Posted on 04/26/2017 8:36:24 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
FOT&E (Fleetwide Operational Testing and Evaluation) missile launches are a routine part of Minuteman operations. Typically we test two or so missiles a year randomly selected from the 450 remaining (soon to be 400) Minuteman IIIs on alert.
The warheads are removed obviously and replaces with an instrumented reentry vehicle.
LOL - one of the biggest challenges for a new FA lieutenant (back in the day)at Fort Sill was learning how to set up the aiming circle and use the firing point data to lay the battery to ensure the rounds went in the impact area instead of Medicine Park. Wonder if they still teach that, given the GPS whiz-bang technology on board the M109-series? Guess they still need it for the towed pieces.
Not that your MSM would ever tell ya. Of course, you’d get the “breaking bulletin” on some drunken actor who got arrested.
“That doesn’t look like a flying Twinkie...”
Cool, an OT shot. They don’t do these as often as they did before the early 90s but they are still a scheduled operational requirement.
I witnessed one in 77 from the top of the hills overlooking the launch facility. Impressive, especially at dusk when you watch the missile start up out of the hole with flames licking the body of the missile and then the flash when it clears the hole and accelerates out to Kwajalein atoll.
Gave a good sense of what would have happened if we ever had to turn the keys and it sends a message to the hostile nations as well.
Its called a dry dock shelter.
Around 2001 I was standing in front of my girlfriend’s home in San Jose. I read on FR that there was going to be a Minuteman missile test out of Vandenberg, so I looked south, on a lark.
Certainly something that far away would not be visible, I thought. I was very wrong.
The enormous contrail was not only visible, but as it ascended and went through the different levels of the atmosphere it reflected different colors, so it looked like a giant rainbow.
A giant rainbow of freedom and awesomeness, that is.
I got a sense of pride at that moment that no lefty hipster will ever feel.
That depends on whether the Norks have upgraded their AAA radars. It’s been known for almost two decades that if you datalink your radars to create a virtual Very Large Array, you actually *can* see a stealth aircraft on radar. Not well enough to get a missile lock, but enough to know there’s something up there and vector fighters to go say hello. And the B-2 is subsonic.
Fascinating post and one of the reasons I love this site. I had no idea such a thing could be done.
HARM’s away!
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW??
“That doesn’t look like a flying Twinkie...”
Did you hear how mad the Norks got when some South Koreans loaded balloons with Choco-pies, the South Korean equivalent of Moon Pies, and floated them to their starving cousins north of the border? The Norks threatened to shell the spot where the balloons were launched.
Judging from Kim Jong-un’s girth, I suspect he got rid of the Choco-pies his troops captured by eating them.
” I wonder how much that is costing Kim each time he does it?”
A modified version of the Reagan Doctrine, troll him the point that he depletes his entire arsenal and whatever capital they have left.
Troll him till he’s broke.
“Hory sh!t! I so ronery.”
Isn’t that how the F-117 was downed over Bosnia? Triangulation using cell phones signals or microwave or some such I do not recall. All I know is they managed to locate it and bring it down and now all F-117’s are in an underground cemetery in Nevada or something like that.
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