Underground with America's nuclear-missile crews

Hindustan Times

7 days ago

THERE ARE no big red buttons in the underground bunkers, or 'capsules', that control America's nuclear missiles. Instead, launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) involves decrypting and verifying orders, receiving the appropriate codes and then many hands turning many keys and levers at the same time: two per officer or 'missileer', two missileers per capsule and at least two separate capsules must act in unison. The redundancies ensure that no rogue missileer or crew can fire a weapon—or block a launch.
Your correspondent went through the procedures in a simulator at the F.E. Warren air-force base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, home to the 90th Missile Wing. Even in a make-believe setting the dread was real enough. After turning the levers, there is no going back. Little squares on a grid on the console, each representing an ICBM silo, change colour, from red (ready) to yellow (launch confirmed).
And then you wait. If you still have missiles, you stand ready to fire more. If you are out of weapons, you relay messages to other launch facilities. Above all, you wait for the enemy's nukes, which are almost certainly coming your way. You might strap yourself into your chair, put on a hard hat and pray that you avoid a direct hit. You hope that the survival features—60 feet of earth above; blast doors; springs and shock absorbers all around; and supplies, backup power and air scrubbers within—will keep you alive. And if you eventually make it back to the surface, what would you find?
The mind-bending logic of mutual assured destruction, which holds that being ready to unleash a nuclear apocalypse serves to prevent it, faded from public attention after the cold war. Yet the terrifying questions of nuclear war are returning in a new age of big-power rivalry. The last treaty limiting American and Russian nuclear weapons, New START, will expire in February, with no replacement in sight. Russia has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons. China is fast building up its arsenal. It will have perhaps 1,000 warheads by the end of the decade, according to the Pentagon (fewer than the 5,000-odd that America and Russia each possesses).
In turn America is modernising all parts of its 'triad' of land-, sea- and air-launched nuclear weapons, parts of which are half a century old. Minuteman III ICBMs will be replaced with Sentinel ones; B-2 bombers with the B-21s; and the Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs) with the Columbia-class subs. The government is also debating whether it needs more nuclear warheads. The most contentious element is the Sentinel programme, whose cost has exceeded its budget, raising questions: why has the air force botched its estimates, does America really need ICBMs and would arms control be the better answer?
America's ICBM infrastructure is vast, with 400 missiles deployed in 450 silos scattered across the great plains. A spider's web of cables connect them to 45 'missile-alert facilities' (MAFs), each consisting of a peanut-shaped capsule below and a support building 'topside' above. Maintenance teams tour the unmanned silos and, when necessary, pull ICBMs apart 'like Lego pieces', as one put it, to be worked on back at base. Armed teams in Humvees and helicopters keep the sites secure.
In 2024 the estimated costs of Sentinel jumped to $141bn, more than 80% higher than the previous projection. For critics such as Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association, a campaign group, the overrun amounts to rank incompetence. Having originally ruled out extending the life of the Minuteman III as uneconomical, the air force is having to do just that because of the delays to Sentinel, which was supposed to begin entering service in 2030 but may not do so until 2038.
General Andrew Gebara, the air force's point-man on nuclear policy, says development of the Sentinel missile itself is progressing well. The problem is that the infrastructure to support it dates to the 1960s and 1970s, and is in worse shape than expected. The original plan had envisioned reusing existing facilities after a light refurbishing, but such are the problems with weakening cement and water infiltration that it would be 'cheaper and faster to just dig a new silo'. Similarly, other officers note, replacing old copper cables with fibre-optic ones would allow more data to flow and reduce the number of MAFs (from 45 to 24).
Replacing the current facilities sooner rather than later brings other advantages, the air force adds. New silos will more easily fit Sentinel, which is expected to be larger than the Minuteman III. And separate systems would make it easier to operate both old and new missiles as Sentinel is phased in.
A new control centre and warhead-handling facility are under construction at Warren. To save money and minimise disruption the air force will try to dig new facilities within existing sites, or on land it already owns.
Does America need ground-based ICBMs at all? Mr Kimball argues that they are destabilising. Instead America should rely on a 'dyad' of missiles launched from air and sea. The location of ICBM silos is no secret, he notes, and they would be a priority target, giving a president a few minutes to decide whether to use the missiles or risk losing them. 'That vastly increases the risk of miscalculation,' says Mr Kimball; better to rely on submarine-launched nukes, which are nigh impossible to find and provide an assured second-strike capability.
Eric Edelman, a former Pentagon official, retorts that, on the contrary, ICBMs are stabilising. Without them an enemy might be tempted to try to decapitate America's deterrent by striking the handful of nuclear-bomber and submarine bases, and command-and-control nodes. Moreover, new hypersonic missiles are harder to spot. With ICBMs in silos, an enemy must fire hundreds of missiles at the American heartland, which would undoubtedly be detected and invite massive retaliation. 'Why would you want to simplify your adversary's targeting problem?' asks Mr Edelman. China, which has built hundreds of silos in recent years, seems to accept such logic.
Some argue that America should complicate the targeting even further by making at least some ICBMs mobile, as China and Russia do. A congressionally appointed bipartisan commission in 2023 recommended examining the possibility. This would revive cold-war programmes such as the Midgetman, a small ICBM carried on a road-mobile launcher, and the Peacekeeper railway garrison, a large missile carried on special railway carriages. Both missiles forces were intended to be dispersed across America's transport network in times of crisis, but the idea was abandoned with the end of the cold war. General Gebara says it was studied anew and rejected because it would be both expensive and unpopular.
Beyond the cost and mix of nuclear weapons, a broader question looms. With the expiry of New START, America and Russia will no longer be bound by the ceiling of 1,550 'strategic' (long-range) warheads each. Some experts say the two sides should continue to abide by the limit informally, pending new arms-control negotiations.
President Donald Trump has spoken about his desire for 'denuclearisation', and for talks with China and Russia to halve defence spending. But neither power seems interested. James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank, reckons nuclear policy is anyhow likely to be decided by the bureaucracy. 'Among the majority of the Republican national-security establishment that thinks about these issues there's a pretty clear view that we need more nukes,' he notes.
As wonks debate, ominous responsibility rests on the shoulders of young officers on alert in the capsules, usually lieutenants and captains in their 20s. They typically work 24-hour shifts every three days, locked away in pairs, taking turns to sleep and work. In quiet moments they stream television and send text messages via a computer topside (no personal electronic devices are allowed). Many use the long hours to study for postgraduate degrees.
On the day your correspondent visited the Foxtrot-01 capsule near Kimball, the two women on duty spoke of the hours of camaraderie underground, watching episodes of 'Friends', and their pride in keeping America safe. On a wall someone had drawn a whale with a spout in the shape of a mushroom cloud—a reference to the 'Moby Dick' squadron of second-world-war bombers to which their unit, the 320th missile squadron, traces its origins. Next to it were words that summed up a mission they hope never to carry out: 'Death from Below'.