Hellfire Missile Mistakenly Sent to Cuba Has Been Returned to U.S.
February 13 2016 - 1:32PM
Dow Jones News
By Gordon Lubold and Devlin Barrett
WASHINGTON--An inert Hellfire missile mistakenly sent to Cuba in
2014 after a training exercise has been located and returned to the
U.S., State Department officials said Saturday, ending a saga that
had put at risk sensitive technology and caused diplomatic
strains.
The training missile had been rerouted in Germany and put on a
plane to Cuba, where it had remained for more than a year as U.S.
diplomatic officials scrambled to get it back.
The loss of the missile was embarrassing to the U.S. in part
because the weapon could have been provided to an adversary and
exploited for its sensitive technology, and because it remained a
sticking point as diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba
dramatically thawed over the last year.
A plane carrying the missile arrived in Orlando, Fla., early
Saturday, where it will finally be returned to a warehouse that
holds a large stock of Hellfire missiles for Lockheed Martin Corp.,
the missile's manufacturer, U.S. officials said.
"We can say without speaking to specifics that the inert
training missile has been returned with the cooperation of the
Cuban government," said State Department spokesman Mark Toner in a
written statement, adding: "the re-establishment of diplomatic
relations and the reopening of our embassy in Havana allow us to
engage with the Cuban government on issues of mutual interest."
Mr. Toner provided few further details about how the missile
ended up in Cuba, citing federal law.
A spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin referred queries to the State
Department. A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, which is investigating the matter, similarly referred
queries.
A Hellfire is an air-to-ground missile often fired from
helicopters. It was first designed, more than 30 years ago, as an
antitank weapon. Since modernized, it is a cornerstone of the U.S.
counterterrorism arsenal, often fired from drones to carry out
attacks in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere. The missing missile
didn't contain explosives, but still amounted to a treasure trove
of sensitive technology if it were to fall into the wrong
hands.
The missing Hellfire was used in a North Atlantic Treaty
Organization military exercise in 2014 but was wrongly routed onto
an Air France flight that took it to Cuba. Officials there removed
the missile and held it with no public explanation. A federal
investigation is under way to determine if the missile was
intentionally mishandled or if it was simply the result of a series
of blunders. The missile's loss was first reported by The Wall
Street Journal.
The tale of the missing missile began at the Orlando
International Airport in early 2014, where it was prepared to be
used in a NATO exercise in Spain, according to U.S. officials. The
crate in which the 100-pound, 5-foot missile was shipped was
clearly marked as containing material subject to rigorous export
controls and officials said anyone handling the crate would know it
wasn't regular cargo.
After the exercise the missile was repacked and, for reasons
that remain unclear, the missile began a circuitous trip through
Europe. First, it was loaded onto a truck belonging to a
freight-shipping firm in Rota, Spain, and sent to Germany,
according to officials familiar with the case.
That firm released the cargo to yet another shipping firm, which
was supposed to put it on a flight from Madrid to Frankfurt before
it would travel, on another flight, to Florida. Instead, officials
loading the first flight realized the special cargo wasn't there.
Officials realized it had been loaded onto a truck operated by Air
France and was heading for Charles de Gaulle airport outside
Paris.
There, it was loaded onto a pallet of cargo and placed onto an
Air France flight. By the time the error or errors were discovered,
the plane was on that flight and headed to Havana.
Write to Gordon Lubold at Gordon.Lubold@wsj.com and Devlin
Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 13, 2016 14:17 ET (19:17 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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