America's 450 nuclear missile silos exist, at least in part, to be destroyed in a nuclear attack. USA TODAY breaks down the debate over their future.

South of Tucson lies the last surviving Titan II nuclear missile silo — once part of a network of 54 sites built during the Cold War. Constructed in 1963, this facility housed a missile capable of ...

An Atlas F missile like those that used to be on standby in bunkers under Kansas. (HUM Images / Universal Images via Getty Images) Way out in the Kansas prairie, 140 feet below ground, a ...

The Air Force hoped to reuse existing silos for Minuteman III nuclear missiles for the upcoming Sentinel program, but has concluded it will have to dig new silos. (A1C Braydon Williams/Air Force) The ...

THERE ARE no big red buttons in the underground bunkers that control America’s nuclear missiles. Instead, launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) involves decrypting and verifying ...

The Air Force is asking Congress to pass legislation to restrict further construction of towering wind turbines that have edged in closer to its nuclear missile sites. The ground-based silos share ...

WASHINGTON — The Air Force’s vast fields of underground nuclear missile silos are rarely disturbed by more than the occasional wandering cow or floating spy balloon. But the service is now asking ...

You'd think that the world's most powerful weapons—the ones that could virtually exterminate life on this planet—would get the best funding and most modern equipment. Think again. Newly released ...

A new monument will be put up in southeast New Mexico honoring the sacrifices eight men made while aiding the United States’ nuclear efforts during the Cold War. “These men died during a tremendous ...

China has the world’s largest tunnel network, called the “Underground Great Wall,” to protect its nuclear missiles. Russia ...

Way out in the Kansas prairie, 140 feet below ground, a concrete-lined relic of Cold War annihilation has received a literal — and metaphorical — coat of “fresh paint throughout.” It’s not being ...