The rocket boosting a new reentry vehicle for the future U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile system exploded 11 seconds after launch in its first test.
In her story "Rocket for New US ICBM Explodes," writer Shannon Bugos detailed the rocky start of the program. The test involved a Minotaur II+ rocket carrying a prototype Mark 21A reentry vehicle built by Lockheed Martin. The vehicle will house a W87-1 nuclear warhead, which is in the middle of a modification program administered by the National Nuclear Security Administration. A nuclear warhead was not used during the July 6 test at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. However, the blast required action from local firefighters.
"The test launch will demonstrate preliminary design concepts and relevant payload technologies in [an] operationally realistic environment," said the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center in a press release prior to the test. Following the failed test, the center commented only that "an investigative review board has been established to determine the cause of the explosion."
The rocket and reentry vehicle will be placed on the U.S. Air Force's new LGM-35A Sentinel ICBMs. The Air Force plans to purchase more than 650 Sentinel ICBMs to replace the existing fleet of 400 Minuteman III missiles, plus spares and test missiles, starting in fiscal year 2029. Testing of the Sentinel missiles, under development by Northrop Grumman, will begin in 2024.
The Pentagon had scheduled a long-planned test of a Minuteman III ICBM for early August. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin elected to delay the test by about two weeks due to heightened tensions with China over Taiwan, John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, announced on Aug. 4. The department had cancelled another ICBM test in March.
"As China engages in destabilizing military exercises around Taiwan, the United States is demonstrating instead the behavior of a responsible nuclear power by reducing the risks of miscalculation and misperception," said Kirby.
ICBMs constitute the land-based leg of the U.S. nuclear triad and are located across three Air Force bases in five states, Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. The Air Force released a draft report on the environmental impacts of such weapons. It said the weapons: "have potentially significant adverse effects on cultural resources, public health and safety, socioeconomics, and utilities and infrastructure" in the short term and, in some cases, the long term."
The report describes four possible alternatives to the current plan, rebuilding the Minuteman III missile fleet to existing specifications, constructing and deploying a smaller ICBM, constructing and deploying commercial launch vehicles containing nuclear-capable reentry vehicles, or converting existing Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles for deployment in land-based silos. The Air Force rejected these alternatives due to the perception that they did not meet all the system requirements in areas such as sustainability, integration, performance, survivability, safety, and risk. Bugos pointed to an alternative in her story, "an alternative that the Air Force chose not to examine was reducing the size of the ICBM force to below 400, as some arms control experts have suggested."
"The current force level of 400 deployed ICBMs is not--and has never been--a magic number, and it could be reduced further for a variety of reasons, including those related to security, economics, or a good faith effort to reduce deployed U.S. nuclear forces," Matt Korda of the Federation of American Scientists wrote in a July 13 blog post.
The Defense Department had solicited a study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace International Peace on potential alternatives for the land-based leg of the nuclear triad, to possibly include the reduction of the ICBM force. The study has not been made public, said Bugos. Will our country ever take a serious look at our nuclear posture?
Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer for the Peace Economy
