- CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Quietly,
and with little fanfare, a major change in the profile of global security
is being carried out in Wyoming, around Cheyenne.
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- It's the deactivation and retirement of the Air Force's
peacekeeper missiles. Removing them is a requirement of the nuclear weapons
treaties with Russia. They're being pulled out of their silos at the rate
of one a month.
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- The barren winter landscape outside of Cheyenne reveals
no clues about the unthinkable power that is still hidden there.
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- "This is the most powerful weapon that the United
States has ever fielded," said Col. John Faulkner.
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- Its name alone may be the biggest irony of the Cold War,
that possibly the most destructive weapon in the history of mankind would
come to be known as 'the peacekeeper.'
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- Built to be launched from silos near Cheyenne, Wyoming,
America's 50 peacekeeper missiles were designed to fly anywhere in the
world, each missile capable of dropping ten nuclear warheads on different
targets and each warhead many times more powerful than the nuclear bombs
dropped on Japan."
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- "The cold war didn't end....it was won," said
Faulkner during a recent interview with 9NEWS.
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- Faulkner says it was missiles like the peacekeeper that
helped win the Cold War. And he says as each one is pulled out of the ground
and deactivated, the world should breathe a small sigh of relief.
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- These missiles are being retired because similar missiles
in Russia that were once pointed at the United States are also being decommissioned.
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- "The magnitude of what we're doing...taking the
most powerful weapon that we've ever developed...and removing it from our
arsenal, is significant," said Faulkner.
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- In storage facilities at FE Warren Air Force Base, the
peacekeepers are carefully disassembled with their nuclear payloads already
taken away. The missiles are now basically just harmless; multi stage rockets.
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- At the end of the Cold War, there were more than 20,000
nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. Now there are about half that number.
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- Copyright 2003 by 9NEWS KUSA-TV. All Rights Reserved
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- http://www.9news.com/storyfull.aspx?storyid=21948
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