Nobody wants a nuke in their backyard, but America's nuclear missiles have to go somewhere.
So the military keeps many of them here, basically the middle of nowhere, scattered across nearly
10,000 square miles of remote ranch lands and wind farms in Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska.
The missiles are underground.
Each launch facility occupies just a small, fenced-in patch of land, not much bigger
than a soccer field.
You'd barely notice if you drove past one, unless somebody pointed it out to you.
But someone will definitely let you know if you've wandered too close.
That patch of land is some of the most heavily guarded real estate in the world.
About two hours from the nearest Air Force Base, this unassuming, isolated outpost is
the base of operations for the Air Force's solitary sentinels.
It's early Monday morning at F.E. Warren Air Force Base.
These security forces airmen are going through a pre-deployment briefing, but they're not
headed on a six-month trip to Afghanistan.
They're going to spend the next three days out in the missile field.
Three days a week, every week, away from family, friends, and the outside world.
That kind of constant detachment can lead to distraction, so they come here to get everyone's
mind focused on the mission at hand.
Control your radio volume.
Right before they go out to the field, we try and place an emphasis on launch facility,
recapture recovery, joint operations, how we can work with other agencies on base.
Senior Airman Jacob Peterson, Senior Airman Kendra Walker, and Airman First Class Thomas
Hunick will form a team that will be guarding one of the 15 missile alert facilities out
in the field.
Each facility has control of 10 nuclear-armed Minuteman missiles, and these cops are the
ones who protect them.
They take this training seriously.
They're the first in the fight and last ones to leave.
As the first responders, if they don't know what they're doing, everything else will just
collapse as they follow up.
Another presence alone can be a deterrent to any threats.
The night before heading out to the field, Senior Airman Jacob Peterson is at home, packing
his things and enjoying a little playtime with his daughter.
Jacob and his wife Nancy have learned how to cope with his constant trips to the missile
fields, even with a small child at home and another one on the way.
We're really used to it now.
At the beginning, when I first started, it was rough to get into the routine.
It's a different kind of life, it really is.
It's nice not to miss a large amount of time, and just, you know, I'm gone for a couple
of days and then I come back, so whatever I miss, I'm going to be able to see it when
I come back, you know, so it's not too much.
When she came, the routine changed, of course, but other than that, I mean, once this one
comes, it'll be another change, but, I mean, we'll get used to it, we'll adapt.
I mean, that's just how it is.
Being away from his family so much is still tough, but for Jacob, having the support of
his loved ones makes all the difference.
That's red.
I guess a lot of my family and my friends think it's kind of cool that we're out there
and we protect the nation's number one resource, you know, that thing that everyone is scared
of, you know, it's that reason that no one messes with the United States and we're out
there protecting it, so they respect that.
It's a pretty big deal, I think, I really do.
In the morning, the cops of the 90th Security Forces Squadron get ready for their trip to
the missile fields.
That includes picking up all the weapons, ammo, and gear they'll take with them.
At Guard Mount, the cops are assigned to teams and told which missile alert facilities they'll
be guarding.
So, Julie Dayes, Walker, Peterson, Hewney.
Walker, Peterson, and Hewney are headed out to site Juliet.
This is where they'll spend the next 72 hours, the missile alert facility.
One of their main jobs will be protecting these guys.
These are the missileeers, sitting some 75 feet below ground in a nuclear bomb-proof
bunker.
They're the ones in control of the missiles.
And should the president ever give the order, they'll be the ones launching them.
It's an almost incomprehensible responsibility, but these officers take it in stride.
They tell you you're going to be responsible for weapons on alert, but when the first time
you come down here and actually sign the paper saying I'm responsible for these 10 ICBMs,
I have control of these weapons right now, it's a little nerve-racking the first time.
It gets easier as you go on, you still have to really pay attention to everything you're
doing, but it gets a little easier day-to-day, you realize that everything's safe, they have
lots of safeguards in place to prevent anything happening to the weapons system or anything
else out here.
Lieutenant Drum monitors some of those safeguards, like sensors that can tell if someone or something
has gotten inside a launch site.
If an alarm goes off, the missile officer calls the cops on the alert response team
on the top side, who's spring into action.
Senior Airman Peterson and Airman 1st Class HUNIC are responding to an alarm at one of
the missile sites, but they have to find it first.
Pretty flat out here, so there's really not a lot of landmarks that you can go off of.
It's hard enough to see out of the Humvees to begin with, and then some of the road signs
are really hard to read, and we're always in a hurry no matter where we're going, where
there's two alarms or whatnot, so the person in the patch seat really has to be on point
and getting in the road map and figuring out which direction we need to be at at all times.
The team doesn't know exactly what is causing the alarm.
It could be a team of foreign commandos, or just a jackrabbit.
They don't take any chances, first checking out the site through binoculars for any suspicious
activity.
Then Airman HUNIC sprints up the access road to the site, while Airman Peterson provides
cover from the Humvee.
HUNIC then secures the exterior of the site before signaling his partner to advance.
Once inside, HUNIC performs an extensive sweep of the area looking for anything out of the
ordinary.
Peterson continues to watch over his partner.
They leave nothing to chance.
Airman Peterson and HUNIC aren't the only ones securing the site.
Back at the control center, Senior Airman Kendra Walker maintains constant communication
with the response team, while keeping an eye on them and their surroundings via remote
security cameras.
If we have an alarm kick off, I can pull up the history.
I can see what was on site.
I can follow them around.
It has a pan-silt zoom, so it follows it.
It actually tracks its movements.
That's good trips.
Stand by please.
So, it's useful.
It's actually going on.
It helps you watch your 12th team and make sure no one is trying to get up behind them
or something.
If Airman Walker does see a threat, she can radio back to base for heavily armed reinforcements
who will arrive by helicopter within minutes.
Stealing one of these nukes would be like trying to rob Fort Knox.
It's just not going to happen.
But because these are nuclear weapons, extremely improbable scenarios are treated like imminent
threats.
Here you go.
That's good.
You've got to keep your edge.
One thing about the missile field is chances are you're never going to encounter a hostile
out here.
But you can't lose that edge because it's such an important job that if there ever was
to be anyone here that you've got to be on the top of your game, as long as we're pessimistic,
the world's safe.
We're wrong every time.
It's good because we've got to expect people out here if we're not no one else's.
That's pretty much what we're trained for is just to be ready for anything.
To alarm could be wildlife, but there as well could be people on site protesting.
I mean, you never know.
Someone might be there beating on the launcher with a sledgehammer.
It's happened.
So you've got to clear your head and just be on the game all the time, pretty much.
After they've completed their checklists and secured the site, the team must wait for the
missile officers back in the capsule to reset all the alarms.
Once they've been given the go ahead, the team can head back to the missile alert facility.
And that's the most excitement the team is likely to see during their shift.
Most of the job is just sitting, waiting, watching.
It can get pretty monotonous spending days at a time away from family, urgently responding
to false alarms and protecting something that's already pretty impenetrable.
It's not for everybody, and it takes a special kind of airmen to keep watch over the most
devastating weapons system on the planet.
I know a lot of people look down on missile field.
Nobody really wants to come out here, but I think that's what makes it what it is.
The fact that we don't really want to be out here, but we're out here all the time, 24-7-365,
protecting this resource, it's a big deal.
For today's Air Force, reporting from F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming,
I'm tech sergeant Nicholas Kurtz.
