![]() ![]() Less than an hour from the U.S.-Canada border, the base occupies 5,000 acres of offices, family housing, airplane hangars, and runways. Air ForceĪppropriately, a sign above Minot’s guard gate reads, “Only the best come north.” “It was a culture shock, for sure.” Each time they go on alert, missileers run through a series of tests and checklists that help verify the safety and reliability of the ICBMs under their control. “The first month I lived in Minot, a blizzard dumped so much snow that by spring, the snowmelt caused the worst flood the town had seen since the 1960s,” he remembers. Johnston arrived in North Dakota by way of Vandenberg Air Force Base, located on the coast of sunny southern California. “But the more I got involved in the nuclear mission, the more excited I became to play a role in something so important.” “Without knowing much about missileers, I made a last-minute career switch,” Johnston remembers. Johnston attended the United States Air Force Academy and planned to become a pilot, but during his senior year he learned about an eyesight problem that made flying impossible. “This alarm indicated that something had jostled an ICBM in its silo.” Only the best come north “Each alarm has a different sound,” Johnston remembers. Johnston remembers one shift that took a strange turn after an alarm sounded. But occasionally something happens that makes those 24 hours anything but boring. I was working on my master’s degree, so I studied a lot.”Īt Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, where Johnston was stationed until 2015, missileers typically pull on-alert duty eight times a month. “There are exercises we run and daily actions we need to complete, but there’s often a lot of down time that we try to make the most of. “There’s a lot of maintenance we regularly perform on every ICBM, so that takes up a portion of your on-alert shift,” says Johnston, currently the junior Air Force Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. But because the nation has never launched an armed ICBM-and hopes never to do so-going on alert often means that missileers must find productive ways to pass time. They then sign their names into a logbook and assume responsibility for a portion of the country’s 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), each of which carries a nuclear warhead, either a W78, designed by Los Alamos National Laboratory, or a W87, designed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.īy placing missileers in launch control centers, the underground rooms from which ICBMs can be launched, the United States is able to respond to an attack at any moment, 365 days a year. At 45 different locations spread across five states, pairs of missileers ride elevators 60 and sometimes 90 feet underground to relieve the pair working the previous shift. On any given day, 90 missileers like Johnston make a similar journey. This would be Johnston’s home for the next 24 hours. ![]() Beyond the door was a small room, called a launch control center. The elevator opened to reveal an eight-ton concrete door designed to withstand a nuclear blast. The old machine creaked as it lowered and stopped with a shudder. Air Force Major Kevin Johnston rode an elevator nearly six stories underground. ![]()
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