2024-07-20 minuteman missile communications

The Nugget

Minuteman missile communications heavily rely on a complex network of hardened infrastructure, with significant redundancies to ensure command and control remain functional even in the event of nuclear war.

Make it stick

🚀 ICBMs: Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles form the land leg of the nuclear triad.
💥 EWO: Emergency War Orders are authenticated and executed by the missile crews to launch nuclear missiles.
📡 HICS: Hardened Intersite Cable System ensures communication between missile facilities with redundancy and resilience.
👥 Two-person concept: Every missile crew must work in pairs to improve safety and prevent unauthorized launches.

The Minuteman IIIs are part of the U.S.'s nuclear triad, scattered across 400 silos in Wyoming, North Dakota, and Montana.
Minuteman missiles are controlled from Missile Alert Facilities (MAFs), each handling ten Launch Facilities (LFs) remotely.

Each MAF contains a two-person crew: the MCCC and the DMCCC, who operate from an underground capsule called the Launch Control Center (LCC).
The crew is responsible for testing missiles, monitoring security, and other key operational tasks, all following strict procedural checklists.

External communications include several radio systems and satellite links to ensure orders can reach missile crews, even post-attack.
Internal communications are managed through the HICS, a highly redundant cable system designed to withstand war-time conditions.

Launch protocols involve checking EWOs against codes, dual-key activation, and targeting updates before missile launch.
Security systems at LFs trigger alarms on intrusion, which security forces must then authenticate with the LCC to avoid unauthorized access.

Originally, retargeting Minuteman missiles was a cumbersome process requiring maintenance crews on-site.
Technological upgrades, such as the Command Data Buffer (CDB) and REACT systems, have since streamlined targeting updates, reducing retargeting time significantly.

"Scattered single facilities were difficult and costly to staff. Minuteman selected a compromise point: clusters of ten independent Launch Facilities (LFs), spaced miles apart and called a 'flight,' are remotely monitored and operated from a single Missile Alert Facility (MAF)."
"Missile crews operate according to the 'two-person concept,' a general prohibition on any person working alone."
"In the event of nuclear war, it was assumed, surface structures in these sparsely populated but strategically critical parts of the country would be wiped cleanly away from the earth."
"HICS, as originally installed, operated at 1.3Kbps... the 1.3Kbps stuck."
"Rapid retargeting allowed the missiles to be retargeted from within the LCC... retargeting an entire squadron now takes only ten hours."

This summary contains AI-generated information and may have important inaccuracies or omissions.