Missile launch facility

The La Coupole facility is the earliest known precursor to modern underground missile silos still in existence. It was built by the forces of Nazi Germany in northern Occupied France, between 1943 and 1944, to serve as a launch base for V-2 rockets. The facility was designed with an immense concrete dome to store a large stockpile of V-2s, warheads and fuel, and was intended to launch V-2s on an industrial scale. Dozens of missiles a day were to be fuelled, prepared and rolled just outdoors of the facility's concrete casing, launched from either of two outdoor launch pads in rapid sequence against London and southern England. A similar-purpose but less-developed facility, the Blockhaus d'Eperlecques, had also been built, some 14.4 kilometers (8.9 miles) north-northwest of La Coupole, and closer to intended targets in southeastern England.

Following repeated heavy bombing by Allied forces during Operation Crossbow, the Germans were unable to complete construction of the works and the complex never entered service. The United Kingdom conducted post-war investigations, determining that it was "an assembly site for long projectiles most conveniently handled and prepared in a vertical position".[1]

U.S. Minuteman II missile being worked on, in its underground silo launch facility

U.S. Peacekeeper MX missile launches from its underground silo launch facility

The German idea of an underground missile silo was adopted and developed by the United States for missile launch facilities for its intercontinental ballistic missiles. Most silos were based in Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Montana, Wyoming and other western states. The first missile launch facility was located in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, however there was a high school built on top of it in 1985. There were three main reasons behind this siting: reducing the flight trajectory between the United States and the Soviet Union, since the missiles would travel north over Canada and the North Pole; increasing the flight trajectory from SLBMs on either seaboard, giving the silos more warning time in the event of a nuclear war; and locating obvious targets as far away as possible from major population centres.[2] They had many defense systems to keep out intruders and other defense systems to prevent destruction (see Safeguard Program). In addition to the three previously-mentioned siting reasons, the US Air Force had other site requirements that were also taken into account such as, having the sites be close enough to a populace of roughly 50,000 people for community support along with making sure launch locations were far enough apart that a 10 MT detonation on or near strategic locations would not knock out other launch facilities in the area.[3] "In 1960 the US Army established the Corps of Engineers Ballistic Missile Construction Office (CEBMCO), an independent organization under the Chief of Engineers, to supervise construction".[3] This newly established organization was able to produce Minutemen Launch silos at an extremely fast rate of ~1.8 per day from 1961 to 1966 where they built a total of 1,000 Minuteman missile silos.[3]

The Atlas missiles used four different storage and launching methods.

• The first version were vertical and above ground launchers, at Vandenberg Air Force Base on the Central Coast of California.
• The second version were stored horizontally in a shed-like structure with a retractable roof, to then be raised to the vertical and launched, at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.
• The third version were stored horizontally, but better protected in a concrete building known as a "coffin", then raised to the vertical shortly before launch. These rather poorly protected designs were a consequence of the cryogenic liquid fuels used, which required the missiles to be stored unfueled and then be fueled immediately prior to launch.
• The fourth version were stored vertically in underground silos, for the Atlas F ICBM. They were fueled in the silo, and then since they could not be launched from within the silo, were raised to the surface to launch. The Titan I missile used a similar silo basing of the fourth version.

Launch facility (LF) configurations varied by U.S. missile systems.

• LGM-25C Titan II (deactivated) ICBMs were in a one ICBM launch control center (LCC) with one LF configuration (1 × 1). Titan missiles (both I and II) were located near their command and control operations personnel. Access to the missile was through tunnels connecting the launch control center and launch facility. An example of this can be seen at the Titan Missile Museum, located south of Tucson, Arizona.
• The solid fueled LGM-30 series Minuteman I, II, III, and Peacekeeper ICBM configurations consist of one LCC that controls ten LFs (1 × 10). Five LCCs and their fifty associated LFs make up a squadron. Three squadrons make up a wing. Measures were taken such that if any one LCC was disabled, a separate LCC within the squadron would take control of its ten ICBMs.
• The LGM-30 LFs and LCCs are separated by several miles, connected only electronically. This distance ensures that a nuclear attack could only disable a very small number of ICBMs, leaving the rest capable of being launched immediately.
• Dense Pack was a proposed configuration strategy for basing LGM-118 Peacekeeper ICBMs, developed under the Reagan administration, for the purpose of maximizing their survivability in case of a surprise nuclear first-strike on their silos conducted by a hostile foreign power. According to the Dense Pack strategy, a series of ten to twelve hardened silos would be grouped closely together in a line. This line of silos would generally run north-to-south, as the primary flight path for Soviet inbound nuclear ICBMs would be expected to come from the north over the North Pole. The proposed Dense Pack initiative met with strong criticism in the media and in the government, and the idea was never implemented.[4]

R-36 missile being lowered into a missile silo

The former Soviet Union had missile silos in Russia and adjacent Soviet states during the Cold War, such as the Plokštinė missile base in Lithuania. The Main Centre for Missile Attack Warning, near Solnechnogorsk outside Moscow, was completed by the Soviet Union in 1971, and remains in use by the Russian Federation.

The increase of decommissioned missile silos has led governments to sell some of them to private individuals. Some buyers convert them into unique homes, ultimate safe rooms, or use them for other purposes.

In 2000 William Leonard Pickard and a partner were convicted, in the largest lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) manufacturing case in history, of conspiracy to manufacture large quantities of LSD in a decommissioned SM-65 Atlas missile silo (548-7) near Wamego, Kansas.[7]