StratCom in California

Dennis Apel

While Offutt Air Force Base just outside of Omaha, Nebraska continues to serve as the central headquarters for U.S. Strategic Command, StratCom directs a network of international military bases and listening stations that stretch literally across the planet. This month, as part of our continuing exposé on StratCom’s global reach, Dennis Apel, of the Guadalupe Catholic Worker community in Guadalupe, California, profiles the space and missile defense activities of StratCom’s Component Command at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Vandenberg Air Force Base is located on the Central Coast of California. Geographically, it the third largest Air Force base in the United States, comprising 155 square miles, with a perimeter 99 miles long.

The land on which the base sits was originally the sacred land of the Native American tribe of Chumash Indians, who inhabited Central California for some 13,000 years before the arrival of the Europeans. In 1941, the U.S. Army established a training center called “Camp Cook” on the site, but in 1957, the base was transferred to the U.S. Air Force and renamed (after General Hoyt S. Vandenberg) in preparation for its new function as a space launch facility.

Vandenberg is unique in that it is the only location in the United States where rockets carrying satellites are able to place their payloads in a polar orbit, as opposed to an equatorial orbit. Both government and commercial satellites are launched from the base, and some missions are secret and the specifics of the payload classified. All rockets are launched from Space Launch Complexes sprinkled along to coast at the southern end of the base.

Since the 1980s, Vandenberg has also been the home of the “Western Missile Range,” which is comprised of a 4,200- mile-long corridor extending from the west coast of California to the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. On average, eight times each year the base conducts test launches of our nation’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. ICBMs are fired from underground missile silos at the north end of the base and carry multiple dummy warheads targeted to land in a lagoon at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The 4,200-mile trip takes about 20 minutes and the cost of each launch is $50 million. All silos (about 14 of them) are located at the northern end of the Base and are similar to the silos in the central United States (like in the Nebraska Panhandle) where active ICBMs are on alert. All ICBMs tested are actually removed from active deployment and transported to Vandenberg having had their active nuclear warheads replaced with dummy warheads.

In addition to regular tests of ICBMs, Vandenberg is heavily involved in the Missile Defense program, both in the testing and in the deployment of ground– based mid-course interceptors. A number of tests of a system designed to shoot down incoming ICBMs from other countries using interceptor missiles have been performed from Vandenberg. Typically, an ICMB is launched from Vandenberg and an interceptor missile is launched from Kwajalein, with the hope of an impact in space destroying the dummy warhead carried by the ICBM. Although the system has experienced a number of failures and a few limited successes, interceptors have already been deployed at both

Vandenberg Air Force Base and at Ft. Greely in Alaska. During the recent testing of ICBMs by North Korea, the interceptors at Ft. Greely were put on alert. Vandenberg is also the home of the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC). The purpose of this facility is to integrate the data received from satellites and to make that data available to the four branches of the Armed Forces, as well as to specific Allied Nations. Data can be used for surveillance, tracking, targeting, space superiority, and controlled access to space. The data is then used in any location where our armed forces have current operations including war zones and areas of clandestine operations.

As with many military institutions, the environment along an incredibly beautiful and pristine expanse of California coastline has been affected by the military’s presence here. One of the components of rocket fuel is the chemical Aluminum Perchlorate, known to cause birth defects in fetuses and thyroid disease in adults. The U.S. government’s General Accountability Office, which studied the levels of Perchlorate contamination at Department of Defense sites, including military facilities and military contractor facilities, found the groundwater at Vandenberg to have been contaminated to 517 ppb (parts per billion). Depending on which study one accepts, the safe level of Perchlorate in drinking water is considered to be between 4 and 6 ppb. Recent studies have also shown that a large percentage of the lettuce grown and distributed throughout the United States is contaminated with Perchlorate as is much of the nation’s milk. Perchlorate is now being found in mothers’ milk as well.

Local activists have held regular rallies, protests and vigils at the base since the 1980s, when Vandenberg first began test launches of the Minuteman ICBM. Many have been arrested and some have spent time in prison for their resistance to our government’s policies and Vandenberg’s role in those policies. Those protests continue today as a means of confronting our government’s drive toward what the U.S. Space Command in Omaha, Nebraska calls “Full Spectrum Dominance” — a dominance heavily supported by the mission of Vandenberg Air Force Base.

HOME     |     ARTICLES     |     CALENDAR     |     NEBRASKA REPORT     |     OMAHA NEWSLETTER     |     DONATE     |     CONTACT

This site is made possible by the peacemakers. Site Design by