Bombs Away

s Lt. Mike Schaffer shows off the cramped, but nuclear-safe, toilet facilities inside his launch control center at the India 01 missile alert facility in Montana, he takes care to point out the flushing mechanism. "This," he deadpans, "is the real button."

When you're baby-sitting the most powerful weapons ever devised, it's hard to forgo a little bathroom humor. For more than 30 years, young men and women at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, where the India 01 facility is located, have had the lonely and mind-numbingly regimented task of guarding and controlling America's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

"Along with submariners, the most conservative people in the world are the people who oversee nuclear missiles," says Lt. Col. Allen Branco, an 18-year ICBM veteran. "There's just no room for error."

But now, as various arms control treaties come into force, Air Force personnel face the daunting task of transporting and decommissioning hundreds of ICBMs. Malmstrom-whose 200 missile silos sprawl over 23,000 square miles of empty, and often frozen, Montana mountain and prairie lands-is at the center of this mission.

The first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which is already in effect, and the second, which is awaiting ratification by the Russian Duma, have mandated such sweeping reductions that the United States is closing half its missile bases. But the number of missiles controlled by Malmstrom's 341st Missile Wing will not decrease.

When the dust settles, Malmstrom will become a major destination for missiles that aren't destroyed or put into treaty-approved deep storage. Since 1991, Malmstrom has been asked to clear out 150 Minuteman II missiles-three-quarters of its total missile capacity-and replace them with improved Minuteman IIIs. Thirty of the newcomers, drawn from stockpiles, are already in place, and the job of installing the remaining 120 is more than half complete.

It's an intricate and highly secure ballet: After being broken down into pieces, each of the last 120 missiles must be shipped to Malmstrom from silos at Grand Forks, N.D. They are hauled on trucks over ordinary roads, including the region's many unpaved (and sometimes snow-covered) routes. Then, after some maintenance on the base, the missiles are shipped to Malmstrom-controlled silos.

Officers at Malmstrom are unfazed by the mission's complexity. Decades of missile upgrades and maintenance have left them with experienced crews and time-tested protocols. "We're used to it," says Col. Wayne N. Hansen, the 341st's vice wing commander.

The Organization

The 341st Missile Wing has such a sprawling domain that it's broken into four squadrons, each with its own colors, nickname and esprit de corps. Officers say familiarity and trust are the operational bedrock of missileering, and it is unlikely that the four squadrons will be merged anytime soon. A squadron quadruple their size might be unmanageably large.

Each squadron is responsible for 50 missiles stored in launch facilities (commonly known as silos) 120 feet below a 110-ton concrete door. In a true launch situation, the doors would be blasted off by four explosive canisters. In turn, the 50 missiles are controlled from five small, self-contained compounds known as missile alert facilities.

Each of the missile alert facilities-many of them on dirt roads next to farms and ranches-boasts homey quarters, including lodging, cooking and recreational facilities such as satellite television and a pool table. Each facility has a backup generator and, as a last resort, batteries. The duration of these sources of electricity is "classified, but more than long enough," according to one officer.

The facilities' locations aren't secret-"they would be pretty hard to hide," as one officer put it. But missileers have given many of them outrageous nicknames such as "Life's End Missile," "Moral Disorientation Missile" and "Hotel Hell Launch Control Center."

Security is tight. Each launch facility is ringed by a chain-link fence and barbed wire and security officers meticulously verify each visitor's identity and search for contraband. Once inside, movement to sensitive areas is regulated by password codes.

In addition to the roughly 55 missileer officers who control the ICBMs, each squadron includes about 35 enlisted facility managers and chefs and 140 enlisted security police with light infantry-style gear, including M-16s and military vehicles. Missileers themselves used to carry guns, but that ended in 1990 when their gun-training and ammunition costs were targeted by budget cutters, Air Force officials say.

About a year ago, the enlisted personnel began to receive regular assignments to the same facility for three-and-a-half-day shifts and were integrated for the first time into the missileers' same chain of command. Enlisted personnel say the change has boosted morale and moderated the hierarchical distinctions between them and officers.

Inside the Capsule

The most important part of a missile alert facility is its launch control center, or "capsule," where two-person crews monitor everything about their ICBMs. Crew members become especially familiar with their partners, serving 24-hour shifts in tandem two or three times a week, usually 18 hours awake and 6 hours sleeping (one at a time). Married missileers often say they see their partners more than their families.

In severe weather, missileers may have to work as many as 48 consecutive hours, but the use of four-wheel-drive vehicles and helicopters usually prevents double shifts. Crews are granted unusual autonomy to recommend how to handle the unpredictable local weather.

Capsule crews are ensconced in an environment shielded from nuclear attack. The capsule is literally a big, hollow metal egg with strong shock absorbers. Built at bedrock level, 60 feet to 120 feet below the surface, the capsule has only a single, closely guarded elevator shaft leading to its entrance.

Whether or not this setup is capable of surviving a direct hit, or even a nearby hit, is open to argument. With visitors, the Air Force plays up the capsules' security, but when pressed, officials said survivability specifications are classified. Outside experts are skeptical, suggesting that the main guarantee that the United States could return fire after a nuclear attack owes less to silos' protections than to the likelihood that at least a couple won't get hit at all.

Still, because the capsule is intended to be "hard," nuclear-wise, its 8-ton metal door is supposed to be closed except when changing crews or sending in food or other supplies. While Malmstrom officials say the rule is followed rigorously, the difficulty of yanking the door open and closed has historically made this a popular regulation to ignore. Brookings Institution senior fellow Bruce G. Blair, who was a missileer for more than two years in the 1970s, recalls that he and his crew mate had to scramble to get their door closed when the level of alert was suddenly heightened during the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

Inside, most capsules are predictably snug, though big enough for at least one 6-foot-7, 240-pound missileer in recent memory. India 01-located 35 miles from Great Falls, Mont., the state's second largest city-has room for a toilet, ringed by an insubstantial curtain, and one bed.

Many crew members utilize their quiet hours to study for advanced degrees. The capsules' creature comforts include a television, VCR and refrigerator. (The fridge is not often used, apparently: India 01's chef, Airman Sean M. Ranes, says his cheeseburgers, fries and cheese steaks are the facility's most popular meals.) Recently, technicians improved the carpeting and sound- proofing, which has alleviated long-standing complaints of hearing loss from the drone of electronic equipment. "From our point of reference," said Lt. Col. Thomas Cullen, a onetime capsule crew member, the upgraded capsules "are like the Taj Mahal."

The Hardware

The most critical feature of the capsules is the equipment that allows crews to carry out their ultimate mission: Communicating with the Pentagon when a launch may be imminent. Each capsule houses several parallel communications systems, in case one is rendered useless after an attack.

Those systems include a satellite receiver, an encrypted fax machine and an ultra-high frequency radio for airplane communications, as well as a mechanism to receive messages by very low spectrum frequencies (which, as officers put it, is particularly useful in a "nuclear environment"). Crews also have access to ordinary telephone lines for personal use (credit card calls only) and a closed-circuit phone system connected to other nearby installations.

None of these accessories were purchased off the shelf because the Air Force has determined that an ordinary fax machine wouldn't survive the electromagnetic pulse during a nuclear conflict. Indeed, it took 10 years of development at Loral and GTE (including a trip through the Pentagon's acquisitions bureaucracy) before the capsules' computer system could be upgraded. The Russians installed an equivalent system 10 years before the United States did, Blair says.

Despite the wait, the new computer system-which crews have dubbed "Windows for Armageddon"-has been an immense relief to missileers, who find it much easier to use than the blinding array of "idiot lights" typical of its predecessor. The computers are not particularly powerful-120 megabytes, up from 1 megabyte before the upgrade-but officials insist that's all the system needs. In fact, the system's simplicity has been a blessing in at least one regard: The faulty programming that will cause a worldwide crisis once computer clocks hit the year 2000 does not affect ICBM computers, officials say.

That other nuclear guy, Homer Simpson of TV cartoon fame, might find the capsule layout familiar: Big chairs on rails in front of an unpolished, but functional, control panel. The chairs have belt straps for protection from the ultimate shock wave, but these are rarely used. Years ago, veteran missileers say, the job required much sliding back and forth to tear off paper messages. Now, computer screens provide instant updates on the missiles' vital signs much more ergonomically.

Each of the security alerts and emergency action messages that flash regularly across the screen must be investigated. Most alerts are generated by automatic motion sensors at unmanned silos, usually tripped off by maintenance workers or scampering rodents. The messages are generally tests from supervisors to keep missileers on their toes.

Each capsule console monitors not only its own 10 missiles but also the 40 controlled by the squadron's other four crews, who sit in similar capsules dozens of miles away. This feature provides one of the system's best security defenses. A rogue crew member seeking to initiate an unauthorized launch would have to do more than just convince his partner to turn his own two launch knobs simultaneously. One would also have to prevent the other eight off-site squadron members from vetoing their efforts in real time. Even an entire squadron would need to get the nuclear enabling codes first from high-ranking military officials. Flirting with the end of civilization would be no easy task.

Ironically, the system only became this secure in 1977-and only as a cost-cutting measure during post-Vietnam War downsizing. In 1977 the Air Force decided to cut manpower costs by instituting 24-hour shifts during which missileers were allowed to sleep. Previously, crews were rotated in shorter shifts and were forbidden to sleep. To compensate for breaking its traditional two-man-awake rule, the Air Force instituted tighter security controls. Seals were placed on all critical components to prevent tampering, and new coding processes were incorporated into launch directives that are now provided to crews only when needed. Analysts say this has made ICBM control far more secure than it was for Malmstrom's first decade and a half.

The Missileers

America's missileers are rigorously trained for eight months. Typically they are lieutenants, 22 to 27 years old, who rotate into missileer duty for four years and then pursue other Air Force careers. Women were first allowed in mixed capsule crews in the 1980s, and they now account for 10 percent of missileers.

The missileer's daily grind is regimented by checklists, but as dulling as the procedures are, missileers say the boredom, particularly between 3 and 6 a.m., can be worse. "I miss seeing the sun," says Lt. Tory Saxe. "You have no sense of time. Even the clocks are in Greenwich Mean Time."

And, of course, serving as the gatekeepers of Armageddon adds a layer of stress. The possibility that a missileer may actually have to launch nuclear weapons "is not only the most obvious question, it's the ultimate question," said Lt. Col. Allen Branco. "I have to sign papers saying that an officer is capable of duty. We ask them whether they have any reservations about the use of nuclear weapons. In two situations, people have come out and said that they didn't think they could do this. We had no ill will. We just sent them off to do other things."

The Air Force says it monitors the mental readiness of its missileers through a "personal reliability program," or PRP, that instructs crews on spotting mental unease. Crew members who are considered emotionally unstable are encouraged-if not forced-to adjust their frame of mind before returning to duty.

"It's the job of every person in this business to watch out for each other and say, 'Hey, why don't you get evaluated,' " says a Malmstrom chaplain. Confidentiality is maintained, he added, but "we don't just say OK. This is a very serious thing."

Former missileers such as Blair recall major breaches in the 1970s, such as dope smoking, as well as widespread frustration at the missileers' rule-bound world (he says he and colleagues "learned shortcuts for our own sanity"). While Blair agrees that the situation is noticeably better today, he says subsequent missileers have told him that "people who rock the boat do suffer from stigma, if not outright punishment."

Even so, Malmstrom's safety message is ubiquitous, sometimes outrageously so. Missileers are reminded (to the point of nagging) about everything from car thefts and drunken driving to basketball injuries. Even in freewheeling Montana, which no longer has daytime speed limits, Air Force vehicles must still drive 55 mph on interstate highways and 25 mph on unpaved roads, despite the long travel times.

But something seems to be working. In June, the 341st Missile Wing spent two weeks under scrutiny by the Air Force Space Command hierarchy, and the wing earned its second highest score since Malmstrom's missiles were installed in the early 1960s. "It was very, very stringent, but we smoked it," Cullen says.

Many agree that even as ICBMs continue to be phased out, the missileers' deadly serious job helps maintain a sense of mission. "There's a certain sense of pride for me every time I come down here," says Saxe. Even Blair, whose skepticism lingers two decades after his missileer duty, agrees that the assignment is highly desirable by military standards.

And because the job is so unique, missileering has a tradition of extraordinary outspokenness. At the meeting before a missileer's final capsule duty-the "last alert"-each outgoing missileer is allowed to speak his or her mind, unreviewed and unedited.

On the day Government Executive visited Malmstrom, it was Capt. Jim Sneddon's turn. Though Sneddon began by saying he had no desire to burn his bridges- "the missile community is small," he noted-he still shared some of the cartoons he'd drawn while on duty, many of which lampooned common missileer frustrations.

Missile veterans report that other last alerts possessed even more bite than Sneddon's. "I've seen everything from cussing somebody out to breaking down and crying," says Capt. Michael Jackson, who at 28 is heading off to a combat-planning job after four years as a missileer. "The nature of the job demands a trusting individual. This is the only time I've ever heard of something like this in the military."

Downsizing Mission

The rash of arms control agreements between the United States and Russia have already ended the default targeting of many missiles on Russia and closed the book on round-the-clock nuclear bomber runway alerts. The agreements are soon expected to slash each side's arsenal of deployed land-, air- and sea-based strategic weapons from the peak of 10,000 to 13,000 down to 3,500, of which ICBMs will account for only 500 single-warhead missiles.

Arms control agreements have prompted the closing of three of America's six ICBM facilities.

ICBMs have survived thanks to support from congressional and Pentagon hawks, Blair says, but the currents of change have still prompted major aftershocks. In May, residents of Sedalia, Mo., watched as a contractor imploded a 30-year-old ICBM silo previously run by missileers at nearby Whiteman Air Force Base. A month later, Defense Secretary William Perry traveled to southern Ukraine to join his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in planting sunflowers over what had once been Soviet ICBM silos.

Now, thanks to the Pentagon's 1993 nuclear posture review, there will soon be only three remaining ICBM locations on American soil. Malmstrom will house 200 Minuteman IIIs, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota will host 150 Minuteman IIIs and F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming will have 150 Minuteman IIIs as well as 50 Peacekeeper missiles (the weapons once called MX missiles, which are to be decommissioned by the Start II treaty).

Of these, Malmstrom may be the most active location for a while. Lt. Col. Dave Noble of Malmstrom's logistics team says that moving a single missile from Grand Forks, N.D., to Malmstrom takes about three weeks of effort by both the Energy Department and Malmstrom personnel.

A missile's lower three propulsive cylinders are shipped first in a special trailer. Following routine maintenance, these stages are inserted into their new silo by a large vehicle called a transporter-erector. Next, the missile's two post-boost control system pieces are moved separately to Malmstrom for maintenance and reassembly. This package includes the rocket engine and guidance system-the missile's "brains."

Last to go is the warhead, which must undergo a week of disassembly and a week of reassembly before it's inserted anew. Once the warhead is in place, the entire missile system must be tested and programmed. On average, Malmstrom says its teams can remove and insert one missile a week. At about 50 missiles a year, that means Malmstrom's great switcheroo should be complete by late 1997.

Though the early missile portions are tightly secured in transit, the warhead is cared for most tightly of all. Officers maintain that it's certified not to explode or cause harmful fallout en route, and the package moves with a convoy of U.S. marshals, helicopters and an undisclosed number of Malmstrom's 1,400 military police officers. Some convoys must drive for four hours or more. Officers say Malmstrom's 1,000-vehicle fleet travels 4 million miles a year.

Security flare-ups are rare, but tracked intently. Though anti-nuclear protesters trespassed onto Whiteman Air Force Base several times in 1987 and 1988, Malmstrom has managed to avoid such problems. Malmstrom officials acknowledge that they feared problems when Freemen sympathizers began visiting the site of the group's anti-government standoff in Jordan, Mont., only 70 miles from some of the base's silos. But such problems never materialized.

In addition to scheduling its missile movements unpredictably, "we have strong shows of force," Hansen says. "We exercise very overtly. You can kill yourself practicing for something that may never happen, but in 34 years we seem to have gotten it right."

Ironically, for such a high-tech maneuver, senior officers say the biggest management challenge is actually as simple (or perhaps as complex) as the weather. The Malmstrom region is so big that it experiences three distinct weather patterns. "The challenge is the wind, tornadoes, ice, snow, hail," says Hansen, the 341st's vice wing commander. "These are critical things that we do not want to put at risk. If Mother Nature wants her way, she wins. We have time to do it right the first time."

What's Next

Though negotiations are on the back burner, "some people predict that once Start II is done, maybe by the time of a first Gore or Powell Administration, we could be down to about 1,000" strategic weapons, says Reagan-era Pentagon official Lawrence J. Korb, now a Brookings Institution scholar in Washington. And national security specialist Michael Mazarr of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington suggests that the arms control process is at a point where it "may become more of a political issue into early 1997."

That could instigate more nuclear downsizing at Malmstrom and elsewhere. But Malmstrom officers brush off issues of strategy as the purview of Washington policy makers. Even without such a dramatic rebirth of arms control efforts, their mission will continue. Routine maintenance will always be as predictable as death and taxes, and there's also recurring talk of upgrading the propulsion and guidance systems of Malmstrom's Minuteman IIIs.

Because the weapons being installed within the current round of changes should be functional until 2020, there probably won't be a shortage of openings for prospective Malmstrom missileers. "Our job," Hansen says, "never ends."

The morning of Capt. Jim Sneddon's final missileer shift, he shared with colleagues some of the cartoons he'd drawn while on duty.