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“Awwww… who left
that door open?”

Northrop Grumman Mission Systems in Clearfield, UT received a $24 million cost-plus award-fee contract modification to provide for Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Security Modernization Program Fast Rising B-Plug Low Rate Initial Production. Fifteen B-Plug Kits, and six B-Plug Kit Installations, will be produced under this contract modification.

B-Plugs are used to secure entry into missile silos. For more routine maintenance activities, workers entered the silo through the personnel access hatch in the northeast corner of the roof slab. The access hatch is a heavily reinforced, steel-and-concrete vault door, operated by two hydraulic cylinders. The door opens into a cylindrical shaft that descends to the lower level of the equipment room. Fitted into the shaft is the “B-plug,” a piston-like, steel security door operated by an electromechanical actuator. The silo cannot be entered until the B-plug is retracted.

Negotiations were completed May 2005, and work will be complete by September 2007. The Headquarters Ogden Air Logistics Center at Hill Air Force Base, UT issued the contract (F42610-98-C-0001).

• United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places: Continuation Sheet for Minuteman ICBM Launch Control Facility Delta-01 and Launch Facility Delta-09, Ellsworth Air Force Base, Jackson and Pennington Counties, South Dakota (PDF Format)

• Other DID stories re: the U.S. Minuteman III ICBM Force