VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif.—The U.S. launched a Minuteman III missile here at 11:01 p.m. Pacific Time on Nov. 5., in an important test of the weapon’s ability to strike its targets with multiple warheads.
The Minuteman III missiles that form a critical leg of the U.S. nuclear triad each carry one nuclear-armed reentry vehicle. But the missile that was tested carried three test warheads.
The ICBM test was controlled by an airborne command post in a test of the U.S. ability to launch its nuclear deterrent from a survivable platform.
“These tests are demonstrative of what Striker Airmen bring to the fight if called by the president,” Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said in a release. “An airborne launch validates the survivability of our ICBMs, which serve as the strategic backstop of our nation’s defense and defense of allies and partners.”
After the launch command was transmitted by a U.S. Navy E-6B Mercury, the Minuteman III blasted out of a silo at the launch facility on the north side of this base on the California coast. Airmen from the 625th Strategic Operations Squadron of Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., were aboard the E-6 along with Navy aircrew.
The three test reentry vehicles—one high-fidelity Joint Test Assembly, which carries non-nuclear explosives, and two telemetry Joint Test Assembly objects—struck the Reagan Test Site near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands roughly 30 minutes later after launch, a flight of about 4,200 miles.
“They make up essentially a mock warhead,” Col. Dustin Harmon, the commander of the 377th Test and Evaluation Group, the nation’s operational ICBM test unit, said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There’s two different types. One is telemetered, so it’s got a radio transmitter in it, it’s got antennas, gyroscopes, accelerometers—all the things that can sense motion and movement. And we fly those or we can put one in there that’s called a high-fidelity. That is assembled much like an actual weapon would be, except we use surrogate materials, and so we want it to fly similarly to an actual weapon. … It has the explosives in it that a normal warhead would to drive a detonation, but there’s nothing to drive.”
The Nov. 5 launch was a noteworthy test in several respects.
“This one is actually a unique launch,” Harmon said. “We’re flying three warheads, which, up north, the fielded missiles only have one. But we want to verify the ability of the weapon system to fly three because it’s a requirement for the missile to be able to do that … and we’re launching it from the airborne platform.”
The missiles themselves that are flight tested are randomly selected from one of the nation’s three ICBM bases—Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.; F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.; and Minot Air Force Base, N.D. The ICBM launched in this test was brought from Minot Air Force Base.
“We report to U.S. Strategic Command and ultimately to the White House on the reliability of the fleet,” Harmon said. “Launching the missiles from here is data collection.”
Harmon’s test group will analyze the data from the flight and submit a report in about a year. The team at Vandenberg sifts through around 4,000 parameters and several gigabytes of data. Lt. Gen. Michael J. Lutton, the deputy commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said the report will be a comprehensive account of all the missile’s systems.
“You’ll see assessments of all the different stages of the missile, the subsystems of the missiles, so you’re collecting data on all those items, and then you’re collecting data on the payload, the reentry vehicles,” Lutton said. “There’s mission partnership with the folks downrange and our national labs that are helping us with those assessments.”
There are 400 Minuteman III missiles currently in service across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
“We use an operational missile from up north because we wanted to test the reliability and the accuracy of the weapon system,” Harmon said.
Minuteman III test launches are regularly scheduled events that occur roughly three times per year. They are planned well in advance—the missile for the next test launch scheduled for February recently arrived here—though the Pentagon has delayed tests in the past to manage tensions with Russia over Ukraine and with China over Taiwan.
The U.S. government formally notified Russia in advance of the launch in accordance with a 1988 bilateral agreement. More than 145 countries were also provided with advance notice of the launch under the Hague Code of Conduct (HCOC)—an international understanding on launch notifications.
The U.S. also provided advance notice to China, a DOD spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. China notified the U.S. of an ICBM launch over the Pacific Ocean in September. There is no formal agreement between Washington and Beijing that requires such notifications, but each side provided them to avoid miscalculations.
“The United States provided this ad-hoc advance notification in the spirit of reciprocity in order to encourage the PRC to subscribe to the HCOC and negotiate a U.S.-PRC bilateral pre-launch notification arrangement,” the spokesperson said, referring to the People’s Republic of China by an acronym.
The Minuteman III launch, which was monitored with specialized sensors, is known as a Glory Trip and the Nov. 5 flight was GT-251. The last time the U.S. launched an ICBM with three reentry vehicles was in 2023. The U.S. also conducted an airborne launch that year.
The Minuteman III missile was the first U.S. ICBM deployed with multiple warheads. But two of the three warheads on the deployed Minuteman III missiles were later removed, turning them into single warhead missiles. That step was completed in June 2014 as the U.S. moved to meet arms control limits agreed with Russia and implement the Pentagon’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review.
Concern that the U.S.’s strategic modernization program could suffer additional delays prompted a Congressionally-mandated commission last year to recommend that the Pentagon be prepared to upload additional warheads to its existing arsenal of Minuteman missiles to maintain existing force levels.
Operational since 1970, the aging LGM-30 Minuteman III is set to be replaced by the LGM-35A Sentinel, which has faced major budget overruns.
“For example, if Sentinel experiences a delay while a fraction of the Minuteman III force ages out, warheads from the agedout Minuteman III could be uploaded onto the remaining Minuteman III to keep the number of fielded, land-based warheads constant,” stated the 12-member panel, which was made up of former officials and experts chosen by Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders.
Nuclear force buildups by Russia and China could also lead the U.S. to consider uploading its deployed land and sea-based missiles. The U.S. currently has 400 operational Minuteman III missiles under the New Start Treaty with Russia, which expires in February 2026. The Minuteman III is designed to last into the 2030s.
“We’ve deferred modernization for, depending on when you count, almost three decades,” Lutton said. “I think we have a responsibility to the taxpayers to make sure that the resources that we are given deliver national security for the nation. That’s where we’re at. … Making sure every requirement is nailed down, and every requirement fits the needs of the mission going forward to deter any potential adversaries that are out there and defend the nation.”