The United States has carried out a planned test launch of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) announced.
The first of two launches of the Minuteman missile scheduled this week took place from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara, California, at 12:56 a.m. local time on Tuesday. A 73-second video released by the base showed the launch of the missile as it traveled into the upper atmosphere.
The missiles are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead and can travel more than 6,000 miles and reach speeds of 15,000 miles per hour (Mach 23). They form a key part of the U.S. military’s arsenal, making up one leg of the U.S. nuclear deterrent triad.
The test launch comes amid heightened tensions with Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and a spike in nuclear rhetoric which included Vladimir Putin last month announcing nuclear weapons drills.
The US carried out a planned test launch of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Tuesday, Air Force Global Strike Command announced.
This was the first of two test launches scheduled for this week….
However, AFGSC said in its statement that such tests “have occurred over 300 times before, and this test is not the result of current world events.”
Last November, Russian media gloated after an unarmed LGM-30G Minuteman III was terminated over the Pacific Ocean in a week in which Moscow revoked its ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) banning nuclear explosions, including live tests of nuclear weapons.
At the time, AFGSC said that the launch had terminated “due to an anomaly” without further explanation. However, the defense publication The War Zone described the failure as “concerning,” and one observer posted an image of what looked like “an unusual upswing in the trajectory of the missile” following launch.
X user M51.4ever, who posts about strategic systems, told Newsweek on Tuesday that “it was important to get a success” after last November’s failure.
“We now have to wait for the second launch on Thursday. Test objectives seem to be different as the drop zones are significantly distinct. But unfortunately, we’ll never know what the objectives are.”
“The most important thing is that those two tests have been planned months if not years in advance and are not linked to current world events.”
The ICBM’s reentry vehicle traveled around 4,200 miles to the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s Ronald Reagan ballistic missile defense test site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Colonel Bryan Titus, Space Launch Delta 30 vice commander, said the launch will “hold immense significance” for national defense and for showcasing the “expertise of our dedicated team.”
General Thomas A. Bussiere, commander, Air Force Global Strike Command, said the test will “demonstrate and confirm our readiness to deliver a safe, secure, effective, and credible global combat capability.”
There are around 400 Minuteman ICBMs at U.S. Air Force bases in Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota, and they are regularly checked.
The U.S. Air Force said in 2021 that it had aborted another routine test launch with the missile still on the ground for unspecified reasons, while three years earlier, the flight of another LGM-30G was terminated over the Pacific.
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MOSCOW, June 4. /TASS/. Moscow welcomes Ankara’s wish to join BRICS, and this initiative will be discussed at the upcoming summit of the integration, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“We all obviously welcome the increased interest towards BRICS from our neighbors, including such important partners as Turkey. Obviously, the issue of this interest will be on the agenda of the BRICS summit, which will be chaired by Russia and which we are actively preparing for,” he said.
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A total of 97 countries have confirmed their presence in the BRICS 2024 Games in June this month. The event will be hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kazan region between June 12 to 24.
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