The United States Strategic Nuclear Triad is still in place with 18 Strategic Ballistic Missile Submarines, 450 Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and God knows how many B-52 and B-2 bombers. We have an agreement of some sort with the Russians now and so our missiles are not pointed at Russian cities anymore. Of course, they never were. The missiles are all pointed straight up. They can be targeted as rapidly as you can punch a location in your GPS.
So that's what the end of the world looks like from a sailor's point of view.
2 comments:
Pretty impressive. I was privileged to see more than a few Minuteman launches during the four years I was stationed at Vandenberg, including a rare simultaneous two-missile shot. While the launches I saw weren't as impressive as four Tridents emerging from the sea, they were pretty danged spectacular. So were the Titan launches, but that's another story altogether.
I lived in San Diego all those years and thought some day I'd like to drive up to Vandenberg to see either a launch or recovery but never made it. I used to set my surveillance unit up at the Missile Tracking Station up at Half Moon Bay when we were practicing our trade. It was a fascinating little place with some seriously scary radars. Not a place to be when they were set up to track launches.
I think I was still wearing an Air Force uniform when the Titan blew up in its silo and the Air Force spokesman announced that it didn't have a warhead when it blew up. Something was being removed from the field on a flatbed under a tarp behind him as he spoke. :)
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