Little Mountain Test Annex

The best picture I could find of the facility, from a Boeing newsletter.

This was something that was a little bit of a local mystery to me, but it was really only a mystery to me, as I didn't take the time to really look up info on it, and info was somewhat hard to come by several years back. So, sitting on the shoreline of the Great Salt Lake, west of Ogden, in a fenced-off, guarded facility, near the rail-line causeway, is Little Mountain Test Annex.

It appears that this facility is key to maintaining and testing nearly all aspects of the Minuteman III ICBMs, with work primarily being contracted out to Boeing, despite the site being still owned by the state of Utah, and the facility being managed by the USAF via Hill AFB. 

The best write up I could find on the facility was here by Boeing on their site in 2017. In their own article, they state that "Boeing annually tests the hardness integrity of missile subsections to ensure there is no degradation from aging, maintenance, repair or continuous operation. During radiation testing, employees monitor computer screens and call out instructions. They collect data that will be analyzed". Pretty fascinating all in all for such a small facility that is relatively so close to civilization, and I would highly encourage you to read the full article.

A picture of crew working at the facility from the article I mentioned earlier. 

One of the most intriguing blurbs I found about the site is that the Minuteman III system was only meant to last 10 years, but has been the mainstay of the ICBM fleet for more than 50, and most of the work at this facility has been to help increase the longevity and resilience of the system for being in service for so long. According to Boeing, the USAF has a program called Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, which is meant to produce a more long-lived replacement for the aging Minuteman IIIs in the near future. 

It also goes into a little bit of the history of the facility, stating that is was first established in 1957 to test the Bomarc missile system that was mentioned here before. Later, in 1974 the site was then converted into the Minuteman testing facility it is today, and has remained doing so ever since. They have since worked on all versions of the minuteman system. 

Another, fairly old image of the facility from the CLUI site.

Another fascinating factoid from the 2017 article states that they have not had a single workplace accident of any kind for more than 15 years. Just makes me wonder what was the last kind they DID have in 2002 (or earlier)...but I doubt I'll find out. 

I think the quote of the day from that article I mentioned, is from one of the employees there, Jim Cyr, an 11 year veteran of working at the facility, “I didn’t know how much Little Mountain was doing for us until I started working here -- it’s pretty incredible. Once you dig into it, it boggles your mind. It lets you sleep at night.” Sure is true, Jim. 

Picture of a test firing of the final product. Hopefully, we never have to live-fire it.