[Peace] A new U.S. ICBM Test Launch Draws Oposition

[lc]

  More money to weapons manufactures.




FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Monday, February 17, 2025

A New U.S. ICBM Test Launch Draws Opposition

For further information, contact: info at defusenuclearwar.org

The U.S. Air Force has announced it will test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) between 11 p.m. PT on February 18 and 5 a.m. PT February 19. During such tests, which occur several times a year, the missiles are launched from the Vandenberg base near Lompoc, Calif., and aimed at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Activists with the Defuse Nuclear War coalition will gather near Vandenberg Space Force Base to witness and protest the test.

The protesters have issued the following statement:

These launches are wasteful and dangerous. Rather than promoting peace, they further normalize ICBMs as a permanent feature of global politics, rather than a tremendous political and security liability. We ask that the upcoming ICBM test, and all future scheduled tests, be canceled.

ICBMs have been sold to the public as the ultimate insurance policy, when in fact they are an immediate threat to public safety. In the words of the late Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine, these weapons increase “the danger that any armed conflict between major nuclear states can escalate to all-out war.” Once launched, an ICBM cannot be recalled, virtually guaranteeing a strike on the country that launches them and placing impossible pressure on decision makers to verify that reports of incoming ICBM attacks are accurate. As long as ICBMs exist, we live with the constant risk that misinterpreted intelligence, human error, or a single rash decision could end civilization as we know it within an hour.

Maintaining these weapons is a huge waste of resources. The U.S. has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars to replace its ICBM force under the mandate of modernization. The ICBM program is now at least 81% over budget and years behind schedule, with parts of the program now paused entirely. Yet the U.S. Secretary of Defense has certified, through a “comprehensive, unbiased review” not shared with the public, that the program will proceed.

Test launches damage human communities and ecosystems. The Marshall Islands, already forced to bear the overwhelming environmental costs of U.S. nuclear weapons testing, are still used as a target test area. And, when tensions among nuclear-armed states are high, each test launch carries an added risk of misinterpretation. The U.S. military has acknowledged as much by pausing these launches at high points of tension during the war in Ukraine. Yet the risk of nuclear escalation remains too high to introduce the possibility of misinterpretation of a test into the mix.

President Trump has stated his interest in pursuing arms control with China and Russia. Halting tests explicitly designed to demonstrate the United States’ ability to attack these countries with nuclear weapons, and ending a troubled weapons program that experts agree destabilizes these relationships, would be real, practical steps to facilitate that goal.

Organizers MacGregor Eddy and Leah Yantanon are available for interviews and comments. They can be contacted at info at defusenuclearwar.org.    
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