The Defense Department announced on Tuesday that it mistakenly shipped non-nuclear ballistic missile components to Taiwan from a US Air Force base in the state of Wyoming. It said the items have been returned to the United States. At a Pentagon news conference, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said the misshipped items were four nose cone assemblies for ballistic missiles. He also said they were delivered to Taiwan in March 2005 and had been sent instead of helicopter batteries that had been ordered by Taiwan. “This could not be construed as being nuclear material. It is a component for the fuse in the nosecone for a nuclear system,” Wynne said. “We are very concerned about it.” Wynne said the matter is under investigation. He said the Taiwanese authorities notified US officials of the mistake. Ryan Henry, the No. 2 policy official in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, told the news conference that President George W. Bush was notified of the mistake and the actions to recover the items. Henry called the mistake “disconcerting” and intolerable. Neither the Chinese Embassy nor Taiwan diplomats in Washington immediately responded to requests for comment. He said the Chinese government has been notified of the error. Henry said an examination of the site in Taiwan where the components had been stored after delivery indicated that they had not been tampered with. He said the components were “quite dated,” as part of a system designed in the 1960s. __
