Minuteman III Destroyed Mid-Flight During Test Launch

RT Air Force Magazine @AFA.org, Thursday 8.2.18

"The Air Force destroyed an unarmed Minuteman III following a test launch early Tuesday at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., when it developed an “anomaly” during flight, the head of US Strategic Command said Wednesday. An Air Force crew launched the missile for a routine test Tuesday, and at first it “was perfect,” US Strategic Command boss Gen. John Hyten said Wednesday at the STRATCOM Deterrence Symposium in Omaha, Neb. “It came out of the hole just fine, but somewhere in flight we saw an anomaly,” Hyten said. That anomaly created an “unsafe flight condition” so the crew decided to destroy the rocket before it reached its destination, Hyten said. Failures such as this are rare, with the last one occurring in July 2011, and “this is the reason that we test,” he said. Now “we have to go figure out what happened” and learn more about the Minuteman III fleet to make it safer and more effective in the future. “We test because we’ve got to make sure things work … and make sure missiles are safe, secure, and reliable,” Hyten said. —Brian Everstine "

A Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launches for a test on Aug. 2, 2017. A similar test of a Minuteman III was aborted, and the missile destroyed, on Tuesday. Air Force photo by SrA. Ian Dudley

"This is the reason that we test … we test because we've got to make sure things work … and make sure missiles are safe, secure, and reliable."  ~Gen. John Hyten, US Strategic Command

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