On February 9th at approximately 23:01 local time the United States Air Force test launched and unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. The test was carried out from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California. The missile’s re-entry vehicle traveled about 4,200 miles (6,759.24 KM) to the west and landed near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The test comes amid the highest level of tension the world has seen between nuclear powers in decades. But an Air Force spokesman insisted the test was not in response to any specific events. “Such tests have occurred over 300 times before, and this test is not the result of current world events,” the spokesman said. The spokesman added that the US will continue to operate the Minuteman-III in to the 2030s as it’s slowly replaced by the new Sentinel ICBM.
