Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday announced the resignations of Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley following an investigation revealing a decline in the Air Force’s nuclear program focus, performance and effective leadership.

Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley said “Recent events have highlighted a loss of focus on certain critical matters within the Air Force. As the Air Force’s senior uniformed leader, I take full responsibility for events which have hurt the Air Force’s reputation or raised a question of every Airman’s commitment to our core values.”

Gates announced the resignations in the wake of a report detailing the accidental shipment of four non-nuclear ballistic missile nose-cone assembly components rather than the intended helicopter batteries to Taiwan in August 2006.

The report, prepared by Navy Adm. Kirkland H. Donald, director of naval nuclear propulsion, detailed what Gates called a shift of the Air Force leadership’s focus from, and degraded performance related to, its most sensitive mission.

Air Force leaders focused on the problem only after two internationally sensitive incidents — one involving Taiwan and another in which an Air Force B-52 bomber flew across the United States carrying six armed nuclear cruise missiles, Gates said.

Both incidents could have been prevented if the Air Force had applied proper inspection and oversight, he said. He blamed a “lack of a critical self-assessment culture” within the Air Force nuclear program that might have identified and fixed systemic weaknesses.

In the nose-cone incident, the secretary blamed the Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency for using supply system procedures designed to move large amounts of low-value material for shipping the sensitive classified parts.

But Gates said the incident signals far deeper problems.

“During the course of the investigation, other issued indicating a decline in the Air Force’s nuclear mission focus and performance became apparent,” he said. “Rather than an isolated occurrence, the shipment… was a symptom of a degradation of the authority, standards of excellence and technical competence within the nation’s ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) force.”