At 11:01 pm on Election Day, Nov. 5, as the votes were still being counted, activists from around the CA, including Tri-Valley CAREs Executive Director, Scott Yundt, gathered at the gates of Vandenberg Space Force Base to witness and protest the test launch of a Minute Man III (with multiple reentry vehicles) intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) (without the nuclear warheads of course). During such tests, which occur several times a year, the weapons are launched from the Vandenberg base near Lompoc, Calif., and aimed at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, nearly 4,800 miles away.
The launch occurred right as the activists, who coordinated via the Defuse Nuclear War coalition, gathered at the site with signs and microphones. Military police were the watching the protestors closely, while the launch was seen a good 10 seconds before the boom of its boosters washed over the group. Following the launch, two protestors were moved to cross the property line into the base as protest and were promptly detained, cited and released by the Military Police.
The following day, November 6, 2024, Space Launch Delta 30 Public Affairs released a statement noting that the Vandenberg launch was a, “Minuteman III Intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with multiple targetable re-entry vehicles.” This is notable because the ~400 Minuteman III’s that are currently ready for launch in silos across 5 states are not equipped with multiple targeted re-entry vehicles any longer, though they once were. AKA as MIRVs (Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles), these re-entry vehicles each carry a full nuclear warhead payload bigger than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Adding new MIRV’s to these ICBMs would quickly build our nuclear stockpile and the testing of a MIRV’d missile creates the optics that the US intends to do so.
Test launches damage human communities and ecosystems. The Marshall Islands, already forced to bear the overwhelming environmental costs of U.S. nuclear weapons testing, are still used as a target test area.
When tensions among nuclear-armed states are high, each test launch carries an added risk. The U.S. military has acknowledged as much by pausing these launches at high points of tension in the war in Ukraine. The risk of nuclear escalation remains too high to introduce the possibility of misinterpretation of a test into the mix.
The group condemns these launches in the strongest possible terms as a wasteful, dangerous step backward for peace. Scheduling this latest test on Election Day is a clear attempt to avoid public scrutiny of these tests, even as the continued existence of ICBMs is a profound threat to the life and security of every single person in the United States and around the world. The optics of this launch to our adversaries can only be seen as a display of aggression on a day when all eyes are on us.
| ICBMs have been sold to congress and the public as a guarantor of security. In reality, they are an imminent threat to public security. In the words of the late Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine, these weapons make “any conflict enormously more dangerous than it has to be” by increasing “the danger that any armed conflict between major nuclear states can escalate to all-out war.” ICBMs are on hair-trigger alert and, once launched, cannot be recalled, virtually guaranteeing a strike on the country that launches them. As long as ICBMs exist, we live with the constant risk that misinterpreted intelligence, human error, or a single rash decision could end civilization as we know it within an hour.
Maintaining these weapons is a huge waste of resources. The U.S. has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars to “modernize” its ICBM force, which in practice means replacing the entire system. The ICBM program is now an astonishing 81% over budget and years behind schedule, not including the expense for its new W87-1 nuclear warhead development being done at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the new plutonium pits that will built at Los Alamos National Laboratory and/or the Savannah River Site in SC. Yet the U.S. Secretary of Defense has certified, through a “comprehensive, unbiased review” not shared with the public, that the program will move forward. The plutonium pits for the W87-1 are the subject of Tri-Valley CAREs’ recent litigation victory with colleague groups against the National Nuclear Security Administration. |
Click here for the activist’s Press Release…
Click here for an article about the launch…
