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Minuteman III Launch from VAFB - 118k
MISSILES
MINUTEMAN III
ICBMs
These pages created by Pat Brown
Space and Missile Web page
Last updated on: Jun. 4, 1998

 launches since May 1997 
Photo at left: LGM - 30G Minuteman III launch from Vandenberg AFB, Calif.   The first Minuteman III was launched in 1968 and was first deployed at Minot AFB, ND in the early 70's .


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Minuteman III FOT&E Test Launch
Launch Control Panel
Three MIRVs - Rentry vehicles coming down on Kwajallen Atoll
Peacekeeper cold launched from Vandenberg AFB

    Concealed in reinforced concrete silos beneath the Great Plains resides America's land-based intercontinental ballistic missile force. For nearly 40 years, this reliable deterrent system helped keep the peace between the United States and the former Soviet Union and continues to maintain this role in today's changing world climate.
    
    Maintaining constant vigilance over these missiles are two-person missile combat crews (missileers) who pull 24-hour alerts in underground launch control centers.  The Air Force maintains two varieties of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) -- Minuteman III and Peacekeeper.   On-alert missiles are assigned to three missile organizations:  the 90th Space Wing at F.E. Warren, WY; the 91st Space Wing at Minot AFB, ND;  and the 341st Space Wing at Malmstrom AFB, MO.  F.E. Warren is also the home of 50 Peacekeeper missiles, as well as 20th Air Force, the numbered Air Force responsible for U.S. ICBM forces.
    
    While missileers spend a lot of their duty time below ground, they have had one of the most crucial jobs ion national defence.  The missileer's mission of deterrence has kept threats at bay for almost 40 years.  The crumbling of the Soviet empire was proof the value of missileer's vigil.  Missileers still keep watch from behind the blast doors of their capsules deep in the earth, monitoring Minuteman III and Peacekeeper missiles.  Today, under Air Force Space Command and U.S. Strategic Command, missileers maintain deterrence in a new world order where increasingly more countries have nuclear weapons as a reslt of nuclear proliferation.

(Reference: September 1997 Airman Magazine and AFSPC Guardian of High Frontier brochure)



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Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 by Pat Brown.  All rights reserved.  

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