Hidden underground in steel-and-concrete silos across rural America, more than 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles point to the skies, poised for launch — and ready to obliterate cities across the world.
First designed in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War, the Minuteman nuclear weapons are starting to show their age, and replacement parts are difficult to find for the weapons designed in an analog age.
-snip-
The Air Force “doesn’t know how we are going to afford this,” said Laicie Heeley, a nuclear expert at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan anti-nuclear proliferation think tank in Washington.
Read the full article here.