Dear Friend, Around 1:00 in the morning on Wednesday, activists from the Defuse Nuclear War coalition gathered outside Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California, to protest the first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in 2025.(1) Click here to tell Congress to put an end to such tests and such weapons. These test launches are conducted a few times a year, under conditions designed to make sure that the public remains almost totally oblivious. They are announced with only a few days’ notice, and they take place in the middle of the night, when an unarmed missile is shot from Vandenberg to a facility on the Kwajalein Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. Defuse Nuclear War demonstrators have been on site protesting the missile tests, as well as conducting weekly vigils. The tests are a rare moment when the U.S. ICBM force is made visible; under ordinary circumstances, most Americans have no reason to think of the 400 missiles that wait in underground silos across the Great Plains. These nuclear missiles have long been condemned by experts as counterproductive and dangerous. With no way to recall them after they’re launched, they are particularly vulnerable to intentional or accidental first strikes, and their fixed locations make them an easy target for incoming nuclear attacks. Nevertheless, the U.S. is investing billions in a nuclear-weapons “modernization” program that is currently over budget and behind schedule. If President Trump were really interested in cutting wasteful government spending or in getting rid of nuclear weapons, he could cancel the Sentinel program, which has been paused due to its own failures.(2) Email to your senators and representative, telling them that ICBMs should be shut down.  | 
