This week, the United States conducted two intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base on the California coast, 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Usually, these tests happen two or three times a year, when missiles usually kept in underground silos in several western states are transported to the base to demonstrate that the United States could, if it chose, use its nuclear weapons.

But for months, activists who monitor and work to critically publicize these launches have waited for one to be announced — which often happens with only a few days’ warning. The pair of tests this week were the first in over six months, since the last one, in November 2023, failed.

The test schedule has also been stymied by world affairs. In April 2022, the US Department of Defense announced that ICBM tests would be paused because of their escalatory potential in the context of the war in Ukraine. That war, and the nuclear threats that have accompanied it, continue, but without further acknowledgments of the risk-increasing aspect of the ICBMs.