The human refusal to carry out a launch order was why they installed W.O.P.R.
Posted on 08/15/2020 11:02:40 AM PDT by re_tail20
The land-based leg of the United States’ nuclear triad is the Minuteman III. The Minuteman family has served with distinction as the bedrock of America’s land-based strategic nuclear force since the early 1960s. There are approximately 440 Minutemen currently in the United States’ nuclear arsenal.
It is also the United States’ longest-range missile, and tops out at about 13,000 kilometers, or just over 8,000 miles, giving the United States a truly global reach. The missiles are overseen by the U.S. Air Force, with the majority of the missiles about evenly distributed in the United States’ north and west, at missile launch sites in Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
Under the New START treaty, the United States’ Minutemen were somewhat defanged—as of 2016, the Minutemen III missiles have just a single warhead each. Originally, each of the 500 or so missiles were equipped with three warheads each, for a grand total of about 1,500 warheads.
They certainly highly capable—and possibly the most powerful missile system in existence, but the mighty Minutemen III have been in operation for about half a century. Though the missiles are periodically upgraded and serviced, their usefulness is not set to last much longer, and the missiles are slated for replacement before the end of the decade, in or around 2027.
The Ground Based Strategic Deterrent is the Minuteman III’s replacement. Though the exact details of the program are a bit scant, some aspects of the program are known.
In 2017, both Northrop Grumman and Boeing were awarded contracts to develop their own Minuteman III replacement. Both contracts are said to be worth over around $330 million.
If all goes according to schedule, one of the two companies will be selected to build the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent missile in August of this year, although production delays...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
The human refusal to carry out a launch order was why they installed W.O.P.R.
There is also this place near Rapid City, SD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuteman_Missile_National_Historic_Site
BLM will love tearing that down.
With that said, a complete upgrade would be well worth the money.
Any upgrade would connected to the internet and full of security holes and Chinese spyware chips.
Idiotic to base the missiles where we grow the food.
Read an article years ago that missile crews immediately figured out how to do a one man launch; duct tape, string, a pen, pencil, fork, spoon, etc.
The brass were said to be unhappy the hack was made public, lol.
the M-X was a nasty piece deterrence...10 warheads and extremely accurate...performed flawlessly. City killer deluxe....
Knob Noster??....i think i just like saying Knob Noster Missouri....heh
That’s the movie I’m thinking of, too. Just remember the trailer, which had that exchange (or very similar), but never saw the movie. I’ve seen Wargames several times and don’t recall that scene in it. But a few folks here are adamant that it is.
This I must agree with. Once having been a member of a unit dedicated to communications security, I learned the more crude a communications system is, the more secure it is.
The crudest form of communication between two commanders is a courier running manually encrypted messages. This courier must be physically intercepted, which would make the interception obvious to the commanders.
Digitally anything today is basically Koolaide for us useful idiots spiked with holes, back doors and outright feeds to the unwanted.
The new system, if connected to the internet, will be no exception.
The other day I got a pop up from Google asking if I wanted to entrust all my passwords with one of their secure systems. This would be like giving the fox & coyotes keys to the chicken coop. People by the millions will be falling for this.
I’ve been reviewing trailers on youtube for both movies. Can’t find the exchange so I can’t say with confidence it was in Twilight’s Last Gleaming.
My initial AF assignment was as a missile officer in the 91st SMW, 741st SMS, MMIII at Minot AFB. That was 43 years ago. I guess it’s getting to be time to retire and replace them.
The Titan and older launch facilities were convertible into other uses, Minuteman, not very much.
Kind of fake article. I spent the AF part of my career as a missile officer. There was only one method that I know of and that is because I stumbled on it while writing a training scenario in the simulator. It involved a series of tech order procedures which I verified would work through our tech engineers. It could have been shut down because of the time it would take the system to actually initiate a launch. Immediate changes were made to the Tech Order procedures to preclude it from ever happening.
The new system, if connected to the internet, will be no exception.
The weird thing is, the Air Force (all DoD branches) insist on connecting their systems to the internet, thus the continual Chinese and Russian attempts at penetrating systems they wouldn't have access to 30 - 40 years ago.
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Mike boosters are still in use for experiments.
“ 321st Field Missile Maintenance Wing in Grand Forks AFB, 1978-1982..”
44th at Ellsworth 1980-82.
“ START requires the silos to be imploded. I’d love to have a launch complex....”
An LCF maybe. An LF probably not. There isn’t a lot of room, but on a good note it is two floors.
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