABLE, BUT BELIEVABLE - AT 10:30 P.M. ET:  Read this one carefully, from Fox News:

The Department of Defense and the National Nuclear Security Administration had to wait more than a year to refurbish aging nuclear warheads — partly because they had forgotten how to make a crucial component, a government report states.

Regarding a classified material codenamed "Fogbank," a Government Accountability Office report released this month states that "NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency."

So the effort to refurbish and upgrade W76 warheads, which top the U.S. Navy's (and the British Royal Navy's) submarine-launched Trident missiles, had to be put on hold while experts scoured old records and finally figured out how to manufacture the stuff once again.

COMMENT:  There's a good lesson here.  We assume that expertise is handed down from generation to generation, but sometimes it isn't.  There have been authoritative reports that the United States Government is running on fumes in some technical, defense-related areas because people are retiring and no one is taking their place.  This problem should have the highest priority.

March 9, 2009