In addition to the resignation of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, Gates said a "substantial" number of other officials - presumably including some from Hill - might be fired or reprimanded.
According to the investigation, recently completed by Navy Adm. Kirkland Donald, employees at Hill's Defense Distribution Center violated a series of protocols for shipping and receiving supplies, leading to the inaccurate labeling of the missile fuses as helicopter batteries. When Taiwan ordered a set of batteries in the summer of 2006, Hill employees shipped the fuses instead.
The mix-up, which took nearly two years to resolve, may have violated international arms control treaties and caused further strain in relations between the United States and China, which considers Taiwan to be a renegade province.
But Gates said the Hill case was only the beginning.
"This incident represents a significant failure to ensure the security of sensitive military components, and more troubling, it depicts a pattern of poor performance," he said. "Rather than an isolated occurrence, the shipment of the four forward section assemblies to Taiwan was a symptom of a degradation of the authority, standards of excellence and technical competence," within the Air Force's nuclear missile force.
Coupled with an August 2007 mistake in which an Air Force bomber was flown across the country by a pilot and crew that didn't know they had nuclear weapons on board, Gates said it has become clear that the Air Force was suffering from a ''lack of critical self-assessment culture."
Speaking more specifically to the problems identified by the investigation into the Hill error, Gates said that "individuals in command and leadership positions not only fell short in terms of specific actions, they failed to recognize systemic problems."
Most logistics services at Hill are run by military contractor EG&G Inc., which won its $64 million contract at the northern Utah base in 2002 despite having a record of extremely poor performance ratings while doing similar work in Georgia. Gates' statement did not mention the contractor specifically, but a timeline provided by his office points to several failures at Hill leading to the transfer of the missiles to Taiwan.
Hill Air Force Base Commander Kathleen Close and Air Base Wing Commander Linda Medler were bunkered down on Thursday. They refused through a spokesman to answer any questions about whether personnel at their base, identified in the investigation as responsible for the specific failures at Hill, have been disciplined.
Spokesman Charles Freeman said he didn't know whether the person or persons responsible for a problem that resulted in nuclear weapons components being sent to a foreign nation had been suspended from duty.
"You have to talk to the Office of the Secretary of Defense for that," said Freeman, who said he was not aware that the resignations of Moseley and Wynne were related to the failures at Hill.
Utah's congressional members declined to comment on the Taiwan mishap - but they did have kind words for Wynne and Moseley.
Sen. Orrin Hatch called them "two friends of Utah" and "creators of a dynamic plan for the modernization of the Air Force."
Rep. Rob Bishop's district includes Hill Air Force Base. He said the resignations were "a loss for the country and our military."
Other lawmakers praised Gates' decision to dismiss the two officials, particularly Moseley, who has been embroiled in a controversy over allegedly inappropriate influence in the negotiations for a $50 million contract for an Air Force Thunderbirds airshow.
"Any rookie auditor would smell something fishy," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in a statement. "And the smell went all the way to the top."
McCaskill praised Gates for "walking the walk on accountability."
mlaplante@sltrib.com
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* MATT CANHAM contributed to this article.
