The MX Moment: Part IV
The MX Moment
EXPLORING COLD WAR HISTORY AND DEMOCRATIC FUTURES IN THE NUCLEAR WEST
Part IV: Titan
Cold War Logic
Understanding something as surreal and monumental as the MX missile and its attendant delivery system requires knowing more about the Cold War military logic that fashioned it. As the stops in Trinity, Wendover, and Nevada have shown it was a way of thinking that evolved over the course of multiple decades. Ultimately the logic and rhetoric governing U.S. nuclear weapons policy in the post-World War II landscape has been founded on the dynamic and changing ground of assumptions and beliefs concerning the assumed role the United States should take on in global affairs.
As Cold War realities emerged and took root they were weaned on new flows of capital that have come to define the web of shared military and economic interests defined as the military-industrial complex. The costs associated with living in this space are dynamic and diverse. One consequence is the establishment of secret spaces on the landscape, sites where the core tenants of democratic society have either been transmuted or simply do not exist. And yet, a parallel consequence has been the establishment of industries and economies that have helped the United States reach dramatic levels of success. Cold War logic and the reality of nuclear weapons have created a culture of paranoia and fear at the same moment they have achieved the hoped for deterrence that was the foundational principle of U.S. and Soviet Cold War relations.
In the immediate post-War period, U.S. military planners began work on developing the technologies out of which the first intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM’s) would emerge. Utah was a central hub of this activity, as several private companies working on government contracts developed the technology that would lift both ICBM’s and NASA shuttles into the sky. The explosive growth and reliance on ICBM missiles as key part of U.S. weapons policy is clearly reflected in Utah job numbers, as between 1957 and 1961 the number of jobs in the states missile industry skyrocketed from 600 to 10,500 Utahans.
The first missiles created by the new U.S. missile industry were not thermonuclear ICBM’s, however, but rather an early form of anti-ballistic missile named Nike. As Thomas Vanderbilt notes in Survival City, “for a brief period in the twentieth century, the Nike achieved notoriety as the ‘last-ditch defender of our cities.’ Built in defensive rings around major cities and installations of strategic importance, the Nike was a short range radar-guided missile designed to intercept incoming nuclear-armed Soviet bombers.” (Vanderbilt 175).
Rapid advances in missile technology, coupled with ongoing questions of the Nike’s potential effectiveness hampered the projects growth significantly, and by 1974 the last of the Nike bases had been decommissioned. Nike did offer military planners a difficult lesson of an inherent problem with relying on sophisticated missile defense. This problem, seen in every major missile project conducted by the U.S. during the Cold War, was the enormous cost involved that was too often coupled with a rapid obsolescence in missile system technology.
The next major iteration in U.S. missile defense came with the Minuteman Missile series that would dot the Great Plains in the 1960’s. Of all the ICBM forces that have been employed by the United States it is the Minuteman series that has proven to be the most stable. First put into operation in 1962, 450 third generation Minuteman (LGM-30G) missiles are still on active alert at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, and the Malstrom Air Force Base in Montana. The Minuteman Missile also lives on culturally as the only Cold War artifact currently preserved and administered by federal government agency. Today atomic tourists journeying through South Dakota can visit the Minuteman National Historic Site, which preserves and interprets both an abandoned Minuteman silo as well as a nearby underground launch facility.
As ICBM technology advanced the military language and logic guiding their use took on a more clearly defined shape. A central tenant of the logic that would come to govern U.S. nuclear policy was an imaginary check placed on both U.S. and Soviet forces based on the theory of deterrence. This idea held that by keeping an equivalent nuclear force, each of the worlds two superpowers ensured against the risk of a tactical first strike ever developing. Rooted in the belief in mutually assured destruction, each nation assumed that an equivalent sized force would guarantee that any first strike would be met with an equally devastating counterstrike. Using this methodology, the Cold War military was able to funnel federal money into a variety of expensive projects.
Another crucial component to the military logic driving nuclear weapons development during the Cold War was a belief in a defense system based on a counterstrike triad of weapon systems. The nuclear triad is composed of ICBM forces, as well as weapons aboard submarines, and weapons aboard bomber planes. The logic of the nuclear triad states that each individual leg is mutually supportive, and that each component piece holds a distinct set of advantages that help address the weaknesses found in each other component part. Thus, in the nuclear triad, the sum of all forces working together is stronger than the individual parts. Investing fully in the nuclear triad meant that all three legs had to remain independently viable, and it was a presumed weakness in the U.S. ICBM leg that led the U.S. Air Force to conclude that the Minuteman and Titan forces were not adequate, thus necessitating the need for MX.
The legacy of Cold War military logic succeeded in building the structures that made the nuclear triad viable, but today many of those former systems have slipped into obsolescence and non-use. And what do these Cold War relics that still haunt the landscape say about impermanence and obsolescence? It is with questions such as these that I paid a visit to an abandoned nuclear missile silo in the heart of the Sonora Desert.
Located 28 miles south of Tucson, the Titan Missile Museum is a place that lingers close to the Mexican border, the product of military planners who established the base with the intent of having sufficient response time should a Soviet ICBM ever clear the horizon line of the North Pole.
The Titan Missile is one step in an evolutionary chain of weapons development, through which the MX was an eventual successor. The story of the Titan Missile provides crucial insights into the issues of obsolescence and the politics being played out at yet another (formerly) secret site on the western landscape. The Titan Missile also sheds light on the both the logic and eventual failure to base the MX in the Great Basin, and it is to the end of that story that I now return.
MX Fallout
The links between missile components that are on display at the Titan Missile Museum and the non-military application of military industrial complex technology points to an aspect of the MX project worth considering. As has been noted, the economy that has emerge in the post-World War II era has been fueled by the dynamic melding of military spending and private economic interests, to the point that simply withdrawing federal capital into that system would inevitably trigger devastating economic repercussions. Military spending in Utah alone has proven crucial to the state economy, both through the jobs created by Hill Air Force Base as well as the various government contracts scattered across the state, (such as those with Thiokol and Ashland Inc. which was formerly known as Hercules).
The full impacts of military-industrial culture on daily life can be glimpsed through an interrogation of the various non-military applications born of the Cold War that have made their way into everyday life. The most obvious is the internet which began as the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s ARPANET project. Another example of military technologies powering non-military projects is seen in the federal National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) program, which helped perfect the system jet propulsion systems that would ultimately power both nuclear ICBM’s as well as the space shuttles that have helped expand humanities scientific knowledge.
This application of Cold War military technology into usable civilian application has a tantalizing thread that runs through the proposed MX project. When President Jimmy Carter announced his decision to base the MX in the Great Basin, the Department of Defense quickly reached an agreement with the Department of Energy stating that the two government agencies would utilize the opportunity provided by MX to ally their resources and develop a dynamic solar energy grid in the Great Basin and Sonora deserts. This solar technology would then fuel both the weapon system as well as provide clean energy to the exploding populations of the western United States. Based on the massive costs and efforts required to build a viable large-scale solar industry it appears inevitable that any wide scale future development will need to take place under the auspices of government, not unlike the massive effort witnessed in the Manhattan Project, or through massive subsidies that can be absorbed by government. It is worth considering that the government ability to both finance and legislate such a project nearly arrived conjoined with the development of the world’s largest weapon system.
Of course, any potential positive impacts that MX might have generated had to be balanced squarely against the changes that the project promised. It was this great unknown that oppositional forces against the MX capitalized on while simultaneously working through the democratic channels open to them to articulate and vocalize their discontent.
The social repercussions and loss that the MX shadow cast on the Great Basin have already been discussed, but just as vital to oppositional forces were the potential environmental costs that the MX system threatened. Where military planners looked on the Great Basin desert and saw a largely empty and unproductive wasteland that was ideally suited to serve as a potential zone of national sacrifice, residents looked on the same place and saw a fragile desert environment offering solitude and a deep, meaningful spiritual connection. Writing to Governor Matheson, Salt Lake resident Barbara Turner states as much when she says, “I find a magic and beauty in the deserts of Utah and I am doubtful whether that would be preserved if the MX were implemented.”
And while the U.S. Air Force’s environmental impact statement (EIS) failed to suitably address or mitigate the massive social changed that MX promised, the record reveals that it failed even more spectacularly at assessing and mitigating the dramatic environmental impacts that the weapon system would bring.
When the U.S. Air Force began planning for the MX EIS they turned to the consulting company Henningson, Durham, and Richardson (HDR) to perform the work. In turn, HDR hired out multiple sub-contractors to conduct individual studies that would ultimately merge together to form the larger EIS. The content and areas of focus for the EIS were derived from both public comment given at the scoping hearings of early 1980, as well as specific guidelines stipulated by the Council on Environmental Quality.
The HDR would produce a 28 volume environmental impact statement with conclusions founded on 33 individual technical reports compiled by the various sub-contractors hired on federal tax payer dollars. The massive EIS record and accompanying technical reports were released for review and comment in early 1981, and immediately the various committees formed by the Utah MX Coordination Office went to work evaluating their merit. It didn’t take long for a general consensus to form that in spite of its broad scope and formidable size the DEIS was severely lacking, particularly in light of the fact that it was assessing and planning for the largest construction project ever proposed. Feedback to Governor Matheson’s office suggests that the findings of the DEIS were superficial at best, and often rooted in flawed methodologies that tended to oversimplify (or ignore) key pieces of data.
Among the most common critiques of the MX EIS was its overreliance on maps and data projections. This speaks to a larger issue with U.S. Air Force planning, namely an apparent assumption that the construction of the MX in the Great Basin was inevitable.
Once feedback to the EIS was returned to the MX Coordination Office, Governor Matheson issues the official public comment on its findings for the state of Utah on April 23, 1981. After laying out a detailed set of criticisms, Matheson suggested that “all of these problems could have been avoided had the Air Force been responsive to the scoping comments of the State of Utah and to CEQ Guidelines for Acceptable Environmental Impact Statements.” Furthermore, Matheson concluded that, “the subject DEIS does not permit either a responsible decision maker or a concerned citizen to make informed judgments about the crucial policy issues pertaining to MX deployment.”
With the public comment period ending in May, 1981 and the transition to a new presidency underway, both foes and supporters of the MX had to wait for the official word from newly-elected President Ronald Reagan on the fate of MX.
Based on his public comments, it appears that Reagan shared an attitude for the MX not completely dissimilar from Governor Scott Matheson. In early 1981, Reagan appointed his own independent Townes Commission to revisit the basing options. The conclusion of the Townes Commission was that the MX proposal should be reduced from 200 missiles to 100, and that MPS basing should be abandoned in lieu of a more stable vertical basing scheme, which was the type of upright missile silo that had staged both the Minuteman and Titan Missiles).
Another important factor confronting newly elected President Reagan with regard to his MX basing decision were the new in-roads being pressed by Republican representatives to Utah and Nevada. Perhaps the most important of these connections was Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt, who not only held a personal friendship with Reagan, but had also served a vital role in his campaign for the presidency. Also not to be ignored were the Utah representatives who were faced with increasingly negative public opinion polls on the MX issue from their constituents, as well as ramifications of the LDS statement against the missile system issued on May 5, 1981.
On September 14, 1981 a meeting between Reagan, Laxalt, and Utah senator Jake Garn took place in which the two Congressmen told the president that any attempt to base the MX in the Great Basin would be met with resounding disapproval from their constituents. This, coupled with the tide of increasingly negative opinion to the MX throughout the region, may have been the final nails in the coffin of the MX multiple protective shelter proposal, as on October 2, 1981 Reagan announced a pivot in the nations strategic weapons program that would “not deploy the MX in the racetrack shelters proposed by the previous administration.”
In the years that would follow, fears of the MX didn’t simply vanish from the Great Basin, however. Records reveal that both Utah and Nevada officials and residents remained concerned over other basing schemes that were rumored to have a potential home in the region. It wasn’t until the final decision to implement the MX missile (renamed “Peacekeeper) at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, that the shadow of MX completely dissipated from the Great Basin.
Wandering the Titan Missile Museum several questions arise in my mind concerning an alternate reality in which the MX MPS system had been built in the Great Basin. With its lengthy construction period, the completion of MX would have coincided with the fall of the Soviet Union. The benefit of hindsight unmasks a truth that in early 1980’s the Soviet economy stood on the brink of eventual collapse. Ed Firmage has argued that the success of the MX opposition saved the world from another Cold War military stockpiling, though it seems just as likely that instead of pressing to meet the MX threat the Soviet Union may have just maintained the status quo.
The psychic effects of Cold War ruins on the landscape cannot be understated, but what of the physical effects? Might the MX bases have been reclaimed and repurposed into something else? Based on the examples offered by both the former Minuteman and Titan Missile sites this seems unlikely. An inventory of former missile silos across the country reveal that most of the abandoned silos have simply been dug out of the Earth and bulldozed over, though a handful of entrepreneurs have taken to retrofitting them for eventual sale on the private market as a unique form of underground housing.
These formerly secret sites that do still haunt the landscape carry with them the residual reminders of the psychic fears and anxieties that were born with the Cold War. Returning to the Titan Missile Museum, the narrative that is being composed and offered there daily offers a telling statement on how these places are remembered. It suggests the conflicted and highly politicized nature of nuclear places, which in turn prompts questions of the future democratic opportunities on an often broken and increasingly toxic landscape.
The Ghosts of Titan
Upon entering the Titan Missile Museum I am greeted by a gift shop employee who tells me that the next tour will begin in twenty minutes. I buy my ticket and am given a laminate numbered card. The gift shop and small museum of Air Force artifacts coexist in the same small space, and I get the sense that this is either a recent addition to the missile campus, or a converted support structure built to maintain the massive underground infrastructure that exists below. I explore the exhibit space which details the history of the Titan Missile and attempts to logically fit it into the history of America’s inherently illogical Cold War story. Among the most eye-catching artifacts on display is a large wooden sculpture on the wall depicting a missile in mid-launch, with the words “Peace Through Strength” carved below it.
After browsing the exhibits and gift shop an overhead announcement informs those on the 1:00 PM tour to meet in an adjoining briefing room. As I enter an elderly man wearing a Titan Missile Museum button up shirt and a USAF veteran baseball cap takes my small, laminated ticket stub. We are told to take a seat in the conference room, where we will be shown a short video. Once everyone is in and seated our tour guide gives us a rough itinerary for the tour.
Before heading outside, and underground, we are shown a video which is hosted by a long haired Missile site employee named “Chuck.” The video walks through a very basic sketch of the Cold War, and the most common reasons cited for the building of weapons and facilities like Titan. We are told of the logic of mutually assured destruction, and how the Titan Missile kept the world safe through the magic of deterrence. We are shown in the video many of the locations that we will soon visit in person. Overall the tone of the video attempts to convey a sense that the Cold War was very much a wartime military endeavor, and that the veterans who were engaged in its service are just as deserving of national respect as those who have served in active combat.
At the end of the video we are instructed to bring along all of our personal items and exit a door that will take us into the secure side of the museum, an outdoor area separated from the parking lot by a dangerous looking fence covered with bails of cruel razor wire. Anyone standing over 6’ tall is instructed to take a hard hat from a box near the door, as the underground world we are about to enter has several points with low ceilings.
We exit the museum building and are told by our guide that we are now standing firmly on top of the missile silo and its underground support services. Not unlike the Minuteman silo in South Dakota, from a distance this spot would appear mostly invisible on the landscape. However, upon close inspection, many of the support structures are readily apparent. Various antenna, pipes, and wires emerge from numerous points scattered across the base, the kind of loose ephemera that isn’t unlike the industrial wreckage that has been abandoned on the Nevada Test Site. We are told that these support components were the eyes and ears of the Titan Missile, a rhetoric that humanizes the bomb in the same way that the earliest nuclear scientists relied upon during testing (“boy” for a success and “girl” for a dud).
We are walked across the above ground display area and shown one of the rocket systems formerly fitted to the missile. This relic was designed a as first stage engine, and its job was to push the missile to a certain altitude. Once initial elevation was reached this system was jettisoned from the missile body, and a second stage engine was deployed to boost it even higher into the atmosphere. With an altitude and trajectory achieved, the next step relied on gravity to pull the missile back toward the earth, at which time the nuclear warhead detached and began its descent towards whatever unfortunate city had been selected for destruction. Seeing this engine it is easier to understand how interrelated and incestuous ICBM development and the national space program have been over time. In essence they are opposite sides of the same coin, twin technologies with related means, but a hoped for difference in ends. It compels me to think beyond any time that I know, and imagine the adroit case that was made by U.S. Air Force officials for defense dollars to spend on ICBM development in the wake of the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957.
Our group is stopped by the guide at period aboveground locations to learn more about the various pieces of atomic debris that are on display. We are shown one of the massive fueling trucked parked near the Titan Missile fuel intakes. As our guide describes the various systems around us I notice “Chuck” from our video emerge from a building outside the enclosed perimeter and amble slowly by. Others in the group notice too and begin whispering to one another about his appearance, as if we have just spotted a celebrity in this unexpected place.
The highlight of the aboveground portion of the tour is its final stop at the missile silo opening. Today the massive concrete blast shield door has been permanently pulled back and secured, so that various spy satellites can attest to the fact that the space is no longer being used to store an active nuclear missile. Similar results have been achieved at other sites by simply bulldozing in the site.
The silo is covered with a Plexiglas shield that allows us to look into the abyss of the six story silo and gaze at the gutted Titan Missile shell that still resides here. As we look in on the missile silo some of the specifics of just how destructive this particular weapon truly was are recited. Equipped with a 9 megaton warhead the Titan II had the destructive potential of hundreds of Hiroshima’s. During the Cold War it was assumed that any stealth first strike by Soviet forces would seek to knock the Titan Missile out of commission before it could launch. In response, both the missile silo and its attached support facilities were hardened with cement and given ample room to move and sway in the event of a first strike.
Looking in on this retired weapon of mass destruction, the sensation I feel lingers on the edges of the mathematical sublime. The sheer fact that this warhead had the ability to wipe entire cities, entire cultures, and entire histories off of the map is something that fails to make sense in anything but the loosest and most abstract sense. I have no rational way to process the numbers or comprehend the possibilities.
As we approach the sealed hatch that will take us underground, and into the heart of the Titan Missile facility, the hatch door opens and members of an earlier tour group begin to emerge into the sunlight. We wait for them to file out before we make our own descent.
We have been told that the prevailing sprit that permeated Titan during its operation glory was secrecy and security, and what we are now seeing bears this out. At the bottom of the flight of metal stairs upon which we are now descending is a sealed door with a telephone. Anyone wanting to enter the secure facility had to ring this phone and provide a security code. A small bucket beneath the phone was used to collect the ashes of coded strips of paper that were burned once access into the facility was granted. Another safety protocol in place is literally written on the walls in the rhythmic warning “No Loan Zone.” We are told that the two person Titan Missile operators not only had to accompany each other everywhere on the base, but also were equipped with a sidearm to ensure that the potentially fateful duties were carried out if a call to launch the missile ever came down from the President of the United States.
Upon entering the underground facilities of the Titan Missile complex I have a distinct impression of being lost in another world. The paint on all of the surfaces is a military green, and all of the surfaces appear to be made of stainless steel. A testament to the engineering that went into this facility is pointed out to us by the fact that the massive blast door we passed through on our way into the underground still moves on a swivel, and can be successfully opened and closed by a single person. Standing in the Blast Lock Area of the missile silo, we are in the area that once served as the final checkpoint for visitors looking to access the most sensitive parts of the base.
The separate underground structures of the Titan Missile silo are connected by long, narrow metal cableways, and we now move along the path that will take us into the Launch Control Center and its attendant crew quarters.
Our next stop on the tour is in the command center, the brains of the beast. With its antiquated computer systems, military green color, and the faded carpeting it is almost laughable to think that this was once the site from which so much destruction could emanate. We are shown the systems, which though primitive still maintained enough information in 1 kilobyte to accurately target the missile on its unknown site. Many of the computer panels have been replaced with blank shields, presumably as technology improved and they were no longer needed.
The guide asks for a volunteer to sit at the command console, and a middle-age woman from the group is selected. This is fitting as this was one of the few Titan Missile bases commanded by a female office. The volunteer is instructed to put her hand on the key that will initiate a launch cycle. As a safeguard, two separate keys had to be turned in unison for the cycle to initiate. Our guide demonstrates how, with the other key literally across the room from the console, it was physically impossible for any one person to simultaneously turn both keys and initiate a nuclear holocaust on their own.
While the Sonora desert above us beats on to the rhythms of deep time, and a complex web of life that has settled in over eons, this underground world was designed and tuned to a very specific clock, which has now been rendered obsolete with the simultaneous advance of technology, and the end of the Cold War.
From the launch control center we are walked across the cable way, and into the second level platform of the missile silo itself. Our view from this mezzanine now looks up at the world that we had previously looked in on from the shielded silo opening. From this vantage point, the missile is up close and personal, thought its ability to render entire places obsolete doesn’t resonate with quite the same eeriness that it did from the aerial view above.
From this location we can see how complex the support services needed to keep the missile operation truly were. Like all of the wires, systems, and services that were built and designed to sustain it, the power and logic of this thing only comes together in some abstract sense that doesn’t feel like reality. It carries the legacy of a deep history, but that terrible story has been effectively masked and shadowed on the desert landscape. I look at the missile but what I feel doesn’t approach the level of sublime that defines and marks every corner of the Nevada Test Site.
Our tour ends with reemergence into daylight and the marginal heat of an early desert spring afternoon. Our guide encourages us to tour the grounds, and I take the opportunity to wander among the Cold War artifacts, attempting to recover as much as I can of the surreal memories that haunt this abandoned missile site. As I wander I notice a sign on one of the bomber doors leading underground. In bright red letters it warns staff and visitors of the danger of rattlesnakes, who have apparently taken to occupying various spaces in the underground silo. I feel encouraged that in this small act, the desert is exerting its will and slowly reclaiming this place.
Sources
The American Presidency Project. 1982. Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With Reporters on the Announcement of the United States Strategic Weapons Program. Available at: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=44333&st=mx+missile&st1=. Website Accessed 19 Nov, 2012.
Beehive History 28. Salt Lake City: Utah Historical Society, 2002.
Glass, Matthew. Citizens Against the MX: Public Languages in the Nuclear Age. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Masco, Joseph. “Rehearsing the End at the Titan Missile Museum.” On Site 20 (2008): 36-39. Print
Turse, Nick. The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008.
Utah State Archives and Records Service, Governor (1977-1985: Matheson), MX missile records, series 1646.
Utah State Archives and Records Service, MX Missile Policy Board, Administrative records, series 5643.
Vanderbilt, Tom. Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America. Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 2002.