Nearly two-weeks ago a power supposed failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, one-ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline. The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman III missiles in a tri-state area.
Now, the Pentagon is being dogged by questions about a possible missile launch from Vandenburg Air Force Base or a submarine, that was video taped by a news helicopter. The official claim is that the contrail seen in the video is nothing more than that of a jet aircraft.
During the Warren ABF event, the ICBMs shifted into what’s known as LF Down status, meaning that missileers could no longer communicate with the missiles. An LF Down status also means that various security protocols built into the missile delivery system were offline but that the missiles remained technically launch-able.
It’s believe that a launch control center computer (LCC) began to out of sequence, which resulted in “a surge,” in the system. The LCCs interrogate each missile in sequence and if they begin to send signals out when they’re not supposed to, the missiles receivers send out error codes.
Since LCCs ping out of sequence occasionally, missileers are ready to administer a quick fix. However as multiple missiles began to display error settings, missiliers decided to take all five LCCs the malfunctioning center was connected to off-line, leaving 50 missiles dark.
The missileers then restarted one of the LCCs, which began to normally interrogate the missile. Eventually, three LCCs were successfully restarted, while the suspect LCC remained off-line.
Admittedly, my knowledge of how the system works, is predicated on 30-year-old information. When I was stattioned at Warren AFB, a $2.98 piece of hardware at NORAD failed, shocking the entire base into a sudden state of alert.
When on alert, the missiles are under the direction of the U.S. Strategic Command but when not on alert status, they are under the control of the Global Strike Command. The Air Force contends command and control was never lost and that the failure lasted less than an hour and triggered an emergency inspection, sending security forces to verify all of the missiles were safe and properly protected.
A similar hardware failure triggered an event in 1998 at Minot AFB in North Dakota and Malmstrom AFB in Montana, leaving an unknown number of missiles dark. In 1976, Warren AFB was witness to an event that shutdown a series of missile silos in the Wyoming and Nebraska areas and nine years earlier Malmstrom lost communication with ten of it’s Minutemen Missiles, twice in a two week period.
So far no one has officially connected the two incidents. However most current and former Air Force personnel will tell you: there is no such thing as a coincidence in the military.
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