Minuteman Weapon System History and Description (2001) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Minuteman Weapon System History and Description (2001) [pdf]

minutemanmissile.com

94 pointsBezod55 comments

I feel compelled to post some images of inertial guidance systems. Most of these parts are from the Minuteman 1 although there are some earlier and later guidance system components.

The white backplane and the gyroscopes are Minuteman 1 parts.

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0YG4TcsmGWIVSf

Good ole' Autonetics.

BTW you can see some of these at the Air and Space Museum in DC, and a smaller set at the Computer Science Museum in ... Palo Alto? Mountain View? (that area)

Mountain View

https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10268625...

These are great, how did you come across / where did you get them?

I have been collecting Autonetics material since the early days of eBay.

Would love to see any/all other albums/photos that you are willing to share.

I’m working on it. Many projects but documenting this collection is bubbling up to the top.

Here is a Nixdorf 820 with the ROD memory

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0Y59UlCqNHCjx

https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/...

This computer earned listing for this innovation.

https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/...

Which puts into context.

I also included the story of it's previous life.

My thinking is we are focused on making circuits too small. We need big circuits that make big but simple decisions. I was collecting pre-microprocessor computing artifacts for a while. I now need to get sit down and figure out what I have.

In the meantime I use them as reference idea to feed my development of a 100 year computer.

So interesting, thanks for sharing

>The MGS is an inertial guidance system which directs the flight of the missile. The guidance system operates continuously while the missile is in alert status, thus enabling the missile to be launched in less than one minute.

I wonder how often the missile is in alert status? Presumably regular testing?

For those just skimming the guidance system info (for Minuteman III) starts on page 49. Looks like they miniaturized it some and that giant moon lander backplane seems to be substantially reduced?

Amazing pics, thanks for sharing!

Apart from regular testing, I would imagine anything at or above DEFCON 3 would put missiles in alert status. That level requires the USAF to be ready to go in 15 minutes.

During the Cuban missile crisis SAC went to defcon 2 while the rest of the armed forces stopped at defcon 3. The wiki page is an amazing read.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

> I wonder how often the missile is in alert status?

In 1972-74 when I was a Minuteman I launch officer (DMCCC) our 10 missiles were /always/ on alert. You would expect to see 10 green "Strategic Alert" lights across the crew commander's (MCCC's) console unless something was wrong (requiring maintenance or a brief calibration).

IIRC we were in a perpetual state of DEFCON 4 in those days.

Interesting -

As a Minuteman launch officer, I'd be curious what are your thoughts on the incursion accounts of launch officers Robert Salas & David Schindele? (I understand there were comparable reports going into the 1970s as well but I'm not as familiar with those)

Salas @ Malmstrom https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-air-force-personnel-ufos-dea...

Schindele @ Minot: https://www.minotdailynews.com/news/local-news/2023/06/forme...

I was gonna say, they were always on alert. It's in the book. The inertial platforms at least were always spinning because it took a long time (minutes) to spin them up, or down.

Regular testing is one of the few times a US ICBM would _not_ be in alert status.

Ground-based launchers are not survivable and must be ready to fire promptly after attack warning.

What do you mean aground based launch isn’t survivable?

They mean the launch sites aren’t, because they are are obvious, high priority, targets for the enemy.

I get it now. I was fixated on our own missiles, sometimes I forget the context of these objects.

Thank you.

Fun fact: The Air Force's Minuteman guru, Edward Hall,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_N._Hall

had a brother in the Manhattan Project, Theodore Hall,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Hall

who passed early atomic weapon design information to the USSR.

The irony of a family exercising pivotal roles on both sides of a global power-shaping conflict. The 2nd Wikipedia article's cited background, from The Nation:

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/ted-hall-espionage-f...

This has more detail than I would have expected, but I see there’s virtually nothing about the reentry bus. From what I’ve read, that’s where most of the secret sauce involving accuracy comes into play.

What I know about re-entry is that while out of the atmosphere it was using star charts to determine location.

My favorite fact is that the hard drive also acted as the clock. Each rotation grabbed the program codes from the disk to execute them.

What do you mean, the warhead (the reentry body) or the last stage? Because the warhead is passive.

Related: Command and Control by Eric Schlosser

Great book.

On the guidance side, "Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance" is awesome.

As implied in the title, this book focuses on sociology and philosophy of science and has very little technical content.

It also contains a good section on Autonetics. The sociology is probably surrounding the topic od technical advancemnet.

It is a great book though. For technical stuff you have to look for papers unfortunately.

Genuine page turner.

And on the policy side:

The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg

If you like this site you'll also like www.ed-thelen.org (about Nike missiles)

There’s also a Nike site across the Golden Gate Bridge from SF.

South Dakota is home to a preserved missile site. I'd highly recommend stopping by if you're ever in the area. It was fascinating to see the control room as the tour guides talked through the launch protocol.

Back in high school ~17 years ago I came across a website talking about it, then a couple months later on a road trip, I remembered it as we were driving though South Dakota. We were about 7 miles away when I remembered, and it was well worth stopping.

https://www.nps.gov/mimi/index.htm

It's very interesting. I think you have to book ahead for a tour these days.

I love the artwork on this Minuteman blast door: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Minutema...

It's bizarre that this type of information is made publicly available due to freedom of information legislation. What is the benefit? Or is it merely an acceptable side effect of the greater good that FoIA delivers?

Not that my curiosity isn't triggered, but...

I guess… Why wouldn’t it be? At some point why would you keep it classified?

Funnily enough I’m just reading a book on Draper Labs and there’s a huge amount of detail on old inertial guidance systems.

The book to read is “Inventing Accuracy” by Donald Mackenzie

At what level is the book pitched? Detailed technical tome or pop-sci?

I was hugely disappointed by Blind Man's Bluff despite all the praise for it as it was written for a lay-audience.

Some details - it’s an academic study, definitely not pop-sci.

Blind Man's Bluff is a history of submarine espionage for a mainstream audience. I'm not sure what else one would reasonably expect of it.

Hot Spot of Innovation about Doc Draper and inertial guidance isn't academic but it does go into quite a bit of technical detail.

> What is the benefit?

Sticking to our principles

Maybe they know the information has already been compromised.

Also what kind of a deterrence is this if the enemy doesn’t know about it?

We want to make sure people believe in the deterrent. If people start to think they could take out all of our nukes somehow that would be dangerous.

It would almost be as dangerous as us building a system that we think could take out all of their nukes.

Why do you say this?

We have been in this very position before, in 1948, when we were the only people with nukes. We didn't first strike then.

The difference is that in 1948, the other side couldn't do anything about it even if it wanted to.

The other difference is that literally everything has changed in the past 76 years. But sure, maybe if we dig up Truman, Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, and Churchill, and put them and their cabinets back in charge, it might work out.

How many decades of well known mutually assured destruction would you consider adequate to release this information?

Not exactly a new system, surely has been inspected many times by all major nuclear powers over the years.

It might be part of a disinformation campaign- a mostly correct document that includes some intentional inaccuracies or falsehoods.

It's lacking in information of real military value, e.g. accuracy, failure rate, effectiveness of countermeasures, precise alloys used, etc. It's basically a description of a rocket, which probably isn't a surprise to other nations who are themselves building rockets.

Exactly. There's nothing here that "they" don't know already.

Gosh I really wish this WASN'T of general interest these days, but in the immortal punchline of Dave Chappelle - "I understand"

What?

I said:

Gosh I really wish this WASN'T of general interest these days, but in the immortal punchline of Dave Chappelle - "I understand"

Wasn’t that Chris rock in his bit about O.J.?

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