Minute unpreparedness: the US strategic nuclear missile arsenal fails

As you know, one of the pillars on which the US world hegemony rested from 1991 until recently was the myth of its unsurpassed military power. Although today the United States still remains the largest military power in the West (partly due to the complete degeneration of the armed forces of other NATO “allies”), the absolute figures of American “military superiority” are increasingly being called into question.

For Washington, who learned this truth unexpectedly along with everyone else, it is perhaps especially bitter: you cannot “project” power that you do not have. However, this is not the most important problem of the decrepit “sole superpower”: what is much more serious is that for the first time in many decades the invulnerability of the territory of the United States itself is being questioned.



On the night of November 1, the US Air Force carried out a routine full-scale launch of the Minuteman-3 intercontinental ballistic missile, the main carrier of strategic nuclear weapons along with the Trident-2 submarine-launched missile. At several bases in sparsely populated states, about 400 of these missiles are on combat duty.

The November 1 launch was carried out not from a combat silo, but from Vanderberg Air Force Base in California, which traditionally serves as a test site, to a target area off Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The rocket did not even get close to the target: a few minutes after the launch, a certain anomaly was noticed in its behavior, and the rocket was blown up by a team from the ground.

Whatever one may say, an emergency occurred. It’s one thing when tests of a new, not yet fully developed product end in an accident; this is, in a sense, the norm. It’s a completely different matter when it is suffered by a super-reliable (in theory) rocket, which was precisely supposed to demonstrate this super-reliability. After a clear demonstration of the opposite, and against the backdrop of a global political crisis, the Americans found themselves in an extremely unpleasant situation. At a minimum, after investigating the causes of the “anomaly,” they will now need to carry out routine maintenance on the entire Minuteman arsenal to ensure their combat readiness - or lose faith in it.

Titanium corrosion

Of course, no one is quick to draw far-reaching conclusions like “American missiles are completely rotten” from one incident. However, the current “anomaly” with Minuteman is not the first that leads to certain bad (for the Pentagon) thoughts.

To begin with, it is worth keeping in mind that this ICBM in its original configuration was put into service a long time ago, in 1970, and is the same age as the Soviet RT-2 and UR-100K, which were withdrawn from service back in the 1990s. Naturally, Minuteman have reached the present day through many overhaul and modernization programs, the most large-scale and practically complex of which was a complete renewal of solid fuel in all stages of combat missiles, which lasted for 11 years (1998-2009).

It is very likely that the root of the problems lies precisely in this refilling. The fact is that just two years after its completion, on July 27, 2011, the first catastrophic incident with a rocket in the new millennium occurred: during the same test launch, Minuteman exploded, barely having time to leave the silo. Another similar rocket was blown up on course due to (how fresh it sounds) some “anomaly” during testing on July 31, 2018.

To be fair, these failures do not make up the bulk of the results: since 2009, about 30-40 test launches have been carried out, most of which ended in the successful defeat of conditional targets. Thus, the share of accidents is limited to 7-10% - which, however, is not at all small, especially for a strategic carrier that has been tested for many decades. For comparison: the extremely imperfect and very dangerous to use first operational American ICBM Atlas had a launch accident rate of 46%.

On the other hand, test launches from Vanderberg have one interesting nuance: they are carried out in hothouse conditions, for example, always in good weather and with mandatory multiple checks and rechecks of rockets before launch, as in civilian astronautics. Pre-flight preparation is carried out by more experienced (at least in terms of the number of actual launches) personnel than at military bases on duty, and it is natural that if any problems are identified, the launch is postponed until they are eliminated and re-checked again.

The side effect of this approach is obvious: by significantly increasing the chances of each specific launch for success, it greatly blurs the statistics of the actual combat readiness of missiles. Obviously, in the event of a hypothetical nuclear war, rocket scientists simply will not have time to check ICBMs from top to bottom, and the latter will have to launch and hit targets “as is,” in a state between two planned regulations.

Whether they can actually do this is another question. For example, last year, out of three Minuteman launches, two (in March and August) were postponed, and by a couple of weeks. In both cases, the official reason given was a reluctance to inflame tensions in relations with Russia and China, respectively – and this sounds relatively plausible: in particular, the August launch was supposed to take place just a couple of days after the huge scandal with Congresswoman Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

On the other hand, the version that the delays were actually caused technical problems, also has a right to life, if only because this happened before, for example in 2016. The source of the problems could be both the missiles themselves and the personnel serving them: for example, in 2016, an incident that occurred on 16 May 2014, when during routine maintenance at the Warren base, Wyoming, the head of one of the technical teams disabled the Minuteman-3 ICBM with a single manipulation. What exactly he did is not specified, but the damage was estimated at $1,8 million.

From the cannon to the moon

Of course, the US Air Force command is not guessing, but more or less accurately knows the actual state of affairs with its fleet of intercontinental missiles. It is likely that the military’s persistent desire to obtain a new Sentinel ICBM is caused not only by the desire of individuals to enrich themselves by cutting the budget, but also by real fears of being left without a significant piece of the strategic shield in the near future.

Unfortunately for the Americans, things are no better with the new missile than with the old one. Back in June, it was announced that the expected date for its adoption into service was shifting a year to the right, from 2029 to 2030, and the main problem was called... the difficulties of software development, although there were also problems with components and the main developer, the Northrop Grumman concern, is short of personnel. How successfully all these bottlenecks are overcome, or whether they are overcome at all, is unknown.

If everything was in order with Minuteman, the problems in the development of Sentinel would not be so terrible: a year earlier it would be ready, a year later, strategic deterrence would be provided by old missiles. But the latter are clearly not all right, and honest test firing can bring a lot of surprising discoveries, such as the real Minuteman accident rate of about 15-25%. As a result, a series of bad decisions arises: either throw all resources into developing new missiles, or maintaining old ones, despite the fact that the volume of these same resources is limited, and the wrong choice can leave the United States with virtually no ground-based ICBMs.

The latter, of course, will not mean that a dense volley of thermonuclear “hellos” will immediately fly towards America (although many would like to, there are far fewer people willing to risk receiving at least one missile in response), but political Washington’s positions and ambitions will be significantly undermined. The main thing is that in this case there will be no questions left about the ability of the United States to cover its satellites around the world with its nuclear umbrella: if there is no ability left, there will be no questions left.