Minuteman Launch Facility Q-11 (Quebec-11 LF), Chugwater Wyoming

Q-11 was the last launch facility in Quebec Flight, but it was never a small part of the story. From the surface it read as a fenced Wyoming ranchland compound: a gate, power poles, security lighting, a raised launcher area, and an azimuth marker standing in grass. Beneath that plain surface was the final silo in one of the five F.E. Warren flights converted for Peacekeeper, the missile that made an old Minuteman launch field into the United States' only operational LGM-118A Peacekeeper missile field.

Launch Facility Q-11 was an unmanned missile silo / Launch Facility in Quebec Flight, controlled from Q-01, the Quebec 01 Missile Alert Facility / Launch Control Facility. The site belonged to the F.E. Warren Air Force Base missile field, the 90th Strategic Missile Wing during the Strategic Air Command era, and the 400th Strategic Missile Squadron / later 400th Missile Squadron during the Minuteman and Peacekeeper years. It was originally built for LGM-30B Minuteman I, later served in the LGM-30G Minuteman III force, and was then converted for the LGM-118A Peacekeeper.

The site is located in Laramie County, Wyoming, north of Cheyenne and south of the Chugwater area. Public Peacekeeper site-photo documentation identifies the site as Francis E. Warren AF Missile Site Q-11, Permanent Installation Number 8695, Installation Location Code GHYU, at 41-38-26, 104-54-54. Q-11 is inactive and decommissioned; it was part of the former Peacekeeper launch-facility group selected for post-retirement elimination and disposition.

Q-11 stood in the high-plains missile landscape northwest of Cheyenne, in the southern portion of Quebec Flight's former launch-facility pattern. Its location near open ranchland and rural roads reflected the basic logic of Minuteman and Peacekeeper basing: disperse hardened launchers across enough distance that a single strike could not easily destroy an entire flight, yet keep them connected to a launch-control center through hardened communications and support systems.

As a Launch Facility, Q-11 was normally unmanned. Missile combat crews served at Q-01's underground Launch Control Center, while maintenance teams, security forces, communications personnel, and other specialists visited Q-11 as required. The aboveground compound did not need to look dramatic because its primary military value was underground: a hardened launch structure connected to the field's command-and-control network.

Public exterior photographs taken in 2013 show Q-11 as a fenced former Peacekeeper launch compound with a gravel access road, entry gate, perimeter fencing, multiple utility/light poles, a raised launcher area, and an azimuth marker post. Those photos matter because ordinary Peacekeeper launch facilities were not preserved as public museums; many were later filled, altered, sold, transferred, or otherwise absorbed back into the rural landscape after arms-control elimination.

Q-11 is inactive and decommissioned. Public access should not be assumed.

For the full Quebec Flight narrative, see Q-01 Missile Alert Facility / Launch Control Center

Chronology

Read about the Peacekeeper Missile at F.E. Warren AFB

All Peacekeeper Missile Silo Locations

All Minuteman/Peacekeeper Missile Silo Locations