Crawling robots will survey ageing US nuclear missile silos

A long time-old US silos holding Minuteman III missiles which were a key nuclear deterrent because the Nineteen Seventies can be assessed by robots that may crawl straight up partitions

By David Hambling

Robots are going to be employed to crawl over nuclear missile silos within the US, automating upkeep that has beforehand been achieved manually.

Some 400 metal and concrete silos housing Minuteman III intercontinental missiles are unfold throughout Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. Constructed within the early Sixties for an earlier era of missiles, the silos had been designed to resist megaton-level nuclear strikes. Every is 30 metres deep and 5 metres throughout, with a missile inside.

Longevity …