Indian origin, Lt. Raj Bansal of the US Air Force's 90th Missile Wing is one of the last men standing by Minuteman III nuclear missiles and the US President's order to launch them.

Bansal and his partner Capt. Joseph Shannon are among the nuclear launch frontiersmen who do 24-hour shift inside launch silo.

This case of Lt. Raj Bansal can be considered as chronicles of Indian diaspora and possibly a first, as it has emerged that an Indian-American finger is on the US nuclear launch button. 

This illustrate United State's vote of confidence in the country's diversity.

Launch crews, consisting of two officers, perform around-the-clock alert in the launch control center.

A variety of communication systems provide the National Command Authorities with highly reliable, virtually instantaneous direct contact with each launch crew.

Much about their working routine is classified and they may inside launch silo, burrowed in an underground bunker in a flat, unmarked terrain between Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Lincoln, Nebraska.

Nuclear rocket inside launch silo

This nuclear complex it described includes a command center with a pool table, a workout room and television, where support staff, including a cook and heavily armed security force.

Bansal and his partner, controls the missiles and they are buried 60 feet underground in a room called "the capsule."

The capsule is final is the final link in a system stretching from the president of the United States to these missiles. Once encrypted codes are received from US President, the launch of missiles is initiated.

Capsule is protected by an enormous, 2-foot-thick blast door made of 8 tons of solid steel. It said that the room is hollowed out like an egg shell, and in the middle, suspended on shock absorbers, hangs the launch control center, a room within a room.

It is long and narrow, with a bed at one end and a toilet at the other. In between, two chairs face computer displays.

The missiles are displayed in a grid on the computer console. US Air Force Minuteman 3 ICBM launch from this underground silo.

In case of India's nuclear posture, it is considered as opaque and very few people have an idea where the weapons are located or deployed.

Minuteman III missile systems

The Minuteman III missile systems of the kind is primed to launch on his nuclear watch is a land-based ICBM ( Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) with a range of nearly 6000 miles.

The US has 450 of these, each carrying three thermonuclear warheads with a yield in the range of 300 to 500 kilotons. Each of these warheads is 15 to 25 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima, and can eviscerate even larger cities.

Together, the three warheads on Minuteman III will be 100 times as powerful as the one that leveled Nagasaki.

They were deployed in 1970, the Minuteman III is also the first Multiple Independently-targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) capable missile.

Multiple Independently-targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) means each of its warheads can be directed at different targets or cities even though they are on the same missile.

In other words it implies more destructive power with a single launch and making it difficult for anti-ballistic missile systems to intercept them.

According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) the Minuteman III missiles are dispersed from hardened silos to protect against attack and connected to an underground launch control center through a system of hardened cables.