Someone at Minot Air Force Base, home to a missile wing that operates nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, tested positive for COVID-19, according to an announcement this week.
“There is 1 positive case of COVID-19 of an adult, non-military member on base,” Minot stated Wednesday on its official Twitter account. “[B]ase leadership has declared a public health emergency.”
The base announced the confirmed case one day after Navy Adm. Charles Richard, head of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), told reporters there were no confirmed cases of the pandemic viral disease in his command.
The development underscores the rapid spread of the disease and the limitations of the government when it comes to tracking it.
As of Tuesday, “we have zero people in STRATCOM headquarters or in the components that have tested positive, so I have no cases of COVID right now,” Richard at a Pentagon briefing with reporters. “[T]o this point, we have had no impact to our ability to accomplish our mission.”
That included transferring custody of nuclear weapons to and from the branch of the civilian Department of Energy responsible for servicing and modernizing the nuclear arsenal.
“Operationally we have not had a need to modify anything, so our operations continue normally,” Richard said when asked about military interactions with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Administratively, however, “there have been some meetings that have been canceled where we’re doing them over VTC (video teleconferencing) right now.”
A Strategic Command spokesperson later said that, as of Tuesday, the Pentagon services foresee no delays to ongoing and planned nuclear-arsenal modernization programs because of COVID-19.
“We are confident the services, along with industry partners, are able to keep production related to modernization of our nuclear forces on track, while taking appropriate precautions to keep their workforces safe and healthy,” the spokesperson said.
On-time modernization of U.S. nuclear forces hinges on both NNSA-funded weapons programs and Pentagon-funded construction of new delivery vehicles and carriers going off without a hitch. The NNSA has bottlenecks looming as it races to fix problems with components for a bomb and warhead already in the modernization pipeline. The Pentagon wants to deploy new nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines, and aircraft-delivered weapons all beginning in the early 2030s.
As of Tuesday, about 10 people at STRATCOM headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska had gone into self-quarantine after possible exposure to COVID-19, while the Air Force and Navy have “less than 20 [cases] each” of self-quarantine among personnel commanded by STRATCOM.
STRATCOM headquarters personnel could be quarantined if they were “coming back off of travel or something like that, where you wanted to just be, in an abundance of caution, making sure that you gave them a chance to see if they would go symptomatic,” Richards said.
The 91st missile wing includes about 1,800 personnel who manage some 150 silo-based, nuclear-tipped Minuteman III missiles. The President can order the missiles launched at a moment’s notice.
COVID-19 is the viral disease caused by the novel coronavirus that broke out in Wuhan, China, in 2019. It is distinct from influenza, but shares many symptoms with that disease: fever and respiratory distress, such as coughing and shortness of breath. There is not yet a vaccine for COVID-19, and the rapid spread of the disease is disrupting normal life across the globe.
There were around 10,700 confirmed cases in the U.S., and around 150 deaths attributed to the disease domestically, as of Thursday.
