US completes Minuteman missile dismantling

The US Energy Department says it has completed dismantling the last Minuteman missile, a hallmark of America’s defences during the Cold War.

A thousand of the Minuteman ICBMs were scattered in underground silos across the Midwest in the 1960s. They stayed there until they began being deactivated in 1991 under the Start I missile reduction treaty with the Soviet Union.

Two years ago, President George Bush directed the size of the US nuclear weapons stockpile be reduced nearly in half by 2012.