Peacekeeper (MX) Missile System at F.E. Warren Air Force Base
The Peacekeeper missile was the most powerful land-based intercontinental ballistic missile ever placed on alert by the United States, and F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming was the only operational home it ever had. Developed during the final decade of the Cold War as the MX missile, the LGM-118A Peacekeeper represented a major modernization of the ground-based leg of America's nuclear triad. It was designed for greater accuracy, greater payload capacity, and a more advanced launch system than earlier ICBMs.
Peacekeeper grew out of a long and controversial debate over how to base a new generation of American missiles. Early concepts considered mobile or highly protected basing systems, but cost, politics, arms-control concerns, and changing strategic conditions led to a different solution: deploying Peacekeeper in modified Minuteman missile silos in the existing F.E. Warren missile field. The first Peacekeeper was deployed at F.E. Warren in December 1986, and by 1988 fifty missiles were on alert under the 400th Missile Squadron.
The Peacekeeper force occupied five converted missile flights: Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, and Tango. From these facilities, missile crews, security forces, maintainers, communications specialists, and support personnel carried out one of the most technically demanding missions in Strategic Air Command and later Air Force Space Command. Each Peacekeeper missile could carry up to ten independently targetable reentry vehicles, giving a single missile the ability to strike multiple targets. It also used a "cold launch" system, ejecting the missile from the silo before first-stage ignition.
Although Peacekeeper was built to strengthen deterrence, its operational life was shortened by the end of the Cold War and the changing arms-control environment of the 1990s and early 2000s. The United States began deactivating the Peacekeeper force in 2002, and the last missiles were removed from strategic alert in 2005. On September 19, 2005, the Peacekeeper mission formally ended at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, closing a 19-year chapter in American ICBM history.
Today, the clearest public window into the Peacekeeper era is Quebec-01, a former Missile Alert Facility north of Cheyenne. Built originally as a Minuteman launch-control facility and later converted for Peacekeeper service, Quebec-01 has been preserved as a Wyoming State Historic Site and designated a National Historic Landmark. It stands as the only accessible Peacekeeper Missile Alert Facility left in the world, preserving the story of the missile, the people who operated it, and the Cold War landscape that once surrounded F.E. Warren Air Force Base.
Peacekeeper Missile Locations and Coordinates
General Information about F.E. Warren Air Force Base
Missile Deployed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base