US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour | Hacker News Reader

US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour

aerospaceutah.org

120 pointssklargh85 comments

This is a remarkably real view of the Minuteman Launch Control Center in the early to mid-80s for sure. The accompanying audio is realistic as well except all six comm systems would be blaring at once and several printers would be clacking away… It was very intense, demanding job.

I was a Launch Control Officer for five years in the mid-80s out of FE Warren AFB in Cheyenne WY. My squadron was the 320th Strategic Missile Squadron with all 5 capsules and 50 missiles were physically in western NE, with the furthest over 100 miles away in Sidney NE. I spent 335 days underground over the 5 year period.

Considering that when the launch order came, MAD had probably already failed: Would you have obeyed the order and killed a few million people?

I’ve oftened wondered that over the years. Maybe that’s why the young ones are usually on the front lines. Another related possibly more difficult, is how many of us would have turned the key without prior world tensions occurring. Before each alert we received a pre-departure briefing on current world conditions. I think an out-of-the-blue order would have been very difficult… We periodically lost a crew member due to internal personal changes with respect to one’s willingness to follow through. One of my early Commanders pulled himself off and left the service to become a Greek Orthodox priest and is still at it today.

Did you not have drills where you weren’t told it was a drill?

No we did not. We were heavily trained and frequently evaluated but never believing it was real in that sense. Things happen in the world for which increased level of readiness occurred, but as the fixed pillar of the Strategic Triad, we were always in a higher state of readiness.

Are there procedures in place for if the person in charge of a launch center decides not to launch?

(Not speaking for the actual expert) - I think I read that missiles require two separate Launch Control Facilities (LCF) to turn keys for immediate launch, but will eventually launch after a (classified) delay if just one does (unless vetoed by other LCFs in the same group).

This is roughly correct. In addition to the immediate ground launch crew votes (in reality a squadron is 5 launch centers, i.e. capsules, all interconnected to a total of 50 missiles, and as stated two launch control centers need to successfully “vote”), there is always an airborne launch control center flying over ready to provide a second vote after a specific time-out period. In fact one of our primary nuclear safety and control concerns was to keep refreshing the ALCC access timer.

Thanks. I did wonder what the launch veto system was actually for? - working from the assumption that it would be procedurally impossible for a crew to successfully vote for a launch without receiving the correct authorisation codes from an external source first. (I guess it suggested to me that a rogue launch could technically happen, but given any system can go wrong (machinery or operators) perhaps it just made sense to have as many inhibitory safety systems as possible).

If I recall correctly, this was actually a problem they identified a while back, where they found out there was a high degree of failing to follow the launch orders. They've solved it by creating routine drills where an order comes in, and operators have to enter the code and turn the keys, not knowing if it's actually a drill or the real thing.

Recommend any good non-fiction or even fiction books that talk about these experiences?

Command and Control by Schlosser is a great book about nuclear weapon strategy and policy during the cold war. Much of the book is about a disaster at a large ICBM silo. It's both fascinating and terrifying.

Wow, I was there at the same time as a 46350. The Northern Tier was a (unappreciated) masterpiece of the Cold War.

I have to believe it was pretty stressful on your end too! One of the biggest pressures of the job was dealing with all the classified and the stuff you had to deal was the same I’m sure.

Hope you are well!

If you ever happen to be in Arizona, I highly recommend that you visit the Titan Missile Museum: https://titanmissilemuseum.org/

The site has been carefully maintained and the tour brings you up close to places that only a select few were able to see when they were in operation.

Agreed! I just visited just over a week ago for the first time. It's very interesting to see it firsthand and hear about how it all worked. At the same time, it was very sobering and frightening to think about what would happen if these things were used in anger.

Yes! Really interesting, and the guides are excellent. (Think they missed an opportunity to call it MoMAD though.)

Whenever I see things like this I think it's so cool, but it's always followed by this weird feeling that lasts a few hours where all I can think about is, "What have we done?" Why does destruction come to easy to us? Why has it always been a prioirty?

Being able to destroy everyone else is what prevents them from destroying us.

Something I think about and feel bad about is the "nuclear sponge". Why do we have a bunch of ICBMs in the midwest? So that if someone wants to nuke NYC, they have to nuke the Great Plains first, or face total destruction. Makes nuclear war that much more expensive. Of course, it's kind of an outdated assumption that that alone would be enough; we still have bombers and submarine-launched missiles.

I have mixed feelings about mutually assured destruction; it would be nice if the human race couldn't destroy the entire planet. But, it does make sense on some level. Why don't you go up to lions in the zoo and pet them? I bet they're soft! The reason you don't is because you know it will bite your arm off. We hope the same logic applies to nuclear first strikes. (I also feel a little bad knowing that my country is the only one that ever used nuclear weapons. The world didn't end, but that's little consolation for the 200,000 civilians we vaporized in an instant.)

I dont think "nuclear sponge" is a real concept that dates to the Cold War. Can you provide a reference? In a quick search, I just found poorly written and recent articles that just link to each other.

Rather, the silo fields were dispersed to get out of range of sub launched missiles or soviet ICBMs that would go over the N pole, which is why some of them are very close to the Mexican border in NM (like the Titan IIs around Roswell). Of course, potential modern Russian ICBMs that have the range to go over the South Pole negate this defense and also any midrange ABM interception possibilities.

I also suspect that silo locations were an early example of Congressional pork. Or, just located next to exiting SAC bases for logistical reasons, like Beale AFB in northern California.

Never mind. This is from 1978 with respect to the MX program (although this is quite late in ICBM deployment history and I think more of a specific problem for the MX- the "Peacekeeper" was supposed to be so accurate that it was reasoned that the Soviets would see it as a first strike weapon against their missile fields, making any potential US deployment necessitate an immediate soviet response. Hence crazy basing ideas like a network of underground trains carrying the missiles.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/07/24/f...

I think I'd prefer to go instantly in a moment via nuke than say burn to death in one of the many firebombing raids the US did on Japan during WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_194...

> More than 90,000 and possibly over 100,000 Japanese people were killed, mostly civilians, and one million were left homeless, making it the most destructive single air attack in human history.

I know you didn't mean it literally, but it's still worth saying: They did not "go instantly in a moment". A few, sure. I'd assume most of them probably still burned to death, or were buried under rubble, or bled out after being cut by debris, or starved to death after being blinded.

Firebombing is bad, but nukes are also really bad, there's no need to treat them as if they're merciful.

Not to mention the further many, many people that died in excruciatingly awful ways from the radiation

MAD makes sense if you assume the participants are rational and have accurate information. That's probably true on average in the long-run. But what bothers me is that it only takes one accident or miscalculation or crazy president to bring about the end of the world. And we've certainly had our fair share of close calls with bad sensor readings or training tapes being put into a live operational setting.

Yeah, I think MAD and "launch on warning" are distinct concepts. If we survive the first strike, we can rationally plan our second strike. So training tapes being played on the live system won't cause us to accidentally make a first strike; we can still assure destruction after taking a first strike. (That's why there's the nuclear triad.)

I think that "launch on warning" was an official policy at some point. I am not sure if it is anymore. I don't think it's a good one and it's not necessary to deter a first strike. The missiles are underground and at unknown locations in the ocean for that reason.

As for crazy presidents, yup, that is a legitimate concern. I am not sure why we put commanding the armed forces into the hands of one person. (The advantage is that one person can decisively retaliate after a surprise strike on Washington. The disadvantage is that a drunk Twitter war can escalate to ending the world. Sigh!)

As for irrational actors, that's another big problem. What does North Korea lose if they nuke the US? Not much; they don't have a huge economy as it is. It's a nice "fuck you" if the reigning dictator sees that the end of their regime is inevitable. MAD doesn't help with that at all.

It's all actually pretty scary. We like to think that the cold war is over, but really, not all the countries of the world are at peace right now, so everything could be over in the blink of the eye and you won't see it coming. I guess keep all that in mind as you plan your day!

Good argument for a defection retirement program to offer by the west. We bring your family to safety and grant your retirement in style, so you do not get MAD. Let's negotiate with terrorism quitters.

We already negotiate with terrorist via AGM-114s. Why would we want to do what you suggest?

> that's little consolation for the 200,000 civilians we vaporized in an instant.

And they’re the lucky ones.

My grandpa was there as a Marine as soon as the armistice was over (he went from the horror of burning out japanese from tunnels with flamethrowers to that). He didn't talk about it much, but he sure hated Reagan and Reagan's love for nukes. By the time I was around his hips had melted away and had to be replaced. I have the Rossarie he carried there. I'm not really religious, but I figure if it could get him through a post nuclear attacked city it can be my lucky talisman as well.

People make fun of the fifties 'just make it look like everyone was happy' mindset, but can you blame these people? He was a young Iowa farm boy. He grew up riding his horse to school, no cars. Then off to be a Marine in the Pacific (because he and everyone from his town was too recent of German descent to be trusted to go to Europe, plus the town had a German language newspaper before the war, which of course, by the end, no trace of being German was left. Only red blooded American English speakers) who saw the effects of nuclear war. Dude just wanted to drink a beer and listen to polka music on Laurence Welk.

The longer MAD works, the better I feel about it. We're at 77 of nuclear peace thanks to MAD. That's a pretty good record.

On the flip side, it's pretty hard for human systems to keep a nine nines success rate forever.

What’s the numerator and what’s the denominator?

Numerator is nuclear wars? Nuclear bombs dropped? People killed by nuclear bombs? Years with a nuclear bomb dropped?

Denominator is total wars? Number of bombs dropped? People killed in war? Years passed?

By some numerators and denominators, we’re well into 99.99999x territory.

Coordination is hard?

If anyone is near Cheyenne Wyoming or passing through on I-25, I highly enjoyed visiting Quebec-01 State Park. Former silo left intact where you can tour. I think you need a reservation:

https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/places-to-go/quebec-01

Then go back and watch the first 15 minutes of Wargames. They did a great job.

It made for a great movie opening ("Wargames", 1983): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls

(Don't worry; that guy went on to be White House Chief of Staff.)

TURN YOUR KEY CAPTAIN! Love Wargames for all it's goofy hacker nonsense.

And the other guy went to cut off someone's ear.

After a goose chase to confirm, it was John Spencer playing in The West Wing. Not an actual CoS...

I just finished reading Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen – it was great. The book walks through a minute by minute scenario from the second of launch through the satellite detection, alerting of forces, decision making challenges, evac and continuity of government during a nuclear exchange. Highly recommend.

She was also recently on Hardcore History Addendum with Dan Carlin discussing the book.

What do you think of her also-very-nuclear-related "Area 51: an Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base" (2011)?

(leaving aside the frequently-repudiated Mengele-Stalin slant of the excerpt at the end, a la https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/area-51-... ' Barnes, the Roadrunners' president, said he believes the childlike aviator tale was fabricated to give the publisher something "juicy" and "sensational ')

She frames a very unique angle on James Killian (of MIT 'Killian Court' fame) in context of Pacific thermonuclear nuclear tests, for example.

I can help but think the missileers would be less depressed (it's a known problem) if some more attention was paid to aesthetics and comfort, given the amount of time they spent locked in there.

The chairs look comfy, better than standard government issue, and they're on tracks so you don't have to get up to check on the equipment.

Actually the chairs were pretty comfortable. They were locked down to survive (in theory) the shaking resulting from nudets. The deputy launch commander’s was on a long track so he could slide back and forth to gather the redundant messages and reset alarms. The commander sat facing the missile light board.

I'm not going to claim that it's much better these days, but it's worth noting that the launch center in the link is quite old. The launch center have had multiple upgrades since then; the link here [0] shows some videos from inside a newer configuration, which does look a little bit more comfortable, and even that video is from the early 2000s. I would have to guess that more upgrades have been made since then.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40289005

I don't know if there's a worse peacetime job in the military than sitting in a missile silo every day. At least for me, it seems absolutely dreadful, sitting there all day every day.

Indeed it can be. There was a lot of action in the O club in one’s off days. We oftentimes thought however that these a-launch crews probably had it worse, except at least it would be more quiet without all the active comm systems. And since we were always “alert” we took part in many, many global military exercises…

This video shows a bit more in action step by step:

https://youtu.be/HWZXinRwCaE?feature=shared

That looks like a much later system.

I'm surprised that "pop-up menu" was a part of this particular interaction scenario. But much of the rest of the UI looks more like what I would've guessed.

Yes, that video looks to be the "REACT" [0] upgrade that was done in the 1990s. It specifically says it changed it to make the operators sit side-by-side.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Execution_and_Combat_Tar...

I watched this one recently, and was going to share it here. I'm not in the field, but this looks like a nice demo of the current launch systems UX, unlike the tens that are dated to the early 80s.

I live fairly close to the wonderful museum this is located at on Hill Air Force Base north of SLC.

This new exhibit is really neat but not very big, all things considered, and not worth the trip on its own.

What is worth the trip is the museum as a whole, with an F-117, the only SR-71C in existence, an F22, and all kinds of other planes and rockets - it's not Wright-Patterson, but it's one of the better USAF museums I've been to.

The museum at Edwards AFB in California is amazing[0], but is located on the base so you have to get prior permission to visit it as a civilian.

When I was there a few years back, they were fundraising to move the museum to a more publicly accessible location. It looks like that was successful, and it will be re-opening soon: https://www.desertnews.com/news/article_c95e0a2c-edc4-11ed-9...

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Flight_Test_Museum#C...

That's amazing.

It's terrifying to take a step back from this and think about how much incredibly sophisticated technology had to go into ensuring that we could wipe out the human race in minutes.

And then, of course, there's all the technology handling the safety guards. Because we obviously don't want to wipe out the human race in minutes, so we have all these protocols and failsafes to ensure that doesn't happen unless it's really supposed to happen.

All for ... nothing.

Nothing, in the sense that every time Russia built more ICBMs the US had to build more ICBMs. That tit-for-tat got to incredibly absurd levels.

So all of this ludicrously complex technologies, from the missiles travelling to space, the lauching of multiple guided warheads, the safety guards and nuclear weapons, the trillions of dollars ... for nothing. All a game of "mine is bigger than yours" for strategic deterence.

Hopefully it stays that way.

> ... had to go into ensuring that we could wipe out the human race in minutes.

That was never ensured. Historical casualty projections expected that, in the event of large scale nuclear attacks, the majority of the involved countries' populations would survive not only the attack but the conditions afterward.

For how much afterwards though?

Indefinitely, even in the case of near-total destruction.

While not exactly historical fiction, this scene from Dr. Strangelove comes to mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y

Have you seen Threads? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/

I think the irradiation of soil everywhere would mean a total collapse of agriculture. Maybe some tribes in Papua-Ginea would survive but I am pretty sure only ghouls could live in USA and Europe.

John Von Neumann comes up in a lot of tech topics but he had some monstrous opinions particularly on this - he thought game theory proved that USSR and USA would go to war if both sides had nukes and recommended the USA strike first in order to win in the early years of USA almost monopoly on nukes.

What's inside of the locked down door? Is that just the main door in? I'm assuming that hallway is the museum.

And what is on the map with the circles? Is that a geographical map or some sort of system map?

And what shock do the Shock Isolators stop? Shock from a launch?

The launch center you see is a square box about the size of an RV suspended by four large “shock absorbers” inside a hardened capsule with walls about six feet thick. The shock absorbers are so the launch center can sway in the event of a NuDet (nuclear detonation) near by. Unlike the older Titans, the Minuteman missiles were nowhere near the capsules, being a minimum of three miles away. Each capsule had direct command and control of 10 Minuteman missiles distributed in a spoke like fashion around the hub (capsule). The Titans crew was right with their massively larger missiles.

Awesome info, thank you! 335 days underground.. Similar to Nukes in the Navy!

In answer to your first question, in the field that would be the primary blast door, a penetration that went through the capsule to a chamber with another larger blast door out to the elevator. At the other end of this chamber is the passage to the generator room. We were obviously equipped to go quite some time “off-grid”.

I am assuming the view is from one of the training simulators which are used exact, suspended control centers with a viewing window.

We had no maps in the capsule. Any targeting we did was normal 3-d coordinates, technically we really did not have a “need to know” where the coordinates were located.

Thanks! If you look to the left, from the hallway, then go to the very left corner and look right there's a paper map on the wall with circles all over it. Was curious what that was. In my absolute ignorance it looks like one of those "nukes will explode this far" sort of maps but I can't tell if it's actually a map of land or a system design thing.

Easter egg hunt: MIL-STD pink slippers, for wearing around the doomsday activation room.

Does anyone have any recommendations on books about nuclear deterrence? I found the Bret Devereaux article from 2022 [1] very interesting and wondered where one might learn more about this thing that keeps us all alive (so far).

[1] https://acoup.blog/2022/03/11/collections-nuclear-deterrence...

I sure hope they are testing the people better now.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/13/us-air-force-m...

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Cheating_Scand...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/high-marks-cooks-lifted-...

Also the missiles themselves are failing testing:

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/icbm-test-failure-nuclear-...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68355395

Why again do we have thousands upon thousands of these things when less than 100 would do? We are going to accidentally nuke ourselves sooner or later.

The US has 400 land-based nuclear weapons, not thousands upon thousands. They're there to be a better thing for our enemies to aim at than our cities.

Exactly. If anyone is curious, look up the term Nuclear Sponge.

Nobody's going to be aiming at nuclear silos in the middle of nowhere that are not only designed to withstand a nuclear attack, but may well have also launched by the time your missile arrives. US early Cold War targets have been declassified. [1] We did make efforts to target airfields where nukes would have launched from (prior to the ICBM), but those were valuable and weakly defended targets, regardless of whether the enemy's ships were already airborne or not. But a large chunk of our missiles were directed towards agriculture, industry, medicine product, and a large number of targets were justified as simply "population." The Soviet targets likely would have been more or less identical.

In nuclear war the goal will not be to eliminate the enemy's military - military's can be rebuilt. At the point of nuclear war absolutely all norms and rules of conflict will have been discarded. The goal is going to be to eliminate the enemy's entire country, such that he might never be a threat again. In such a situation I'd feel far safer standing near a nuclear bunker out in the middle of nowhere than I would in the middle of a high population, high economic value urban area.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-nucl...

According to this [0] the number of warheads as of 2020 is 3750 which does kind of qualify as "thousands upon thousands".

Edit: I don't think it matters if "only" 400 are land-based, does it? it's still "thousands".

[0] https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Fact-Sheet_...

There's MIRV, so depends what you mean by "these things".

But also some among these 3750 are in subs, and bombers.

And as for "100 would do": Well, if they all hit their targets, maybe. But part of the reason for overkill is so that even a sneak attack that's 90% successful should trigger MAD. Well, I say "should", but more like that's the cold logical deterrence rationale.

Not a launch site, but the largest stockpile of deployed nukes in the world is in a heavily populated area near seattle.

https://truthout.org/articles/puget-sound-is-home-to-the-big...

To give you an idea of what kinds of grim circumstances this was built for, the seats have 4-point seatbelts!

Yes, we were strapped in for quite a shaking…

The one in Arizona was better and even more better with the top to bottom tour before it flooded.

Did it flood recently? I was there only a few months ago. I also checked the site and it looks like they are still giving tours?

They used to give tours that went to all levels of the silo (there are like 20+ levels) but the bottoms of the silos flood unless you run diesel pumps a lot. They said it was unlikely they would offer them again. Also Patrick Stewart touched the missile with his bare hands and fucked it up in his arrogance despite being told multiple times not to, apparently (the oils in your hand are corrosive to the alloy used for it).

What's the story with Patrick Stewart touching the missile? Couldn't find anything about it on Google.

This kind of place was best captured by opening scene of Wargames:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls

So along with the beeps they verbally announce “claxon claxon claxon” before they start their message?

The pink bunny slipper in the military satchel does it for me.

Where are the giant floppy disks?

There are no computers in that 1960s launch control center. It's all hard-wired.

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