The era of the missile that won the Cold War is officially over.
The Peacekeeper, guarder of American soil since 1988, stands no longer. The last of the nation's 50-missile stockpile sits in a warehouse at Hill Air Force Base, where workers were busy Thursday dismantling it.
"This is the world's most powerful weapon that was never fired, yet won a war," Col. Michael J. Carey, commander of the 90th Space Wing, said at a ceremony thanking Hill employees for maintaining the missile since it became operational in 1988.
The United States started removing the Peacekeeper from its intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal in 2002 after President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to reduce their country's respective missile forces from 6,000 to between 1,700 and 2,200.
Parts from the dismantled 50 Peacekeepers have been shipped across the country. Its nuclear warheads will be under the Energy Department's watch.
Hill will keep 63 Peacekeeper motors in bunkers both on the base and at Oasis on the Utah Test and Training Range, said Brenda Chatlin, chief of missile maintenance support at the 309th Maintenance Wing. Workers at Hill will keep the motors operational because the Defense Department will likely find another mission for them, possibly to launch satellites to test new weapons systems, said Col. Michael D. Altom, commander of Hill's 309th Missile Maintenance Group.
"There is still a mission for Peacekeeper," Altom said. "It's not done."
At its operational peak, the Peacekeeper had enough firepower to destroy hardened missile silos and command bunkers. Each missile carried up to 10 independently targeted nuclear warheads.
In a letter to all Air Force personnel who worked on the Peacekeeper weapons system, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the Peacekeeper ushered in a "new era of nuclear deterrence" that leaves the United States with a "distinguished legacy of security. Our nation prevailed over a determined Soviet adversary with the close of the Cold War, and the Peacekeeper played an important role in that monumental achievement," Rumsfeld wrote.
Day-to-day life at Hill will not change with the deactivation of the Peacekeeper, Altom said. Workers that once specialized in Peacekeeper maintenance will now shift gears and focus on the 500 Minuteman III missiles Hill maintains. The Minuteman missile is the only land-based ICBM remaining in the nation's nuclear arsenal.
Each Peacekeeper cost the Air Force an estimated $70,000 to build. Without the missile in the nation's arsenal, Air Force officials expect to save more than $600 million through 2010.
"The Peacekeeper helped change the course of history," said John Clay of Northrup Grumman. "The Peacekeeper helped demonstrate to the Soviet Union that the United States had the political will to match the Soviet's nuclear buildup," he said, adding, "Victory was achieved without a single missile launched in anger."
E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com
