Minutemen & the Gap

Along the ancient bed of a glacial lake, U.S. 89 runs eastward out of Great Falls, Mont., and climbs into the Little Belt Mountains. There, above the once prosperous coal-mining town of Belt (pop. 757), a plain link fence encloses two acres of barren land and Russian thistle, four watchful electronic sentinels, and a few drab slabs of concrete. Beneath that concrete is buried an Air Force Minuteman missile--one of the most efficient instruments of intercontinental destruction the U.S. possesses.

The Belt site is just one of many Minuteman installations either built or abuilding. Officially declared operational for the first time this week, 20 of the three-stage, 32-ton Minutemen are now cradled in 80-ft. silos sunk in Montana's wheat and cattle country. They are armed with nuclear warheads, aimed and ready to hurl the equivalent of 500,000 tons of

TNT to within a mile of any target up to 6,300 miles away (Moscow is 5,100 miles, Peking 5,700).

Fast & Simple. Minuteman is the weapons system that, with the Navy's Polaris submarines, is making the so-called "missile gap" a real missile gap--favoring the West. Within a year, Montana will have 150 Minutemen in place. Another 650 have been authorized for South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri and Wyoming. Minutemen will roll like cigars off production lines until some 1,500 are deployed, far outnumbering the U.S.'s programmed 126 Atlas missiles and 108 Titans.

The advantage of Minuteman is that its three engines use solid fuel. Thus, while the already deployed, liquid-fueled Atlas and Titan* take 15 minutes to fire, Minuteman can blast out of its hole within 32 seconds of the trigger command --the first truly pushbutton transoceanic weapon. The use of a solid propellant also eliminates the complex plumbing and finicky maintenance problems of the earlier missiles. Minutemen can be turned out faster than their silos can be emplaced. Once deployed, they require no major maintenance for three years. At a systems cost of $3,400,000 per missile, Minuteman costs one-fourth as much as the Atlas.

The Minuteman has arrived a year ahead of its original schedule, speeded by Air Force decisions in 1959, when there were widespread charges that an unfavorable missile gap did indeed exist. Although the speedup seemed "absolutely impossible" to Air Force brass, it was accomplished mainly by the drive, patience, and, as one colleague puts it, the "damn genius" of Brigadier General Sam Phillips, Minuteman program director and, at 41, one of the youngest generals in the Air Force.

Working out of Los Angeles, Phillips has directed an immense task of construction, training and logistical coordination. For the Montana installations, the 54-ft. missiles are flown in C-133 cargo planes from an Air Force plant near Ogden, Utah, to Malmstrom Air Force Base near Great Falls, transferred in an air-conditioned building to 64-ft.-long tractor-trailer vehicles called transporter-erectors (T-E's). These crawl at 15 m.p.h. on level roads, stall to 2 m.p.h. on grades. The 150 silo sites of Malmstrom's 341st Strategic Missile Wing are scattered over 18,000 sq. mi., connected by 3,000 miles of road, only 500 of them paved. At the sites, the TE's raise the birds, slide them gently into place.

Eight for One. The silos, too, are mechanical marvels. Their massive doors and shock-mounting are so effective that only a direct missile hit could knock them out; Pentagon strategists figure an enemy would have to throw at least eight missiles at each one to have any assurance of destroying it. Each missile is suspended so that the earth could rock but the bird would still fly straight.

Each group of ten Minutemen is controlled from a concrete capsule, mounted on springs, covered by some 60 ft. of earth. At identical consoles sit two officers. They stare at dials and lights that warn of any defects in their birds. If warned, the men merely push a button and a taped voice controlled by a computer tells them precisely what is wrong.

The console controllers are the end men in a taut chain of command that can send the missiles rocketing toward preplanned targets at 15,000 m.p.h. The control officers do not know where their birds are going--but they will push the buttons.

Safeguards. Under Minuteman's failsafe system, an order to fire flashes from the President to Strategic Air Command headquarters at Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base. High SAC officers throw a switch that opens an electronic lock on the missile flight. They call the two control officers. The two, sitting 15 ft. apart, pick up separate telephones to receive, decode and authenticate the orders. Each must agree that it is a valid command. They go through a launch sequence in unison, break lead seals on their console buttons. The birds still will not fire until another two-man crew in another capsule sends a concurring signal. Finally, any of five control centers in each squadron can push a switch labeled "inhibit" and stop the launch.

No saboteur can reach the control officers. They descend into their green-walled capsule by elevator or steel ladder, are protected by steel doors 3 ft. thick. Atop the control center sits a squat building with three security guards. Around the building is an electronically guarded fence. "God help the man that tries to get in," says one project officer.

Out of the Bath. On-the-spot direction of the Minuteman sites is in the hands of a slender World War II pilot, Colonel Burton C. Andrus Jr., 45, commander of the 341st. He normally patrols his area in a blue station wagon, with one of three radio-telephones in hand. He can never be more than six rings from any phone, often scrambles out of a bath to hear a voice say: "Very good, Colonel, you made it in 27 seconds."

Andrus is proud of Minuteman and of his wing: "We have the highest degree of perfection and morale ever achieved in any military organization." Yet he is fully aware of the potentiality for boredom in sending highly trained men underground to sit and wait. All launch crew members hold B.S. degrees, work toward master's in aerospace engineering while on duty. "We don't anticipate that any of these men will crawl the walls," Andrus says.

At the Pentagon, some Air Force officers worry about the service turning into "a field artillery outfit." While some 90% of U.S. nuclear striking power is still borne by manned bombers, Minuteman will soon change all that. If this bothers some of the officers who fly, it undoubtedly troubles Nikita Khrushchev much more.

* The advanced Titan II, not yet operational, will have a reaction time similar to the Minuteman's. Under present schedules, half of the 108 Titans will consist of new models by the end of 1963.

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