Inside Montana’s “nuclear doomsday” base under Chinese spy balloon

By James On Feb 3, 2023

Montana is famous for its empty plains, wild river canyons, and its status as home to one of the nation’s three publicly known large-scale nuclear missile silos.

So when a suspected Chinese spy balloon was spotted hovering in the air of the “big sky state,” it wasn’t long before analysts suggested its most likely target: Malmstrom Air Force Base, which has been dubbed as the basis for America’s “doomsday.”

“Montana plays a vital role in national security by hosting nuclear missile silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base,” state Sen. Steve Daines wrote in a letter to the Pentagon, sounding the alarm Thursday.

Its location in the west of the country meant that the airbase was noted in the 1950s as an ideal site for the base of missiles aimed at the Soviet Union.

Today, the US Air Force maintains 150 Minuteman III ICBMs in 13,800 square miles of central Montana, making it the largest nuclear weapons complex in the Western Hemisphere.

Malstrom Air Force Base in Montana is home to 150 Minuteman III ICBMs, which can be airborne in less than four seconds after a launch command.

Malmstrom Air Force Base is located in Cascade County in the US state of Montana. It is located about seven miles from Great Falls and is home to the 341st Missile Wing.

“We are the guardians of the end of the world,” wrote a commander in 2013. That is not an exaggeration.

It is one of three bases that together house the country’s arsenal of 400 Minuteman III missiles.

The silos in Montana are manned by the 341st Missile Wing, whose mission is to provide ‘lethal combat capability by launching long-range precision nuclear strikes in a moment.

The closest he came to doing so was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

When an American U-2 surveillance plane detected Soviet military personnel deploying medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles throughout Cuba in 1962, President John F. Kennedy had to respond.

He imposed a naval blockade of the island and ordered Montana’s Minuteman I missile to be placed on alert.

But they were so new that engineers had just finished building their launch control facilities. No one was entirely sure if the systems would work properly.

Even so, the first Minuteman went on ‘alert’ on October 27, 1962.

A launch control facility under construction near Malmstrom in the 1960s. The missiles were put on alert during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Airmen from the 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron inspect the wire connections of an ICBM during a simulated electronic launch Minuteman test in September 2020

“Montana plays a vital role in national security by hosting nuclear missile silos at Malmstrom AFB,” State Senator Steve Daines wrote in a letter to the Pentagon, raising the alarm.

Why would China launch a ‘spy balloon’ over Montana? Beijing suspects delving into ‘Cold War playbook’

The detection of the suspected Chinese spy balloon over the United States sparked speculation that Beijing was mounting a concerted surveillance effort near sensitive military sites.

China has claimed the balloon is a civilian aircraft that went off course, but analysts have said the balloon could be a Cold War-era spy technique deployed in US airspace.

Balloons have been used as an espionage technique, including by the US, since the 1950s. But technological advances mean modern models are harder to detect and have far greater surveillance capabilities.

The balloon currently floating over the US is about the size of three buses. It is believed to have flown over the Aleutian Islands in the northern Pacific Ocean and then crossed Canadian airspace into the United States.

One model suggests it will likely move further into the Midwest and over Missouri by Saturday, but the nature of the device and changing weather make an accurate prediction difficult.

The balloon is large enough to destroy it and spew debris, putting the safety of people on the ground at risk, US officials said.

The balloon’s trajectory passes “a number of sensitive sites,” a senior Pentagon official said when asked about the presence of nuclear missile silos in Montana.

“Clearly, they are trying to fly… this balloon over sensitive sites… to gather information,” the official added.

However, the balloon’s technology is not ‘revolutionary’ and its observations are no better than what China is able to see through other means, such as its spy satellites.

China’s claim that the balloon is a civilian weather-monitoring device is not entirely unfounded. Such balloons, which may appear similar to a surveillance device, are common tools for meteorological research.

China has sent such balloons over the United States in recent years, the senior Pentagon official said.

A day later, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev came down and ordered the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba.

Today, the missiles have been upgraded to their third incarnation, all guarded by some 3,300 military personnel and 600 civilians.

Each missile is 60 feet long and weighs nearly 80,000 pounds, with a range of 8,700 miles.

If the order to launch arrives, it will launch itself into the air from the silo in less than four seconds, climbing 70 miles above Earth before reaching its planet-side target in 25 minutes before unleashing twenty times the explosive power of the bomb. which killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima.

For now, defense officials are downplaying the idea that the high-altitude balloon could be collecting important information.

But it has already triggered drip ructions.

On Friday morning, Antony Blinken postponed his planned trip to China, where he was expected to meet the country’s leader Xi Jinping.

Although the US prepared fighter jets, including F-22s, to shoot down the intruder, the Pentagon ultimately decided not to intervene as it could create a debris field large enough to endanger the people inside. below.

However, a defense official told the Associated Press that it was headed for the Montana missile fields, but the US has assessed that it had only “limited” value in terms of providing intelligence that China could not obtain through other sources. technologies, such as spy satellites.

Republican leaders and former President Donald Trump have led calls to bring down the balloon.

Canada was also monitoring a “potential second incident” on Friday as officials worked to determine if a separate sighting was the same balloon.

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who served under Trump, accused China of a “blatant act.”

He told CNN that the United States should ‘[bring] below so we can capture the team and understand exactly what they are doing. Are they taking photos? Are they intercepting signals?

“Otherwise, I would definitely shoot it down, as long as there is no risk to the people on the ground.”

Esper said it was of “great concern” that the balloon was flying near missile ranges and strategic bomber bases.

US Senator Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, said the balloon was alarming but not surprising.

“The level of espionage directed at our country by Beijing has become dramatically more intense and brazen in the last five years,” Rubio said on Twitter.

A model of the path taken by the balloon suggests it originated in central China and then entered continental United States airspace over Alaska and across Canada.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a trip to China that included a meeting with President Xi Jinping after the balloon was detected earlier this week.