Stripes: MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, North Dakota— Throughout the agricultural fields that dominate North Dakota,150 Minuteman III nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles are encased in silos in the ground.
Each silo contains one missile, dug into deep holes on private farmlands, three to 10 miles apart. From the air, the silos are hard to detect.
But the positions are in the open, except for an antenna and some fencing, so the sites are often approached by animals or non-threatening drones, said Col. Jason Beers, commander of the 91st Security Forces command at the base.
“There are a lot of [unmanned aerial vehicles] with commercial farming,” he said.
The base hasn’t had a security issue with drones at the silos, though there isn’t a lot they can do if they did, Beers said.
“It’s not restricted airspace,” he said.
The proliferation of drones in the United States and the potential security threat that they pose to the nuclear facilities, nuclear weapons storage areas and military installations has gained the attention of the Pentagon and Congress, a defense official told Stars and Stripes on the condition of anonymity.
“It’s certainly got more attention as it has become more common among our adversaries,” the official said. “Even [the Islamic State group] has played with UAVs.”
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing potential defenses against an intruding drone, as are several private companies. The challenge is many of the methods that could be used to defend against a drone – whether shooting it down or disabling it with a laser or electronic or radio interference – could also harm nearby infrastructure or other aircraft.
But the Pentagon will also need the authority to contain or shoot down drones near the silos. Gaining the authorities and creating policy to defend silos against drones is a concern of Gen. Robin Rand, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command.
At the Air Force’s annual convention last week, Rand told reporters the proliferation of drones has the service working on options to best to protect the missile silos, bombers and weapons storage facilities under his care.
“I will tell you there have been recent examples of extended [UAVs] over some areas that we don’t particularly like them to be on — I’m not comfortable with that,” he said.
But the policy to deal with it has to come from multiple agencies that have jurisdiction, including the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and others, Rand said.
“It’s not just something where I can tell the guys to go out and take a shotgun and point it up and shoot down something flying over,” he said. “We as a nation need to deal with this potential emerging threat.”
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Alabama, introduced legislation in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act to require the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, which is responsible for securing the nation’s nuclear material and weapons and energy programs, to get started on a solution.
“Some of my colleagues and I have been tracking how these systems could pose a threat to national security. [UAV] incursions and unauthorized overflights of critical defense facilities continue to increase — and, unfortunately, the laws and regulations governing these things haven’t kept up,” Rogers said.
The bill passed the House, but is still being negotiated in the Senate.
“We have to face the fact that yes, the possibility exists” that a UAV could be used to attack a U.S. nuclear facility, Rand said. “We need to be able to deal with it.”
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Then there is Hillary:
Clinton Privately Opposed Major U.S. Nuclear Upgrade
Dem nominee breaks with key Obama defense policy in previously unreleased recording
FreeBeacon: Hillary Clinton privately told supporters this year that she would likely scrap a major upgrade to the United States’ nuclear weapons program, according to leaked audio of her remarks.
At a private event in McLean, Va., in February, Clinton revealed that she would likely cancel plans to upgrade the nation’s cruise missile arsenal. “I certainly would be inclined to do that,” she told a questioner who asked about rolling back the Long Range Stand-Off (LRSO) missile program.
Audio of Clinton’s comments at a gathering of major campaign supporters in February were revealed by hackers who breached the email account of a campaign staffer. One email released by the hackers contained a recording of Clinton’s remarks and a subsequent question-and-answer session.
The LRSO question came from Andy Weber, a former assistant secretary of defense who oversaw the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons programs. He and William Perry, who served as secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton, called for the cancellation of the LRSO program last year.“Will you cancel this program if President Obama doesn’t in the next 11 months and lead the world in a ban on this particularly destabilizing, dangerous type of nuclear weapon?” Weber asked at around 39:00 in the recording.
Clinton said she would be “inclined” to do so. “The last thing we need are sophisticated cruise missiles that are nuclear armed,” she said.
Her campaign did not respond when asked if her position has changed since then.
Canceling the LRSO program would be a major break from Obama administration policy, which has placed significant emphasis on the missile as a key component of its wide-ranging efforts to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
About 1,000 LRSO missiles are scheduled to replace the Air Force’s Air-Launched Cruise Missiles (ALCMs) by 2030. The ALCM program has formed a key component of U.S. nuclear deterrence policy since the early 1980s.
The Air Force released long-awaited requests for proposals from defense contractors in July. It estimated that the government will pay $17 billion for a new arsenal of LRSO missiles, though critics have pegged the cost at as much as $30 billion.
Emails released by the State Department in response to Freedom of Information Act requests show that Clinton was briefed on aspects of the LRSO debate while serving as secretary of state.
After a November 2010 meeting between high-level Pentagon officials and former Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.), then the Senate’s third-ranking Republican, the State Department’s top legislative affairs official informed Clinton and top aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin that the administration was “committed to LRSO.”
Clinton has appeared unfamiliar with details of the Obama administration’s plans for nuclear weapons modernization in statements since then. Clinton avoided a straight answer when asked about those plans at a campaign event in January, but expressed skepticism.
“Do you oppose plans to spend a trillion dollars on an entire new generation of nuclear weapons systems that will enrich the military contractors and set off a new global arms race?” she was asked.
Clinton responded, “Yeah I’ve heard about that. I’m going to look into that. That doesn’t make sense to me.”
Former Air Force launch officer John Noonan disagreed with Clinton’s opposition to the LRSO program and other aspects of the Obama administration’s nuclear modernization efforts. But he is skeptical that Clinton will actually follow through on that opposition.
“There’s been tremendous advancements in Russian and Chinese cruise missiles, coupled with an atrophy in American capability,” noted Noonan, a former Jeb Bush campaign aide critical of both Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“The Obama Administration, to their credit, has acknowledged this and have budgeted for the LRSO,” he said. “A President Clinton’s Pentagon will be faced with the same tough reality.”
As for Clinton’s remarks to Weber in February, Noonan guessed that she was “just petting a donor on the head and telling him he’s pretty.”
Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson concluded a three-day trip to Turkey, where he visited a refugee camp, reviewed resettlement processing, spoke to a number of Syrian and Iraqi refugee families, met with government officials in Istanbul and Ankara to discuss a range of homeland security-related issues, and signed two bilateral accords to codify mutual commitment to deepen collaboration.
