(South Dakota News Watch) The United States has thousands of nuclear missiles spread out across the country, but there haven’t been any in South Dakota since the early 1990s.
There were 15 launch control facilities for 150 Minuteman missile silos in western South Dakota in the region of Ellsworth Air Force Base starting in 1963.
Amid Cold War arms-reduction efforts and the START I treaty with Russia, the United States had those nuclear weapons removed and the launch control facilities destroyed rather than upgrade the Minuteman missiles. A launch control center and a silo remain at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site near Phillip.
The United States reported its nuclear stockpile was at 3,748 warheads as of September 2023.
Today, 400 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles remain deployed near air bases in North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, with missile fields extending into parts of Colorado and Nebraska.
