Musing On Missiles

In North Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and Missouri, the Strategic Air Command, (SAC), has six Air Force bases that control the entire arsenal of Minuteman Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles, (ICBM's). There are 1,000 of these missiles, each one capable of flying halfway around the earth to deliver three individual nuclear bombs to selected targets. The multiplication is simple, 3x1,000; Minuteman has 3,000 nuclear bombs available. The mathematics continue, Minuteman forms only one third of a triad; thousands more bombs can be delivered by SAC bombers and by the submarine fleet of Navy ICBM's. These are tactical weapons, posed strictly as a deterrent; our battlefield nuclear capability is equally staggering. It appears that our military and political leaders are genuinely democratic in their desire to allot, to each man, woman, and child labeled as our enemy, one nuclear bomb apiece.
When you drive through a Minuteman missile field, you would be hard pressed to realize it. Every one of the six missile fields is spread over tens of thousands of square miles. The missile silos and the launch control centers are all buried underground, and any of their distinguishing features are hard to spot. If you did not notice the above ground communication antennas or the silo lids, you would not know you were in a missile field.
Even the local people are hardly aware of what is around them. Once, I had a flat tire on a rental car on a back road near the town of Knob Noster, Missouri. A middle aged farmer stopped his truck to help me and, when he asked, I told him that I was working out of Whiteman Air Force Base, which was about thirty miles away. He then asked if I could tell him anything about the deserted missile silo that was near his house. I didn't have the heart to explain to him that it was not really deserted, it was just not manned, and that a missile could come roaring out of that silo at any time of the day or night.
In the early 1960's work was started on the sixth, and last, missile field at Grand Forks, North Dakota. The equipment of Wing VI, (The Air Force always uses Roman numerals for their wing numbers similar to super bowl games), was much different than the equipment of the other five wings of Minuteman. Our leaders in Washington, both the Pentagon and the politicians, knew that there would be installation problems and delays because of the new equipment and because the schedules that they had imposed were unrealistic. Claiming that Russia was much stronger than we were, they insisted that their schedules be maintained. This attitude resulted in millions of dollars being wasted and relentless pressure put on the Air Force personnel at Grand Forks.
As the physical construction neared completion, and SAC was getting ready to install their missiles, I started my Minuteman career. My company, General Telephone and Electronics (GTE), had won the contract to supply the command, control, and communications equipment for Wing VI. After some minimal training, I was sent to Grand Forks as head of a team of five engineers. We were to work directly with SAC, as they brought their missiles on line. The job of my group was to supply technical answers and information to all SAC personnel. They had been to school on our equipment; in fact, they had had a lot more Minuteman schooling than we had, but the system is very complex and they had a lot of questions, and they needed help. Because our company had built the equipment, they would turn to us for answers. We were supposed to be walking, talking, textbooks.
We dispatched to the sites with the airforce, we worked in the electronic labs with the airforce, and we helped update and correct airforce technical manuals and procedures. The first six months on the job the men in my crew worked long hours and I worked extra long hours. We were not paid overtime; we just couldn't walk away at the end of an eight-hour day and leave our coworkers overwhelmed and ensnared in their problems. It was a hectic time.
This rugged assignment taught me two things. The first was that I learned this missile system almost from a to z. I worked on almost every aspect of it, from the 220 volt power lines coming into the sites, all the way through the electronic equipment to the computers that launched the missile. I did become a walking, talking, textbook.
The second thing I learned was to have a deep, abiding respect for the airforce men and women tasked to keep these missiles up and running. They labored long and hard to keep impossible schedules and meet arbitrary deadlines. They bitched every step of the way, but they did what they had to do. Despite bad equipment, terrible weather, heavy floods, and desperate fatigue, they kept on working. A lot of good people got worn down, but, eventually, all the missiles were started and brought to the ready. (A status the air force calls Strategic Alert.)
After almost 15 months at Grand Forks my work was finished. I was called home to Massachusetts. From then on, until I retired in 1992, I worked on Minuteman, MX, which I called Son of Minuteman, and Rail Garrison, which I called bastard Son of Minuteman. My insight into Air Force procedures along with my system knowledge proved invaluable to my company. I shuttled between System Engineering, Management, Specification Writing, and Field Engineering. I would be sent out to troubleshoot problems and/or attend technical interchange meetings. I was given free rein and I thoroughly enjoyed my work.
Grand Forks was buried deep in my past and I probably would not have thought about it except for a curious incident that happened to me in 1989. I went to Great Falls, Montana, for a three day Technical Interchange meeting being held at Malmstrom Air Force Base. It was dusk, almost dark, by the time we left the airport and headed for our motel. As we neared our destination, a vehicle crossed in front of us about three hundred yards away. What caught my attention was that it looked like an olive drab armored car. I asked my colleagues if they had noticed the vehicle and they said that they had, but they couldn't be sure what they saw because the light was fading rapidly. I wondered why the military would need an armored car? I decided they didn't need an armored car so I let the thought go.
The next morning, after we got on base, we passed a parking lot where ten or twelve olive drab armored cars were parked. I was curious, so I asked the Deputy Commander of Maintenance about them.
"Oh, we have to use them, as escorts, whenever we change out an R/V," he casually answered.
I almost fell off my chair. R/V stands for Re-entry Vehicle. That is the euphemism used for the nose of the missile that contains the three warheads and the equipment that nudged each warhead to its selected target. When I was at Grand Forks, the only escort necessary for the R/V's was a jeep that had two Air Police. They carried loaded weapons and a radio for communications. I was even more curious now. Why were such elaborate precautions being taken?
The last day of the meeting, I went out for a beer with an old friend of mine, a Chief Master Sergeant. Senior Non Commissioned Officer's are the backbone of the military; they know what is going on and they know how to get things done. When I needed information, I would always check with the senior NCO's. And that is what I was presently doing. We had a couple of beers and he told me about the armored cars.
Sometime after the mistrust and the bad feelings that Watergate and the Viet Nam War stirred up against the government, the military began to worry that some disgruntled fanatic might try to steal a nuclear warhead for his own purpose. To prevent any possibility of this occurring, they instituted new rules about delivering the R/V's from the guarded armory to the missile sites. There would be an armored car directly in front of, and directly behind, the truck carrying the R/V. Each armored car would have four Air Police with loaded weapons and two-way radios on a dedicated frequency. The front armored car would also carry a United States Marshall. This was because the Air Police would have no jurisdiction over a civilian crowd, and the Marshall would first have to tell the crowd to disperse before he could call on the Air Police for assistance. As this convoy left the Air Force Base and headed for the missile, a helicopter would begin to circle it until it reached its destination and the R/V was stacked on the missile. Back at the Base, another helicopter and its crew were kept on alert; if anything happened to the first helicopter, the second would be airborne immediately.
I could not believe what I was hearing. The amount of extra effort required to perform a relative simple mechanical task was staggering. It made a routine job that happens quite often, into a circus spectacular.
That evening, when I was alone in my room, my mind began going over my past experiences. Over three decades ago, when I first became involved in Minuteman, the enemy was overseas and it was Communism. Now, our original enemy has disappeared, but our warheads have not. We now have a new enemy to take the place of the old one. Our new enemy is the rag tag lunatic fringes of our own society.
My question now is where should we be aiming our missiles, our bombers, and our submarines?


After earning degrees from the University of Michigan in English and Engineering, Jay Carp joined General Telephone and Electronics (GTE). Jay spent his career working on the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. He was also part of the team to develop a radar system for use in Viet Nam to locate enemy mortar and artillery shells. For twenty years, Mr. Carp worked entirely on Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) systems.
To learn more visit the authors web site http://www.jaycarp.com