Incident Underscores Need to Modernize U.S. Nuclear Arsenal and Rethink New START

Baker Spring / November 09, 2010

On October 24, 2010, at the Warren Air Force base in Wyoming, the United States Air Force lost communication with a sizeable portion of America’s nuclear deterrent: a squadron of 50 nuclear-armed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). In the past, this type of disruption was rare and limited to individual missiles. The broad scale of this incident, however, resulted in one of the most serious and sizable ruptures in nuclear command and control in history.

This incident comes in the midst of the Obama Administration’s effort to push the U.S. Senate to grant its advice and consent to New START, a nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, in the upcoming “lame duck” session of Congress. Given that each missile is responsible for covering a number of targets and that New START is set to further reduce the ICBM missile force, the gravity of the incident may have been exacerbated had the treaty been in effect. The 50 ICBMs that went down represent one-ninth of the U.S. ground-based ICBM arsenal. (more…)