Air Force building underground nuclear warhead facility at Warren AFB in Cheyenne

A 90,000-square-foot underground facility will house and handle nuclear weapons at an Air Force based in Cheyenne, military officials said.

The underground structure at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base will have reinforced concrete with necessary above-ground support structures, the Federation of American Scientists reported in September.

The new structure “will provide a safer and more secure facility for the storage of U. S. Air Force (USAF) assets,” the Air Force said, the Federation of American Scientists reported.

The report said that weapons likely to be stored at the base include the W78/Mk12A and W87/Mk21 warheads for the Minuteman III ICBMs at the 150 missile silos and possibly the new W87-1 warhead, which will replace the W78.

The Army Corps of Engineers awarded the $144 million contract to build the new underground nuclear weapons storage and handling site to Flur Corporation, the Federation of American Scientists reported. However, after crews began working in 2018, the project was stopped in 2019 before resuming this past spring.