According to Business Insider, the US Air Force is scheduled to test-fire an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile between 11:01 pm Tuesday and 5:01 am Pacific time Wednesday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The missile will travel over 4,200 miles to a target in the Marshall Islands, marking a routine verification test that’s completely separate from President Trump’s recent nuclear testing announcements. The Minuteman III system is 50 years old and was supposed to be replaced by the new Sentinel ICBM starting later this decade at an estimated cost of $78 billion. However, the Sentinel program has been pushed back to the 2030s with costs ballooning to over $140 billion, forcing the Air Force to maintain Minuteman III missiles potentially into the 2050s. These routine ICBM tests are scheduled years in advance, but the Air Force currently only has them planned out to 2030 and is still working on post-2030 testing plans.
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Aging missiles and broken promises
Here‘s the thing about the Minuteman III – we’re basically flying nuclear missiles that are older than most of the people operating them. The system entered service in 1970, which means some of these missiles have been sitting in silos since before the first Star Wars movie came out. And the replacement? The Sentinel program is a classic Pentagon procurement disaster. It’s two years behind schedule and nearly doubled in cost to over $140 billion. The Government Accountability Office blames unrealistic schedules, engineering problems, and an “atrophied industrial base” – which is bureaucrat-speak for “we don’t have the factories or skilled workers anymore.” So we’re stuck with 50-year-old technology that has to last another 30 years. How confident does that make you feel?
Trump’s nuclear confusion
Now here’s where it gets messy. President Trump recently told 60 Minutes he wants to “test nuclear weapons like other countries do,” specifically mentioning Russia and China. But what does that actually mean? Nuclear experts immediately started scratching their heads. Is he talking about explosive testing – setting off actual nuclear bombs underground like we haven’t done since the 1990s? Or is he referring to testing delivery systems like the Minuteman III, which we already do regularly? Energy Secretary Chris Wright tried to clarify, saying “these are not nuclear explosions” but “non-critical explosions.” Meanwhile, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Senator Tom Cotton are backing Trump’s claims on social media, saying Russia and China are conducting super-critical tests. But the nominee to lead Strategic Command says he’s seen no evidence of explosive testing by either country. So basically, nobody seems to know what anyone else is talking about.
The reality of nuclear testing
The truth is, the US hasn’t conducted an explosive nuclear test since 1992, and for good reason. We’ve developed sophisticated computer simulations and subcritical experiments that tell us everything we need to know without actually detonating nuclear weapons. Restarting explosive testing would be incredibly provocative – it would likely cause Russia and China to resume their own testing, kicking off a new arms race. And let’s be honest, do we really want to start setting off nuclear bombs again when we can’t even agree on whether masks work during a pandemic? The routine Minuteman III test happening this week is exactly the kind of testing we should be doing – verifying our existing systems work without escalating tensions unnecessarily.
What happens next
Looking ahead, the Air Force has a massive challenge. They need to keep these ancient missiles operational while somehow getting the Sentinel program back on track. According to the GAO report, the Pentagon is dealing with “organizational issues within the Air Force” on top of all the technical problems. And then there’s the political dimension – if Trump wins re-election and actually tries to restart explosive nuclear testing, we could be looking at a fundamental shift in global nuclear policy. But for now, this week’s test is business as usual. It’s just another reminder that our nuclear deterrent relies on technology that’s literally older than the internet. Maybe we should focus on fixing that before we start talking about new types of testing.
