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Photo Diary: Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, South Dakota [1]
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Date: 2022-09-14
The Minuteman series became the first American ICBMs to have the capability of striking multiple targets, and it became the frontline American nuclear deterrent for many years.
For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and travel around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visit. I am currently in South Dakota.
The Titan II ICBM, in its hardened silo, had given the US a reliable and efficient way to strike the Soviet Union in the event of nuclear war, but only 100 or so Titan IIs had been produced. The Air Force wanted several times as many missiles on alert.
By the time the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, the US Air Force had already decided that it wanted to replace the Titan II missile fleet with a new multi-stage intercontinental missile—but one that used solid-fuel rocket engines, which could be manufactured on a mass-production basis and then be kept ready on constant alert without the difficulty and expense of liquid-fueled missiles. Originally codenamed “Weapon System Q”, it soon became dubbed “Minuteman”, after the Revolutionary War militia who, legend says, could be ready for battle within a minute.
The finished design called for a three-stage rocket, 53 feet high and six feet wide (about half the size of the Titan II), which could deliver a nuclear warhead some 5500 miles. The first two test launches, at the new Cape Canaveral Test Range in Florida, were failures, but in February 1961 Minuteman made its first successful launch, dropping a dummy warhead 4600 miles away in the Atlantic.
Even as the Minuteman I was being produced and deployed, its replacement was already on the drawing board. The Minuteman II had more range, better accuracy, and a new 1.2 megaton warhead. In 1971, work began to refit the Minuteman silos at Ellsworth Air Force Base, near Rapid City SD, to accommodate the new missiles. In all, some 450 Minuteman Is were replaced in their silos by the newer version.
In 1964, meanwhile, during its annual May Day parade, the Soviet Union proudly rolled out its new anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, designed to shoot down incoming American missiles before they could reach their targets. The US Air Force became concerned that perhaps its Minuteman force was now vulnerable to Russian countermeasures, and they needed a plan to overcome those defenses. The radical solution that resulted would change the course of nuclear warfare.
The idea of placing more than one warhead on a single missile was not new: the US had already put three W58 weapons inside the Polaris A-3, a configuration known as MRV (Multiple Reentry Vehicles). But these warheads were unguided and followed a simple ballistic trajectory when released, allowing them all to hit the same target. This was considered to be an advantage since it would spread the destruction across a wider area, and it would also help to overwhelm any Soviet ABM defenses.
It was a technological development in space satellites, however, which produced the great leap in nuclear missiles. By 1961, commercial satellites were already a big business, and it was quickly recognized that placing them into orbit would be much cheaper if each launch vehicle had the ability to carry several satellites at once—especially if these could be delivered to their own individual orbits. With this goal in mind, the Ablestar second stage for the Thor satellite launch system was developed, with a restartable engine which gave it the capability of releasing a satellite in orbit, firing the engine again to reach a different orbit, then releasing another satellite.
The Air Force immediately saw the technology's potential military role, and carried on an intense research program. Using sophisticated electronic guidance systems and upgraded restartable engines, they produced a module that was capable of releasing a number of nuclear warheads during flight, each one following its own particular trajectory to its own separate target. Because the module released its warheads like passengers, it became known as the “Bus”, and the system was dubbed “Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicles”, or “MIRV”.
Once the system became workable, the Minuteman II was modified to take advantage. With a larger upper stage and new smaller warheads (with 170 kiloton yields instead of the Minuteman II's 1.2 megaton), the new Minuteman III missile could now carry three MIRV weapons, tripling the US's ability to deliver nuclear warheads on targets without increasing the number of missiles or silos.
Further, advances in electronics and computers led to increasingly sophisticated guidance systems, which led to accuracies that could never be dreamed of before. The original Minuteman I had an accuracy of around one mile: the Minuteman III had an accuracy of less than 150 yards.
The Air Force began construction of Minuteman missile silos even before the missile's testing had finished. By 1968 there were over 1000 Minuteman missile sites in the US, ranging from Montana to Missouri. Over the years, the Minuteman I was replaced by the Minuteman II, then the Minuteman III. They became one of the Air Force's primary nuclear deterrent forces, and there are around 400 of these remaining on active duty in the US arsenal. All of them have been “de-MIRVed” and have had two of their three warheads removed in order to comply with arms-control treaty limits.
Today, the Delta-09 silo and Delta-01 launch complex at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota, run by the National Park Service, is on public display. There are tours of the Launch Control Center, and self-guided tours of the launch silo grounds.
(Alas, the tours for the Delta-01 underground launch center fill up very quickly since they can only take a few people at a time, and it was booked solid until November. So I was not able to get a tour. But I was still able to visit the Delta-09 launch silo site.)
Some photos from a visit.
Visitors Center
Minuteman II warhead on display
My hand for scale
Diagram of the Launch Center. Each one controlled ten missiles.
A Launch Center chair and control panel
Approaching the silo site. The silo itself was unmanned. If maintenance needed to be done on the missile, a service crew would arrive, accompanied by a security force.
The silos were set far away from population centers, but are close to I-90. There were 150 silos scattered in this area.
The front gate required a coded pass to get in
The silo site is surprisingly small
The area inside the gate was covered by motion sensors, vibration detectors, and ground radar
The Soft Support Building. Most of it is underground. It contained the electronics and the environmental support systems for the silo.
Personnel Access Hatch system. The service team would enter the silo here. The small hatch in front is the A-Plug. The service crew would open this, and enter the appropriate code to unlock the larger Access Hatch.
The security force could then enter their own separate code to open the access hatch. The access hatch weighs about five tons and was opened by hydraulics. It was deliberately set to take 30 minutes to open—the time it would take for a security team to arrive if an intruder attempted entry.
The UHF antenna provided communications to the silo
This 110-ton concrete and steel blast door covered the silo to protect the missile. It was opened immediately before firing.
Today the open silo is covered by glass for display
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