Japanese officials have toured a U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile base in the state of Wyoming, learning about the specific procedures leading up to a nuclear missile launch.
The visit took place during the bilateral Extended Deterrence Dialogue at Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne last Thursday and Friday. This is the first disclosed tour of an ICBM base during the deterrence dialogues, which were established 2010.
It follows an inspection of the USS Maryland, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine at Kings Bay Naval Base in Georgia, during the dialogue in June 2022, and an up-close look at a B-2 strategic bomber at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri in June 2023. Such sea-, air-, and land-based platforms are together known as the nuclear triad.
The intentional disclosure of the visits, which started in 2022, is believed to be a signal to adversaries like China, Russia and North Korea, that the U.S. nuclear umbrella is up and running.
In a joint statement released after his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in April, U.S. President Joe Biden reiterated the “unwavering commitment” of the U.S. to defend Japan using its full range of capabilities, “including nuclear capabilities.”
On the visit to Warren Air Force Base, officials from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense received a brief on the ICBM mission and then toured the missile procedures trainer, where U.S. Air Force members conduct training on ICBM launch procedures.
Only the U.S. president can authorize a strategic missile launch. Once the order is conveyed to the launch control center, crew members verify that the message is legitimate and use two keys to initiate the launch itself.
According to a decommissioned launch control center on display in Ohio, no single person can turn both keys, since they are 12 feet (3.7 meters) apart.
Once launched, the order cannot be reversed. The missiles reach their targets anywhere in the world within 30 minutes.
“ICBMs are said to be the most prompt leg of the triad,” Sebastien Philippe, a research scholar with Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, told Nikkei Asia. According to the Congressional Research Service, once the launch order is transmitted and is verified, the ICBM could be fired in two minutes. The submarine, by comparison, would take 15 minutes.
But Philippe also noted that the land-based leg is the most vulnerable of the triad, because the ICBMs sit in fixed, in-ground silos visible from space. Adversaries know exactly where the silos are: Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota.
Philippe said they are the fastest to launch is “because they’re so vulnerable to an enemy first strike that you want to launch them before losing them.”
They are also the most controversial leg of the triad, Philippe said, owing to the hefty price tag to replace the current Minuteman III ICBM with the Sentinel ICBM.
In January, the Air Force notified Congress that the Sentinel program, developed by Northrop Grumman, would cost roughly $130 billion over the next decade, up from an estimated baseline of $96 billion.
Philippe said that rather than replacing the land-based leg, it would be more effective to add to the planned 12 next-generation Columbia-class missile submarines or build more B-21 bombers for a fraction of the Sentinel’s cost.
China is expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country and that it could have at least as many ICBMs as Russia or the U.S. by the turn of the decade, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute noted Monday.
