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.
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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.
