Exclusive: An inside look at America’s aging ballistic missile arsenal
CNN
The unassuming site with the innocuous name Oscar-6 barely protrudes from the expansive landscape only a few miles away from the Canadian border. Were it not for the barbed wire fence, the nondescript patch of land could be mistaken for an abandoned construction site a 45-minute drive from the nearest town.
The unassuming site with the innocuous name Oscar-6 barely protrudes from the expansive landscape only a few miles away from the Canadian border. Were it not for the barbed wire fence, the nondescript patch of land could be mistaken for an abandoned construction site a 45-minute drive from the nearest town. Underneath the blast door stands one of the most powerful weapons in the US inventory, a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. Sitting atop the towering missile is its polished silver nuclear warhead, capable of hitting virtually any spot in the world, with booster rockets that can propel the missile to 15,000 miles per hour. This missile silo, like the other 149 dotting the North Dakota countryside, are hard-wired to a series of facilities spaced outside Minot Air Force Base, where small teams of airmen stay on alert around the clock, always ready in case the unthinkable order comes to launch one of America’s weapons of mass destruction. The US has approximately 400 Minuteman III missiles, according to the Air Force, spread across several bases. They must be kept always at the ready so that they are hopefully never used. “The potential destructive power of these weapons is so vast,” said Col. James Schlabach, commander of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base. “The public at large needs us to be sharpened and on our game with this in all aspects of it.” ICBMs make up one part of the nuclear triad, the means by which the US could launch a nuclear attack. But unlike the other two parts of the triad – strategic bombers and ballistic missile submarines – the ICBM launch facilities are fixed positions. So are the missile alert facilities that control 10 launch facilities, or silos, each.
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