Sahuarita, Arizona -- “I will end misguided defense policies,” Barack Obama said last February. “I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems. . . . I will not develop new nuclear weapons.”
Obama’s words -- delivered during the primary season to an organization that seeks to cut Pentagon spending in favor of increases for education and healthcare -- come to mind easily here, at the Titan Missile Museum, in the Arizona desert about 20 miles south of Tucson. I’ve come to Arizona on a family visit, and, faced with the perennial question of what one does the weekend after Thanksgiving, my wife and I have found ourselves staring into the hardened silo of a missile that could have delivered a nine-megaton nuclear warhead anywhere in the old Soviet Union -- 30 minutes from Sahuarita to Moscow. Taking it in, you develop a deeper appreciation for the role that places like this, and the men and women who served in them, played in winning the Cold War. Derided as the product of “misguided defense policies” by the Obamas of yesteryear, this site, in the middle of nowhere, is truly a historic place. When you talk about peace through strength, here it is.
The Titan II missile was the largest nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile ever in the U.S. fleet. Just over 100 feet long, powered by two liquid-fuel rocket engines, it was the same vehicle used to launch the Gemini manned space missions in the mid-1960s. The warhead was also the biggest ever on an American missile, the nine-megaton load dwarfing anything in the U.S. arsenal today.
#ad#At one point, there were 54 Titan missile silos in the United States, concentrated in Arizona, Arkansas, and Kansas. Now, this site, which was first armed in 1963 and stayed on duty until 1982, is the only one left; all the rest have been abandoned and destroyed, the result of technological progress and arms-control agreements. But this one, known to the Air Force as Silo 571-7, has been preserved nearly exactly as it was. The missile, of course, is non-functional, the warhead removed (a small rectangular hole has been cut in the nose just to prove it is inactive). The massive, 760-ton silo closure door -- designed to protect the Titan from a nearby nuclear hit -- is left permanently half-open.
#page#To say the site is nondescript would be an exaggeration. It’s barely there. The only building in the area is the one built to house the museum’s offices, a small exhibit, and a tiny store. The silo door is painted desert tan and blends into the surroundings. There’s a 1960s-era jeep and a couple of vintage cars parked around, plus a display of the tanker vehicles used in the tricky operation of loading the missile with highly volatile liquid fuel. That, plus a door leading 55 steps down to the missile control area, is pretty much it.
#ad#When you tour the site, your first stop underground is the control room. You won’t find a nicer example of mid-century technology, with its institutional green consoles, old-fashioned indicator lights and rotary phones. “It looks exactly like it did,” says Yvonne Morris, the museum’s director who, as a young Air Force first lieutenant, commanded a missile crew here in the early 1980s. “We’ve had young people look at the dial phone and say, ‘What’s that?’”
If a missile had ever been launched from here, it would have required two officers turning two old-fashioned brass keys (normally kept in the red emergency war orders safe) after going through a list of safeguards that must be heard to be believed. It’s fair to say that this was a job that required more care than any other in the world, and visitors here get to see just how many safety measures there were.
But the bigger message of this site is what it says about American power and its role in the Cold War. “The mission of the Titan II was peace through deterrence,” Morris told me. “What it was supposed to do, in simple terms, was to be the biggest, baddest missile on the block, to show the former Soviet Union that if you launch us against us, we will retaliate.” This place is a monument to the success of Mutual Assured Destruction.
The museum is run by the Arizona Aeronautical Foundation, and one of the most impressive things about it is that it doesn’t preach to its visitors. If you’re looking for an anti-nuclear message, you won’t find it here. If you’re looking for an endorsement of any defense policy today, you won’t find that, either. What you will find is a group of people -- the guides here are astonishingly well-versed in seemingly everything about the place -- who want to preserve something that played an important role in winning the Cold War. They clearly love the place.
And so do many of the 50,000 people who visit each year. “Generally what happens is a group of people will arrive here at the museum, and one or two of them really wanted to come,” Morris told me, “and they basically dragged along everybody else who is with them. The folks who are along for the ride expect to be bored and for it to be tedious, and 98 percent of the time, when they are done with the tour, they go from being bored to being interested.”
That’s what happens when you encounter something you’ve heard about all your life but have never actually seen. And even though the museum’s guides don’t sermonize, it’s hard to leave the Titan II silo without appreciating the benefits that come from having the world’s best defense. You also appreciate the people who made it possible. And worry about what’s happening today.
At one time, the silo’s quaint control consoles were state-of-the-art, and, from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, they weren’t put there by presidents who promised to kill or slow the development of new weapons systems. In the 45 years since this silo went online, weapons have moved forward many generations. Now the cutting edge is in missile defense -- programs that President-elect Obama will be under great pressure to kill.
In an Oval Office interview a few weeks ago, I asked President Bush for his reaction to Obama’s pledge quoted at the beginning of this article. He said he will wait to see what an Obama administration actually does, but he was emphatic in support of missile defense. “This system has developed way beyond where it stood in 2001,” the president said, “to the point where we were able to take a tumbling satellite out of orbit with one shot off an Aegis cruiser. So I hope that when people fully analyze the capabilities and understand that there is an important check against certain regimes’ ambitions…[that they realize] a missile defense system is a tool, a part of a series of tools a president can be able to use to effect the advance of liberty for the sake of peace.”
That’s what the Titan II was in its time. And that is the lesson of Silo 571-7.