Minuteman missile

Minuteman missile, intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that has been the mainstay of the land-based nuclear arsenal of the United States since the 1960s.

There have been three generations of Minuteman missiles. The Minuteman I was first deployed in 1962. This 17-metre (56-foot), three-staged missile was the first ICBM to use solid fuels, which are safer and more quickly activated than liquid fuels. It was also the first U.S. ICBM to be based in underground silos. (Previous missiles were stored on aboveground launch pads.) Between 1966 and 1973 the Minuteman I was replaced by the Minuteman II. Improved propulsion gave this missile a longer range of about 13,000 km (8,000 miles), and its reentry vehicle, carrying a 1.2-megaton thermonuclear warhead, was equipped with electronic jammers and other devices designed to penetrate radar-directed antiballistic missile defenses around cities and military sites in the Soviet Union.

The Minuteman III was deployed between 1970 and 1975 with two or three independently targeted reentry vehicles (or MIRVs), each carrying a 170-kiloton thermonuclear warhead. In the 1980s three 335-kiloton warheads were installed on some Minuteman IIIs, along with a more accurate guidance system that gave them a “hard-target kill” potential to destroy reinforced ICBM silos and command bunkers in the Soviet Union. At that time about 1,000 Minuteman II and III missiles were deployed in the middle of the continental United States.

Between 1986 and 1988, 50 Minuteman IIIs were replaced by Peacekeeper missiles. Under the terms of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (particularly START I and START II, signed in 1991 and 1993, respectively), the last Minuteman IIs were retired by 1995, and the Peacekeepers were retired between 2002 and 2005. Today the U.S. ICBM force consists of 450 modernized Minuteman III missiles, each armed with a single warhead. The missiles are deployed at air force bases in Wyoming, North Dakota, and Montana.