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Minuteman missile communications
- uhjk 2y ago[dead]
- nirav72 2y agoInteresting article. I have always been curious about how weapons systems like missiles communicate with command and control systems. Especially how the datalinks worked on cold war era systems. Not a lot of info out there. So this article was a good read.
- tonetegeatinst 2y agoBelieve it or not, ITAR regulation. https://isititar.com/ https://isititar.com/
- kejaed 2y agoAs someone who has this week been going through, in detail (is there any other way?), the American CCL and Canadian ECL, this is absolute gold. Thankfully the items in question are no longer on the USML…
- neilv 2y agoThis is hilarious. One time, I had to speak up, that something might actually be ITAR, before an imminent potential violation. I probably didn't make any new friends on that occasion, but the situation was taken seriously, and violation was averted.
- XorNot 2y agoAlso a problem for rocket propulsion content on YouTube interestingly enough.
- lb1lf 2y ago...and the less is spoken of the time I had visited a CubeSat workshop at CalPoly carrying the actual flight prototype of my university's first effort in my carry-on - for compliance testing - the better. I found out the interesting way when leaving the States that ic it goes into space, it comes with lots of ITAR red tape of which I and my university had been blissfully unaware. Being escorted onto my flight (which had been held for an hour!) by a couple of State Department officials who simply told me to sit in the first available seat when we got aboard was kind of cool, though. Instant upgrade to business class, and the pax in the vicinity probably spent the flight wondering who the heck I was and what I had been up to...
- picture 2y agoCubesat Developer's Workshop? Which year was this, if you don't mind me asking? The funny thing is that I did pretty much the same thing, I had our flight computer prototype in my hoodie pocket to fidget with (since I'm leading all the electronics for the project) but luckily we weren't travelling far and didn't get any invitations from the government folks.
- Vecr 2y agoIs that an ESD hazard? Do you have a special antistatic hoodie?
- picture 2y agoIt's not as big of an issue for us since we use nearly all consumer/industrial stuff with build in ESD protection. I was also using it as a way to stress test whether the board would develop problems from handling, temperature and humidity changes, shock and vibration, etc
- lb1lf 2y ago2004, methinks. Our first sat, NCUBE, never made it out of the launch canister once in space; the 2nd one was on a failed launch which probably made some Kazakh farmer's day very interesting - judging from the photos I saw, it seems it came down in a wheat field - but the third one deployed successfully, but at that time, alas, I had graduated.
- RCitronsBroker 2y agothis is the best thing I’ve seen today so far LOL
- sandworm101 2y agoLol. It is because many of those old "cold war" systems are still in use today.
- randall 2y agomy dad was a pm for this stuff. i have no idea what he did as he retired by the time i was 8 (92) but this was his world. anyone know anything else about this stuff? i’ve often considered trying to recreate his career path. (he died about 5 years ago.)
- toomuchtodo 2y agoSeek out roles at defense contractors related to work on the weapons systems in question.
- M3L0NM4N 2y agoI just started a software engineering job at Lockheed Martin a couple weeks ago working on communication systems. Not sure if I can say what though to be honest, and I’m going to err on the side of safety here. I’ll be working on F-22 communications in a few months when/if my program clearance comes through. Super cool so far though.
- kelp 2y agoI can't really help with what you're specifically looking for, but I'm pretty sure my grandfather worked on these as an engineer. He retired from Boeing in 1985. Died almost 20 years ago.
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoIt's honestly not too hard to go down a similar path. Defense contractors are literally always hiring and most job apps will give you a decent idea of what you are working with so you can more or less pick your poison before you even join. Of course long term you'll get moved around but you can generally pick your site (which decides what you work on).
- tamimio 2y agoVery good read, thanks for sharing it. Side note: All the pictures have the geolocation data embedded into them.
- notarealllama 2y agoA fellow exif fan I see
- tamimio 2y agoIt’s always nice to have a look at them!
- CamperBob2 2y agoThere's actually a KML link buried in the text: https://computer.rip/f/minuteman/90th-mw.kmz https://computer.rip/f/minuteman/90th-mw.kmz It will open directly in Google Earth and put you right on the scene in Armageddon, Wyoming, which appears to be roughly eighty miles south of Bumfark, Nowhere.
- lazide 2y agoIf ever there was a good place for Armageddon, it would be there.
- GrantS 2y agoCoincidentally, I just toured the South Dakota minuteman launch control facility this week [1] and it was fascinating. The park ranger giving the tour was a veteran who manned the facility decades ago — amazing stories. You need to book tickets a few months in advance but well worth it if you’re in the area to visit Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, etc. [1] Run by U.S. National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/mimi/ https://www.nps.gov/mimi/
- chromozonex 2y agoYep, I’d highly recommend this as well. We did this a year or two ago as well and it was wild how the underground facilities worked, how small they were, and how remote and nondescript they were. Highly recommend visiting these sites if you’re into history!
- darknavi 2y agoThere is a Titan II missile silo you can tour an hour out of Tucson, AZ. Also well worth it. https://www.nps.gov/places/titanmissilemuseum.htm https://www.nps.gov/places/titanmissilemuseum.htm
- underbooter 2y agoA few months in advance? I've gone to another SD site multiple times and you don't even need a ticket.
- firesteelrain 2y agoWhy do people seek to argue like this on this site? The guy isnt lying.
- Onawa 2y agoLiterally one click away from link provided by OP: Delta-01 Tour Fee and Reservations Alert, Severity, information, Delta-01 Tour Fee and Reservations All Delta-01 Launch Control Facility Tours require advanced reservations. Reservations can be made up to 90 days in advance on-line or by phone at 605-717-7629. No SAME-DAY tours available during the summer season.
- amluto 2y ago> Various options including DSL over HICS cables and radio were considered, but the current plan is to trench new fiber-optic cables across the launch fields. They're less interesting, but fiber optic cables have both capacity and reliability advantages over telephone cables, and could easily remain in service for the life of the Sentinel program. I was actually a bit surprised there was nothing about lightning and EMP suppression. I’m no expert on EMP effects, but multiple-mile-long cable loops underground seem like the kind of thing that would develop large induced currents in the presence of a varying magnetic field. Nonconductive fiber optic cables are entirely immune to these effects. And they’re less expensive than copper!
- jcrawfordor 2y agoLightning protection in these types of cables is well understood, since the telephone system contended with the same problem. Fortunately EMP effects are mostly accounted for by lightning protection, when it comes to the outside plant. There are definitely lightning arrestors where cables enter facilities, but I would wager the facilities were built with halo grounds. There is integral EMP shielding in the design of the bunkers, as well, with a steel liner surrounding the concrete.
- dredmorbius 2y agoLightning isn't the only phenomena of interest to ICBM silo ops which generates EMP.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- skhr0680 2y agoWouldn’t they have already launched before suffering any ill effects from EMP?
- ben_w 2y agoIt only takes one nuke to make an EMP that can mess up most of the continental USA, that's something which could plausibly be done as a first strike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse Now I think about it, how is the international law banning nukes in space actually enforced? E.g. if Russia just put one on a satellite and didn't tell anyone, does anyone have any way to notice?
- kens 2y agoI'm researching the Minuteman II's computer, the Autonetics D-37B/C so I figured I'd put a note here in case there is anyone else looking at it.
- twoodfin 2y agoFor anyone who hasn’t seen it, the highly hn-relevant film WarGames kicks off with a launch order scene between a MCCC and a DMCCC that doesn’t depart wildly from the description here. The rest of the film is pretty good, too! Turn your key, sir!
- wkat4242 2y agoWhat about the fake house? Was that realistic? I've always wondered. I can imagine shaping buildings like a house to fool satellites but the furnished living room looked a bit too much. I assume these bases were military territory with fences around them.
- mrguyorama 2y agoI'm from northern Maine, where we use to have Loring Air Force Base. Back during the SAC days, it was one of the primary nuclear bases in the US. It even gets nuked in Wargames! If you know the right people in town, you can get some fascinating information. At one time, supposedly most of the nuclear weapons in the US passed through Loring. There was a large field area that had bunkers dug into it that held nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. There were many more bunkers than weapons needing storage, so that you could rotate the munitions constantly so that the Ruskies would have to guess which bunker to nuke. On top of this field full of bunkers was a bunch of buildings that looked very boring, and were supposedly made to look like "boring" military buildings. One building was a large concrete cube. About 40 ft on all sides. It was supposed to represent something like a small schoolhouse. It was designed to contain the detonators for the bombs. It supposedly had 4ft thick reinforced concrete walls. It was supposed to be able to survive a near direct strike. This all made a lot more sense back in the 60s when bombs were less accurate, smaller, and satellite intel was significantly more limited. https://maps.app.goo.gl/rauEmMeHagTpVgGQA https://maps.app.goo.gl/rauEmMeHagTpVgGQA this is the location I describe above. If you look to the south-west of the runways, you can see a similar road layout where some base-housing used to be. The bunker area was meant to be hard to distinguish from those from a spyplane or early satellite.
- ben_w 2y agoThinking of (possibly) fake building, was noodling around Google Maps looking for some interesting walks in my area, and found these surprisingly widely spaced groups of buildings: https://maps.app.goo.gl/K5MMuAdLtZ63hL8Y8?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy https://maps.app.goo.gl/K5MMuAdLtZ63hL8Y8?g_st=com.google.ma... Might well be totally mundane, but it sure seems odd to me with my complete lack of knowledge about civil engineering.
- justinator 2y agoCrazy that the communication system doesn't seem to be that much more advanced than tin cans and a string when compared to modern day. Guess the same can be said for the weapons themselves.
- ocdtrekkie 2y agoIt is just a different set of requirements. They don't need to stream Netflix but they need to survive nuclear war. Simpler, lower bandwidth systems are much more "advanced" in this context, and much more repairable on-site.
- justinator 2y agoGood points.
- Mistletoe 2y agohttp://www.airtalk.com/z_ref-4_1.html http://www.airtalk.com/z_ref-4_1.html For people like me that didn’t understand why the cables are pressurized.
- stoperaticless 2y agoRelevant quote: > This is the basic premise of cable pressurization: Keep the pressure within the cable in excess of the pressure that could be applied by standing water.
- chiph 2y agoTo keep groundwater out. it's common to use nitrogen, but the LCC would be hard to resupply with tanks[0], so (based on the photos) they used air that had been dried. Story time: The airbase I was stationed at in Germany had been built by the French, prior to their partial departure from NATO[1]. There was a buried cable on base that went bad while I was there. It was pressurized but apparently the hole in the casing/jacket was large and admitted more water than could be kept out by the nitrogen. So the airmen of the outside plant had to use their TDR[2] to find the fault and dig it up to repair it. To their surprise it turned out to have paper insulation[3], as it was made before plastic began to be widely used in wiring. It also had swastikas printed on it - because the French had used captured Nazi war-surplus cable when they built the base in the late 1940's. [0] It would be hard to maneuver large & heavy steel cylinders down the entrance, through the blast doors, and satisfy the security concerns of the LCC crew that they were legit. And then remove the empties afterwards back through all that. The cylinders can not be stored on the surface, for security reasons and because the buildings would no longer be present after an attack. [1] https://shape.nato.int/page214871012 https://shape.nato.int/page214871012 [2] Time-domain reflectometer. It's like radar for wiring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-domain_reflectometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-domain_reflectometer [3] The water soaked much of the paper for quite a distance in either direction of the hole. So they ended up replacing a rather long piece of cable instead of just putting in a splice junction. Lots of digging & cursing needed.
- topspin 2y agoPerhaps also to detect tampering? Sudden pressure drop will attract attention.
- tshtf 2y agoThis video depicts a relatively modern Minuteman launch sequence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWZXinRwCaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWZXinRwCaE
- _joel 2y agoHandy place if you get caught short, at least if there was a roll - https://computer.rip/f/minuteman/teleprinter.jpg https://computer.rip/f/minuteman/teleprinter.jpg
- themadturk 2y agoThe link in the article to the Minuteman missile website [0] kept me busy for a couple of hours Saturday afternoon. Good stuff! [0]https://minutemanmissile.com https://minutemanmissile.com