Fellow Missileers:

The window for nominations for the Air Force Missileer Hall of Fame is now open. Details on the requirements and format can be found in our September 2025 newsletter. The deadline for all nominations is 15 Jan 2026. 

Ninth Annual Missileer Gathering at AFA National Convention:  Nearly 175 Missileers, veterans and AFA members attended the Ninth Annual Missileer Gathering sponsored by AFA General Charles A. Gabriel Chapter at the Gaylord, National Harbor, Maryland. The event has become synonymous with the AFA National Convention and honors the Missile Crew of the Year, also giving contributions to AFA Aerospace Education. This year, the Gabriel Chapter generously donated $2000 in support of the Air Force Missileers Hall of Fame.

AAFM Board Member Linda Aldrich took the stage to explain about the Missileer Hall of Fame, the upcoming gathering at Minot in 2026 and show a copy of Silent Sentinels video.

20th AF Commander Major General Stacy Huser shared why she changed career fields to become a missileer after talking to crew members already in the career field. She then presented the General Power trophies to the Crew of the Year, Capt. Sarah Lopez and Lt Travis Evans. The evening was a successful show of comradery and pride for being a part of the missileer community. 

Common Sense Prevails: A  previous dispatch told the story of a discussion at a truck stop lunch counter between a retired missileer and a truck driver in North Dakota  The driver saw some patches on the former crew member's jacket, and he asked questions about the missile patches and the missile sites the driver had seen for many years driving across the state. The driver asked how old the missile silos were, and the discussion evolved to the fact that the silos were being upgraded with a new missile. At the end of the discussion, the driver commented "that putting new missiles in 50-year-old silos was like putting a new diesel engine in a 50-year-old truck. Sometimes it's amazing where simple common sense can be found.

Common Sense Leaders:

“One of the things we've learned as we've gone through this [Sentinel] is the original plan was to use the MM III Silos. One of the design changes is... we're not going to use the MM III Silos. We're going to build new silos. There are a variety of reasons but the biggest one I give you is those Silos were drilled in the 1960s. If we used them for the lifespan of Sentinel, they'd be 110 years old.”

            Major General Colin Connor, Director of Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Modernization, Site Activation Task Force.

Air Force Program Executive Officer for ICBMs Brigadier  General William Rogers said, he has “every intention” of fully fielding the forthcoming Sentinel missile ahead of 2050... expects Milestone B in 2027.  Want to know more?  Sentinel Milestone B

Air Force Introduces New Standards for Physical Fitness: 

Next year Airmen will begin taking physical fitness assessments (PFA) every six months. You can view 37 pages of scoring charts at this link:  PFT Scoring

The proposed twice a year PFA has four components:

A two-mile run, at each PFA which tests the Airman’s cardiorespiratory fitness and counts for 50 percent of the total score. The run was increased from the 1.5-mile run in past tests.

Push-ups or hand-release push-ups completed in one minute. Hand-release push-ups require Airmen lower their chest all the way to the ground and extend their hands out to the sides before pushing up again. This component measures muscle strength and counts for 15 percent of the total score.

Sit-ups or reverse cross leg crunches completed in one minute or forearm plank, which measures muscle core endurance and counts for another 15 percent of the total score.

A body composition test where Airmen divide their waist length by their height in inches. For example, an Airman who stands 69 inches tall and has a waist of 36 inches would have a waist-to-height ratio of 0.52. This component counts for 20 percent of the total score, but Airmen do not have to take the body composition test the same day as the workout portion of the PFA.

Want to know more?

 PFA Changes

Staying Fit in the Missile Field? With the new PFA testing coming in 2026, we collected a list of methods our missileers have used to stay fit.

• ·         Way back...when foil packs were being served...some missileers didn't eat them due to high salt and fat contents. In MM Crews cooked their own food on the LCC hot plate. Cooking fish in a MM LCC was not appreciated. Atlas and Titan had larger cooking areas.
• ·         Depending on the site, don't drink the water...bring your own.
• ·         One Airman was training for the Black Hills Marathon and would get his training miles done by jogging the dirt roads in the flight area. His farthest run was 14 miles.
• ·         In Minuteman, one crew member would bring a jump rope into the capsule and jump rope. His commander allowed him to do this until one alert when the shock isolators lost pressure and the floor dropped. Floor leveling was accomplished for the rest of the alert.
• ·         Fitness oriented Group commanders budgeted to put stationary bikes, treadmills, elliptical machines and weightlifting equipment on the MAFs and bikes in the LCC's. Any exercise equipment put in LCCs had to meet hardness requirements. Sit up and pull up bars were also installed topside as well as stretching mats.
• ·         Basketball hoops and volleyball nets were also available when the weather permitted.

Have you seen this latest Minuteman III video: Col. James Schlabach, 91st Missile Wing CC summarizes MM III....quote  "Of the three legs of the Triad, the ICBM leg is the only one that has its full fleet on alert 365, 24/7, every second of every minute, of every hour of every day...

in short...its Big, its Fast, and it lays down a can of WHOOP-ASS the world has never seen". The Strikers of the 91st Missile Wing are featured in this You Tube presentation.

Want To know More? See Inside A Top-Secret Nuclear Missile Silo

Atlas E "Coffin" Video: This is an amazing story of one American engineer's ingenuity and how he

transitioned an Atlas E "coffin" ICBM silo with a 400-ton surface blast door to an underground mansion. Coffin silos stored Atlas ICBM's horizontally and then raised them vertically for fueling, targeting  and launch. The video has original pictures of the facility and foreshadows some of the security concepts used in MM. For example, Atlas E used cement security plugs for a similar purpose as MM B-Plugs and HICs type cabling was wrapped in what appears to be steel and led...no FALPs here.

Want to know more? See  Atlas E Man Cave

Looking for interesting reads on ICBMs? Here are two recent publications that explain the inner workings of ICBMs:

 The Last Thirty Seconds

David K Stumpf details the development of one of many possible solutions for ballistic missile defense commonly known as hit-to-kill. Hit-to-kill is a nonnuclear technique using kinetic energy, rather than explosives, to destroy reentry vehicles carrying chemical, biological, or nuclear warheads. It is the centerpiece of the United States’ current ballistic missile defense systems and has proven invaluable in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia as well as in the ongoing conflict with the Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. While much of the subject remains classified, this detailed study will be welcomed for its substantial references and the inclusion of newly declassified material. Other books by Dr Stumpf include Minuteman: A Technical History of the Missile That Defined American Nuclear Warfare, Titan II A History of a Cold War Missile Program, and Regulus: America’s First Nuclear Submarine Missile, 

"Countdown to Launch! - Rockets, Computers, and Coming of Age in the Cold War" 

A new book by Ralph L. Hollis, Jr. documents his journey from an amateur rocketry enthusiast as a young teenager to an important role in the development of the Minuteman III flight program. The book is a very detailed memoir, with the last half of the story dedicated to his work at North American Aviation's Autonetics division in the mid-to-late 1960s. In 1959, while still in high school, Hollis gained access to early IBM and Bendix computers, developing skills to program and use the computers as he designed, built and tested model rockets. After leaving Kansas State University with a master’s degrics, he was employed by Autonetics and assigned to the Minuteman III team. He mentioned his early computer work simulating the flight of his homemade rockets to his boss and was assigned to develop the Minuteman Flight Simulator, used to validate the flight program for the Minuteman III D37D computer. Just as he did in his personal story, he includes many specifics about the operation of the D37D and components familiar to many of us who spent time in Minuteman. Terms like "PIGA," "IMU," and "semi-somulus" are all back there in our memories.             
                                

                       

                        Possible Modification for future stealth launches?

Sincerely,

Jim 

James F. Warner

Executive Directo