The Air Force at 3:14 a.m. today, local time, successfully launched a Minuteman III ICBM from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. It was unarmed and fitted with three dummy re-entry vehicles. The unarmed RVs flew 4,200 miles before hitting their pre-determined targets at the Reagan Test Site in the Marshall Islands. According to a USAF release, the launch was part of an operational test “to determine the weapon system’s reliability and accuracy.” It “also exercised US Strategic Command’s Airborne Launch Control System, which flies on a Navy E-6B Mercury aircraft. The launch authority was the 576th Flight Test Squadron at Vandenberg.
Northrop Grumman test fired its newest solid rocket motor Dec. 4, part of an internally funded effort to rapidly design and build SRMs using advanced manufacturing techniques.
