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Summary A US Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile was destroyed after five minutes of its flight.
An international news agency reported quoting the military officials that an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile was destroyed in flight early Wednesday due to an anomaly shortly after blasting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base.Air Force controllers detected a flight anomaly and decided to destroy the missile about 5 minutes after launch for safety reasons, the base said in a news release. The missile was over a broad ocean area, northeast of Roi-Namur, an island in the northern part of the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, when it was destroyed.At all times public safety is paramount. We plan for situations like this and everything was executed according to the plan, said Col. Matthew Carroll, 30th Space Wing chief of safety. Established parameters were exceeded and controllers sent destruct commands.Details of what went wrong with the missile were not released while an Air Force team is investigating. This was the second Minuteman 3 test from Vandenberg since late June.A communications problem forced the launch command to be issued by ground control rather than an airborne launch control system, the news agency reported.
