The American navy has introduced it carried out two exams of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) over the previous three days, describing the launches as routine and unrelated to world occasions.
Two Minuteman III missiles have been launched from Vandenberg Area Power Base in California on Tuesday and Thursday, the Pentagon stated. They have been armed with dummy re-entry automobiles as a substitute of the nuclear warheads they might usually carry.
“This check launch is a part of routine and periodic actions supposed to reveal that the US nuclear deterrent is secure, safe, dependable and efficient to discourage twenty first century threats and reassure our allies,” the Air Power International Strike Command stated about Tuesday’s launch.
There have been “over 300” exams of this sort up to now, the Pentagon famous. It stated that this week’s launches have been “not the results of present world occasions.”
Russia started a sequence of tactical nuclear workout routines in considered one of its navy districts final month, in what the Kremlin referred to as a response to “unprecedented” Western escalation of the Ukraine battle. Since then, Ukraine has allegedly focused two of Russia’s early-warning radars, elevating the likelihood of a nuclear change.
The US Air Power and Area Power labored collectively on the Vandenberg exams, which noticed the dummy warheads fly roughly 4,200 miles (over 6,700km) earlier than splashing down at a website on Kwajalein Atoll, within the Marshall Islands. There was no official assertion on whether or not the exams have been profitable.
Whereas the US navy has insisted that its atomic deterrent is “secure, safe, dependable and efficient,” there have been rising considerations in Washington in regards to the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad. A November 2023 check failed as a result of the missile had developed “an anomaly” and needed to be destroyed after launch.
Minuteman III missiles first turned operational within the Seventies. There are nonetheless round 400 of them in silos throughout 5 US states 50 years later, as a result of Washington has but to exchange them. The Sentinel program is not on time and over funds, with the primary check flight not anticipated till February 2026, in response to the Air Power.
In 2021, the pinnacle of the US Strategic Command lamented that the service lifetime of the Minuteman III can’t be prolonged for for much longer.
“That factor is so outdated that, in some instances, the drawings don’t exist anymore,” Admiral Charles Richard stated on the time. The drawings that do exist are “like six generations behind the trade commonplace,” whereas the technicians who can totally perceive them “aren’t alive anymore.”
Earlier this 12 months, the Pentagon awarded a $405 million contract for the upkeep and repair of Minuteman III missiles to Boeing.
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