The Other Cuban Missile Crisis

A dummy U.S. Hellfire missile was mistakenly shipped from Europe to Cuba in 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

  Yahoo

Are we sure it was the missile that was the dummy?

[A] U.S. official told the AP that Lockheed was authorized to export the dummy missile for a NATO training exercise. The official attributed the shipping error to Lockheed's freight forwarders, and said the U.S. was working with Lockheed to get the device back.

[...]

The inert missile did not contain any explosives, the Journal reported, but there are concerns that Cuba could share the technology with potential U.S. adversaries like North Korea or Russia.

Or return it for the US lifting all sanctions?

The Journal reported that the U.S. is also investigating whether the missile's disappearance was a deliberate act of espionage.

[...]

According to the Journal report, the missile was properly shipped to Spain, where it was used in the training exercise. It was then taken on a somewhat roundabout journey through Spain, Germany and France before winding up at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. From there, it was supposed to have been shipped back to Florida; instead, it was loaded onto an Air France flight to Havana.

And they've had it since 2014 (early 2014 according to another report.). Is that the real reason diplomatic relations were restored in 2015?

Lockheed Martin notified the State Department of the incident when it realized the missile was missing around June 2014, the WSJ said.

  Yahoo

I wonder how long it really was before they realized it was missing. There must have been some sweating palms at Lockheed trying to get that thing back without having to tell State what happened. And why didn't somebody at State have the responsibility to get constant information of its whereabouts from the moment it left the US?

[D]espite a historic thaw in ties with Cuba over the past year, Washington has been unsuccessful in its push to get the missile back, the WSJ said, citing unnamed sources.

We held Cuba by the short ones for over 50 years. Maybe it's their turn.

The bungled missile delivery comes with Washington and Havana working to build on their restoration of full diplomatic relations, a move first announced in December 2014.

Yep. That's the timing. About the time the State Department realized they weren't able to recover the missile any other way.

Obama said he had made the decision [to restore dimplomatic ties] because he concluded that 50 years of trying to encourage democratic and economic change in Cuba through isolation had failed.

And the last part of that statement is certainly true. But I feel pretty certain that's not what caused him to make that "decision".

UPDATE 2/13/16:  Cuba has returned the missile.  We'll have to speculate the details.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.