US completes Minuteman missile dismantling
30/06/2006 - 07:16:00The US Energy Department says it has completed dismantling the last Minuteman missile, a hallmark of America’s defences during the Cold War.
A thousand of the Minuteman ICBMs were scattered in underground silos across the Midwest in the 1960s. They stayed there until they began being deactivated in 1991 under the Start I missile reduction treaty with the Soviet Union.
Two years ago, President George Bush directed the size of the US nuclear weapons stockpile be reduced nearly in half by 2012.
