The situation regarding the number of GBI silos is more complex than I’d realised. When the decision was taken to limit the Fort Greely deployment of GBI missiles to 26 rounds, this was to have been achieved by reducing the size of the third silo field, which is currently under construction.

Last autumn, a decision was taken to built an additional eight silos in this third field.

There are no plans to buy additional missiles for those eight empty silos; they will be left empty. But if threat developments were to require an increase in the deployed force, up to eight missiles from the batch currently allocated to test flights could be used for this purpose.