FOR RELEASE – 4 P.M. EDT, Thursday, June 6, 2024
At 12:56 a.m. local time on June 4, and 1:46 a.m. on June 6, the U.S. Air Force and Space Force conducted tests of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The weapons were launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Lompoc, Calif., and aimed at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
On Thursday afternoon, activists with the Defuse Nuclear War coalition issued the following statement:
We, as organizers who are part of the Defuse Nuclear War campaign, condemn this launch in the strongest possible terms as a wasteful, dangerous step backward for peace. We ask that future scheduled ICBM tests be canceled.
The U.S. ICBM force, sold to the public as a guarantor of security, is in fact a huge liability. In the words of the late Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine, these weapons make “any conflict enormously more dangerous than it has to be” by increasing “the danger that any armed conflict between major nuclear states can escalate to all-out war.” ICBMs are on hair-trigger alert and, once launched, cannot be recalled, virtually guaranteeing a strike on the country that launches them first.
Whether they like it or not, Americans and the world live every day with the constant risk that misinterpreted intelligence, human error, or a single rash decision could end civilization as we know it in under an hour.
Maintaining these weapons is a huge waste of resources. The U.S. has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars to “modernize” its ICBM force, which in practice means replacing the entire system. The Air Force recently announced that the program is already 37% over budget and years behind schedule – which likely means even more disingenuous belt-tightening in the areas of real human need that desperately need similar investment.
Test launches add to the degradation wrought by nuclear weapons on human communities and ecosystems. The Marshall Islands, forced to bear the overwhelming environmental costs of U.S. nuclear weapons testing in the early decades of the nuclear age, are still treated as a target test area.
In addition, when tensions among nuclear-armed states are high, each test launch carries a real risk of escalation. The U.S. military has acknowledged as much by pausing these launches at high points of tension in the war in Ukraine. The risk of nuclear escalation remains too high to introduce the possibility of misinterpretation of a “test” into the mix.
Organizers MacGregor Eddy, Judy Talaugon and Leah Yantanon are available for interviews and comment. They can be contacted at info@defusenuclearwar.org.