US soldiers examining their information on well-known educational apps have revealed nuclear secrets, according to an investigation released Friday by the “Bellingcat” website, which was able to accurately locate US thermonuclear bombs stored in Europe.
To learn about sites with “hot” concrete underground buildings containing nuclear bombs, security patrol schedules, and other details, soldiers created digital flash cards on apps such as Shig , Quizzle and Cram.
“By simply searching the Internet for terms known to be associated with nuclear weapons, Bellingcat was able to discover maps used by military personnel serving at the six European military bases that were mentioned as containing nuclear weapons,” the author of the article, Voiki Postma, said.
He found a set of seventy flashcards on the SHIG app titled “To Study”, showing shelters containing nuclear weapons at the folklore airbase in the Netherlands.
According to the site, among the questions on one of the cards are: “How many wineries” WS3 are there in the Folkl base? The answer is – according to the card – 11. And “WS3 is the initials of the military term for storage of weapons and security systems.
The Dutch government has never officially acknowledged that the Folkl air base in the south-east of the country contains nuclear weapons.
Another map from the same group indicated that 5 of the 11 basements were “hot” and the other six were “cold,” each precisely identified.
He also found a set of 80 cards on the “Cram” memory card website, with details of the hot and cold safes at Aviano Air Base in Italy, and showing how a soldier should activate them according to the alert level.
American soldiers in charge of the nuclear arsenal in Europe are regularly subjected to long and detailed security questionnaires, requiring them to memorize a large amount of information and short names.
The website mentions another example that in the bases where the B61 thermonuclear airborne missiles are stored, aircraft hangars (its short name “BAS) are equipped with weapon security systems (WS3) and a concrete structure (bunker) that can contain four thermonuclear bombs. B61.
Worse yet, a soldier entered on one of these online forms the passwords and usernames needed to disable WS3 security systems.
The “Bellingcat” website said it was also able to find details of all other European bases known to contain nuclear weapons: Incirlik (Turkey), Gedi (Italy), Bushel (Germany) and Klein Bruegel (Belgium).
The investigation website is known to have detected Russian military intelligence agents and documented the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
The oldest of these files dates back to 2012, but the most recent were posted online in April 2021, said Voiki Postma, who said he had tried unsuccessfully to obtain comments from NATO, from the US Department of Defense and the European Union. US Army Command (Yukom) on his article.
The review documents were withdrawn from the nominations shortly after her request for comment.