title: Smosh

text: Over the course of the next few years, Smosh began to diversify. They started making short YouTube skits, such as their annual video series "Food Battle" and "That Damn Neighbor". Smosh continued to grow in popularity and became one of the most subscribed channels on YouTube. In 2009, Smosh prepared a massive redesign of Smosh.com, added a games section, and put extras in the video section. In January 2010, Smosh launched the "Smosh Pit" feature, a blog that consists of various pieces of pop-culture trivia, and written comedy. In addition, 2010 saw the channel launch 3 different Smosh-based web series: "Ian Is Bored", which started as a collection of comedic videos by Hecox, but then turned into both Hecox and Padilla making vlog like videos, and renamed "Smosh Is Bored"; "Ask Charlie", where people ask Charlie, from their January 2010 "Charlie the Drunk Guinea Pig" video, random questions; and "Lunchtime with Smosh", a comedy series featuring Smosh getting and eating food from various places, and answering Twitter questions from their fans on Twitter. Some of Smosh's most popular video series include "Pokémon in Real Life" and "If ____ Was Real". Also in early 2010, Smosh created the "iShut Up App" for Android phones as part of a Google sponsorship; it eventually made its way to the iTunes app store. In 2011, the number of views grew by 40% when Smosh was acquired by Alloy Digital (later rebranded to Defy Media).


title: Smosh

text: In 2012, the duo started three new YouTube channels, "ElSmosh", with Smosh videos dubbed in Spanish, "Shut Up! Cartoons", with various animated videos, and "Smosh Games", with gaming-related content hosted alongside Mari Takahashi, David "Lasercorn" Moss, Matthew Sohinki, and Joshua "Jovenshire" Ovenshire. Some of Smosh's most popular videos are video-game themed music videos. These songs (along with other original songs) have been released in 4 albums to date – "Sexy Album" (2010), "If Music Were Real" (2011), "Smoshtastic" (2012), and "The Sweet Sound of Smosh" (2013). In January 2013, the Smosh channel surpassed Ray William Johnson in subscribers to become the most-subscribed YouTube channel for the third time. Smosh released "Super Head Esploder X", a video game for iPads, iPhones, and iPods, in February 2013, and in July 2013 started an Indiegogo campaign for an iOS and PC game, "Food Battle: The Game". Hecox and Padilla raised $258,777 to hire video game producers to create a game based on their characters and the foods used in their annual "Food Battle" series. Smosh donated 10% of the funds to three charities in November 2014, as well as releasing the game.


title: Smosh

text: In February 2014, Smosh released a mobile app to access Smosh videos and other content from their website, and in late 2014 an Xbox One app. Later in 2014, a fan run channel "Smosh France" became an official Smosh channel. In March 2015, Smosh re-launched the Smosh Games Alliance, a multi-channel network where fans join to enjoy network benefits in exchange for a percentage of the ad revenue. In 2015, the duo announced Noah Grossman, Keith Leak Jr., Olivia Sui, Courtney Miller and Shayne Topp as new regular cast members for Smosh videos. A sketch series, called "Every (Blank) Ever", has been released every two weeks since May 2015.


title: Smosh

text: In January 2016, a web sitcom was launched on the main Smosh channel. "Part Timers" is a comedy-drama which takes place at a fictional children's arcade and pizza place called Pork E. Pine's, which takes inspiration from Hecox's first job at Chuck E. Cheese's. Each episode presents a challenge that the team must overcome to keep the business going. The series features regular Smosh cast members, Grossman (as Pete), Hecox (as Ian), and Padilla (as Anton), in addition to Cat Alter (as Mads), Jade Martz (as Ella), Casey Webb (as Dinger), and Natalie Whittle (as Lori). The series was released every Monday on the Smosh channel from January to May 2016. During the month of February, new cast member Boze was added to the Smosh Family, joining the cast of Smosh Games.


title: Smosh

text: On June 14, 2017, Padilla announced he would be leaving Smosh to pursue independent video ventures due to a "lack in creative freedom". Hecox stated he would remain with Smosh, adding "I'm really looking forward to taking Smosh to the next phase, and we can't wait for people to see what we have coming up."


title: Smosh

text: On November 6, 2018, Defy Media abruptly announced they were shutting down and laying off all its employees. Hecox said that Smosh was not "going away" and that plans were underway to find Smosh a new home. Padilla released a video the following day which went into more detail about his departure from Smosh and his issues with what Defy was doing with their employees and Smosh. He said that he and Hecox sold Smosh to Alloy Digital (which later became Defy Media) for stock, which had no monetary value because the company never went public. Padilla also expressed dissatisfaction with how Defy treated its employees and stated the company exploited them financially, took over his Facebook page, tried to take over his Twitter account, prevented him from joining the Screen Actors Guild, and that they had pressured them into starting a fundraiser for "Food Battle: The Game" before it had even been conceived, something that had at the time led to accusations of exploitation being levelled against himself and Hecox. He also explained that he had not previously shared this information because of worries that it would threaten the job security of his friends. On November 12, Smosh released an update video reaffirming that Smosh was searching for a new owner, and that in the meanwhile, content would continue to be released independently by the Smosh team. The cast clarified that they still had a significant amount of content from before Defy Media's shutdown in post-production. They also did not rule out the possibility of filming new content and releasing it independently, calling such an idea "old school", alluding to YouTube's early days when content was less commercialized.


title: Smosh

text: On February 22, 2019, Mythical Entertainment acquired Smosh. This led to changes in the Smosh casts and crews, with some former members returning, while others have departed. Smosh is currently operating out of Mythical Entertainment's Los Angeles office.


title: Smosh

text: On September 18, 2014, it was announced that a feature-length movie starring the duo was in development by AwesomenessFilms; it would be later titled "", and was released on July 24, 2015 by what is now known as 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment, and it’s now re-release by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, with Netflix acquiring the film's streaming rights. Directed by Alex Winter from a story by Eric Falconer, it stars both Hecox and Padilla as fictionalized versions of themselves, alongside fellow YouTube personalities Jenna Marbles, Grace Helbig, Harley Morenstein, Mark Fischbach, Dominic Sandoval, and the "Smosh Games" crew, with Shane Dawson only appearing in the Unrated version. Padilla and Hecox also voiced the characters Hal and Bubbles respectively in "The Angry Birds Movie", with Padilla returning for the sequel.


title: Smosh

text: Additionally, Smosh also created the film "Ghostmates" for YouTube Premium that was released on December 14, 2016.


title: Smosh

text: Smosh is the original and main channel. It has over 25 million subscribers and 9.8 billion views. The channel is where the Smosh team posts sketches and other videos starring Ian Hecox, Noah Grossman, Keith Leak Jr., Courtney Miller, Olivia Sui, and Shayne Topp. Smosh has many complete and ongoing series which include:


title: Smosh

text: Smosh Games uploads numerous videos a week, consisting of Let's Plays and video game commentary shows. When the channel was first created, Padilla and Hecox were the regular features of these videos; however, they began to appear less regularly on the channel overtime, with fellow Smosh Games members Mari Takahashi, Joshua "Joven" Ovenshire, David "Lasercorn" Moss, Matthew Sohinki, Amra "Flitz" Ricketts, Wesley "Wes" Johnson, Ericka "Boze" Bozeman and Damien Haas handling most hosting duties. The channel has over 7.3 million subscribers, and over 2.5 billion video views as of May 2021. Takahashi, Moss, Sohinki, Ovenshire, Ricketts, and Johnson also have their own channels, which are not considered part of the Smosh roster. From 2015 to 2019, the channel hosted annual "Smosh Summer Games" and "Smosh Winter Games" events, primarily hosted on the Smosh Games channel with other videos posted to the Smosh 2nd Channel as well. The first Summer Games in 2015 introduced Shayne Topp to the Smosh family as a referee, while the 2017 Winter Games introduced Boze to the lineup. Damien Haas joined later in 2017. In August that year, Sohinki and Lasercorn announced that they would no longer be full-time members of Smosh Games, in order to focus on their new channel Toaster Ghost, and for Lasercorn to spend more time with his son. They have not ruled out appearing in future Smosh-related videos however, and have appeared occasionally in videos since then.


title: Smosh

text: On January 4, 2018, Ricketts left the channel after being accused by multiple women of sexual assault and rape. After Ricketts' departure, the channel has not continued its yearly tradition of hosting Smosh Summer and Winter Games, and early in 2018, the channel's most consistently popular show, Game Bang, was paused indefinitely and was later implied to be cancelled.


title: Smosh

text: The channel became inactive after Smosh's parent company, Defy Media, folded. However, it was confirmed in an episode of SmoshCast that the channel would resume with a Mortal Kombat video on April 13, with the main cast being more involved and Lasercorn returning to the fold. The video featured a lineup of Ian, Mari, Lasercorn, Courtney and Damien, with production staff Sarah Whittle and Matt Raub featuring in subsequent videos. Both Sarah Whittle and Matt Raub left Smosh in May 2021 & July 2022 respectively. It is currently unknown if any other former Smosh Games members would still be involved with the channel. In an April 2019 episode of "SmoshCast", Jovenshire explained that he had not been an employee of Defy Media since May 1, 2018, and had been working freelance with Smosh Games since. However, he has reappeared in subsequent videos, including a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate competition on May 18, 2019. Mari and Lasercorn both left the channel in 2020 to launch New Element Six (NE6) with fellow Smosh Games alumni Flitz, Joven, Sohinki, and Wes. However, the group disbanded in mid-2020 and Mari later announced her move to Las Vegas. In 2022, Lasercorn, Jovenshire, Sohinki and Mari once again reunited to create "OGSoG", a podcast YouTube channel.


title: Smosh

text: From Smosh Pit (originally named "IanH" and then Smosh 2nd Channel, and was used at first for vlogs and other non-scripted videos), Hecox and Padilla upload their side series "Smosh is Bored" on Mondays, while the rest of the team uploads vlogs on Thursdays, and "Put It In My Mouth" and "Smosh's Seriously Super Stupid Sleepover" on Saturdays. It has over 7.2 million subscribers and over 2.4 billion views. "Smosh Pit Weekly" was a series on the channel hosted by Mari Takahashi from April 2011 to August 2015, posted on Saturdays.


title: Smosh

text: On July 28, 2017, Ian Hecox announced that Smosh 2nd Channel would be renamed "Smosh Pit" in the near future, and that Smosh Pit Weekly would be revived, with Mari Takahashi returning as the host. Two other shows, WHOA! Nature Show, starring Courtney Miller and Olivia Sui, and One Hour Song Machine, starring Keith Leak Jr., were also announced.


title: Smosh

text: The channel hosted a series "The Show w/ No Name", a weekly interactive series that features three members of the Smosh cast as hosts on rotation, with members of Smosh Games occasionally appearing alongside the main cast. The show features art drawn by the fans, along with questions submitted via Twitter for the cast to answer.


title: Smosh

text: One of the most recent "Smosh Pit"series is the popular ongoing "Try Not to Laugh" video series, in which the primary and/ or secondary Smosh cast (usually with at least one guest) perform various improvised scenarios directed at one cast member with a mouthful of water in an attempt to force them to spit it out. The most popular of these videos, as of June 2021, stands at 36.7 million views.


title: Smosh

text: As a part of the Mythical Entertainment rebrand, a podcast titled SmoshCast was launched. Each Wednesday a new episode is released on iTunes with Ian Hecox, or occasionally Courtney Miller, hosting alongside cohosts from the Smosh family. The episode are then released in video format on Friday, censored for YouTube Ads. The channel took a hiatus in 2020, returning for just one episode after on May 4, 2021, to announce Sarah Whittle's departure from Smosh.


title: Smosh

text: On ElSmosh, the team uploads "ElSmosh Pit de la Semana" ("Smosh Pit Weekly"), "Honest Game Trailers", a series from Smosh Games narrated in Spanish, and new Smosh episodes that have been dubbed over in Spanish. It has over 3.7 million subscribers. As of June 21, 2022, ElSmosh still uploads new content.


title: Smosh

text: Smosh France is a fan-run Smosh channel providing French subtitles for many Smosh videos. The channel has been inactive since January 2020.


title: Smosh

text: AnthonyPadilla hosted vlogs uploaded by Padilla. Most videos uploaded prior to 2016 were removed when Padilla revived the channel to upload personal vlogs. It has over 5.3 million subscribers. Since Padilla's departure from Smosh in 2017, the channel is no longer associated with the Smosh brand.


title: Smosh

text: AskCharlie, active from May 2010 to December 2011, hosts videos from the "Ask Charlie" series, where an anthropomorphic guinea pig, named Charlie the Drunk Guinea Pig, answers viewer submitted questions. It has over 321,000 subscribers.


title: Smosh

text: The Smosh Games Alliance (SGA) channel was used for extra content for the Smosh Games crew. Originally it utilized fan-submitted gaming content, spotlighting it on the channel, and offered tutorials in "Smosh University". It continues to hosts more vlogs with the Smosh Games crew. It has over 249,000 subscribers. The channel has been inactive since December 2016.


title: Smosh

text: Shut Up! Cartoons uploads a number of animated series, created by different animators. It has over 2 million subscribers. The channel has been inactive since June 2017.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The LGM-30 Minuteman is an American land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in service with the Air Force Global Strike Command. , the LGM-30G Minuteman III version is the only land-based ICBM in service in the United States and represents the land leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, along with the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) and nuclear weapons carried by long-range strategic bombers.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Development of the Minuteman began in the mid-1950s when basic research indicated that a solid-fuel rocket motor could stand ready to launch for long periods of time, in contrast to liquid-fueled rockets that required fueling before launch and so might be destroyed in a surprise attack. The missile was named for the colonial minutemen of the American Revolutionary War, who could be ready to fight on short notice.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Minuteman entered service in 1962 as a deterrence weapon that could hit Soviet cities with a second strike and countervalue counterattack if the U.S. was attacked. However, the development of the United States Navy (USN) UGM-27 Polaris, which addressed the same role, allowed the Air Force to modify the Minuteman, boosting its accuracy enough to attack hardened military targets, including Soviet missile silos. The Minuteman II entered service in 1965 with a host of upgrades to improve its accuracy and survivability in the face of an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system the Soviets were known to be developing. In 1970, the Minuteman III became the first deployed ICBM with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV): three smaller warheads that improved the missile's ability to strike targets defended by ABMs. They were initially armed with the W62 warhead with a yield of 170 kilotons.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: By the 1970s, 1,000 Minuteman missiles were deployed. This force has shrunk to 400 Minuteman III missiles , deployed in missile silos around Malmstrom AFB, Montana; Minot AFB, North Dakota; and Francis E. Warren AFB, Wyoming. The Minuteman III will be progressively replaced by the new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) ICBM, to be built by Northrop Grumman, beginning in 2030.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Minuteman owes its existence largely to Air Force Colonel Edward N. Hall, who in 1956 was given charge of the solid-fuel-propulsion division of General Bernard Schriever's Western Development Division, created to lead development of the SM-65 Atlas and HGM-25A Titan I ICBMs. Solid fuels were already commonly used in short-range rockets. Hall's superiors were interested in short- and medium-range missiles with solids, especially for use in Europe where the fast reaction time was an advantage for weapons that might be attacked by Soviet aircraft. But Hall was convinced that they could be used for a true ICBM with a range.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: To achieve the required energy, that year Hall began funding research at Boeing and Thiokol into the use of ammonium perchlorate composite propellant. Adapting a concept developed in the UK, they cast the fuel into large cylinders with a star-shaped hole running along the inner axis. This allowed the fuel to burn along the entire length of the cylinder, rather than just the end as in earlier designs. The increased burn rate meant increased thrust. This also meant the heat was spread across the entire motor, instead of the end, and because it burned from the inside out it did not reach the wall of the missile fuselage until the fuel was finished burning. In comparison, older designs burned primarily from one end to the other, meaning that at any instant one small section of the fuselage was being subjected to extreme loads and temperatures.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Guidance of an ICBM is based not only on the direction the missile is traveling but the precise instant that thrust is cut off. Too much thrust and the warhead will overshoot its target, too little and it will fall short. Solids are normally very hard to predict in terms of burn time and their instantaneous thrust during the burn, which made them questionable for the sort of accuracy required to hit a target at intercontinental range. While this initially appeared to be an insurmountable problem, it ended up being solved in an almost trivial fashion. A series of ports were added inside the rocket nozzle that were opened when the guidance systems called for engine cut-off. The reduction in pressure was so abrupt that the remaining fuel broke up and blew out the nozzle without contributing to the thrust.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The first to use these developments was the US Navy. It had been involved in a joint program with the US Army to develop the liquid-fueled PGM-19 Jupiter, but had always been skeptical of the system. The Navy felt that liquid fuels were too dangerous to use on board ships, especially submarines. Rapid success in the solids development program, combined with Edward Teller's promise of much lighter nuclear warheads during Project Nobska, led the Navy to abandon Jupiter and begin development of their own solid-fuel missile. Aerojet's work with Hall was adapted for their UGM-27 Polaris starting in December 1956.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The US Air Force saw no pressing need for a solid fuel ICBM. Development of the SM-65 Atlas and SM-68 Titan ICBMs was progressing, and "storable" liquids were being developed that would allow missiles to be left in a ready-to-shoot form for extended periods. Hall saw solid fuels not only as a way to improve launch times or safety, but part of a radical plan to greatly reduce the cost of ICBMs so that thousands could be built. He was aware that new computerized assembly lines would allow continual production, and that similar equipment would allow a small team to oversee operations for dozens or hundreds of missiles. A solid fuel design would be simpler to build, and easier to maintain.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Hall's ultimate plan was to build a number of integrated missiles "farms" that included factories, missile silos, transport and recycling. Each farm would support between 1,000 and 1,500 missiles being produced in a continuous low rate cycle. Systems in a missile would detect failures, at which point it would be removed and recycled, while a newly built missile would take its place. The missile design was based purely on lowest possible cost, reducing its size and complexity because "the basis of the weapon's merit was its low cost per completed mission; all other factors – accuracy, vulnerability, and reliability – were secondary."


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Hall's plan did not go unopposed, especially by the more established names in the ICBM field. Ramo-Wooldridge pressed for a system with higher accuracy, but Hall countered that the missile's role was to attack Soviet cities, and that "a force which provides numerical superiority over the enemy will provide a much stronger deterrent than a numerically inferior force of greater accuracy." Hall was known for his "friction with others" and in 1958 Schriever removed him from the Minuteman project, sending him to the UK to oversee deployment of the Thor IRBM. On his return to the US in 1959, Hall retired from the Air Force, but received his second Legion of Merit in 1960 for his work on solid fuels.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Although he was removed from the Minuteman project, Hall's work on cost reduction had already produced a new design of diameter, much smaller than the Atlas and Titan at , which meant smaller and cheaper silos. Hall's goal of dramatic cost reduction was a success, although many of the other concepts of his missile farm were abandoned.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Previous long-range missiles used liquid fuels that could be loaded only just prior to firing. The loading process took from 30 to 60 minutes in typical designs. Although lengthy, this was not considered to be a problem at the time, because it took about the same amount of time to spin up the inertial guidance system, set the initial position, and program in the target coordinates.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Minuteman was designed from the outset to be launched in minutes. While solid fuel eliminated the fueling delays, the delays in starting and aligning the guidance system remained. For the quick launch, the guidance system would have to be kept running and aligned at all times, which was a serious problem for the mechanical systems, especially the gyroscopes which used ball bearings.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Autonetics had an experimental design using air bearings that they claimed had been running continually from 1952 to 1957. Autonetics further advanced the state of the art by building the platform in the form of a ball which could rotate in two directions. Conventional solutions used a shaft with ball bearings at either end that allowed it to rotate around a single axis only. Autonetics design meant that only two gyros would be needed for the inertial platform, instead of the typical three.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The last major advance was to use a general-purpose digital computer in place of the analog or custom designed digital computers. Previous missile designs normally used two single-purpose and very simple computers; one ran the autopilot that kept the missile flying along a programmed course, and the second compared the information from the inertial platform to the target coordinates and sent any needed corrections to the autopilot. To reduce the total number of parts used in Minuteman, a single faster computer was used, running separate routines for these functions.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Since the guidance program would not be running while the missile sat in the silo, the same computer was also used to run a program that monitored the various sensors and test equipment. With older designs this had been handled by external systems, requiring miles of extra wiring and many connectors to locations where test instruments could be connected during servicing. Now these could all be accomplished by communicating with the computer through a single connection. In order to store multiple programs, the computer, the D-17B, was built in the form of a drum machine but used a hard disk in place of the drum.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Building a computer with the required performance, size and weight demanded the use of transistors, which were at that time very expensive and not very reliable. Earlier efforts to use computers for guidance, BINAC and the system on the SM-64 Navaho, had failed and were abandoned. The Air Force and Autonetics spent millions on a program to improve transistor and component reliability 100 times, leading to the "Minuteman high-rel parts" specifications. The techniques developed during this program were equally useful for improving all transistor construction, and greatly reduced the failure rate of transistor production lines in general. This improved yield, which had the effect of greatly lowering production costs, had enormous spin-off effects in the electronics industry.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Using a general-purpose computer also had long-lasting effects on the Minuteman program and the US's nuclear stance in general. With Minuteman, the targeting could be easily changed by loading new trajectory information into the computer's hard drive, a task that could be completed in a few hours. Earlier ICBMs' custom wired computers, on the other hand, could have attacked only a single target, whose precise trajectory information was hard-coded directly in the system's logic.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: In 1957, a series of intelligence reports suggested the Soviet Union was far ahead in the missile race and would be able to overwhelm the US by the early 1960s. If the Soviets were building missiles in the numbers being predicted by the CIA and others within the defense establishment, by as early as 1961 they would have enough to attack all SAC and ICBM bases in the US in a single first strike. It was later demonstrated that this "missile gap" was just as fictional as the "bomber gap" of a few years earlier, but through the late 1950s, it was a serious concern.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Air Force responded by beginning research into survivable strategic missiles, starting the WS-199 program. Initially, this focused on air-launched ballistic missiles, which would be carried aboard aircraft flying far from the Soviet Union, and thus impossible to attack by either ICBM, because they were moving, or long-range interceptor aircraft, because they were too far away. In the shorter term, looking to rapidly increase the number of missiles in its force, Minuteman was given crash development status starting in September 1958. Advanced surveying of the potential silo sites had already begun in late 1957.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Adding to their concerns was a Soviet anti-ballistic missile system which was known to be under development at Sary Shagan. WS-199 was expanded to develop a maneuvering reentry vehicle (MARV), which greatly complicated the problem of shooting down a warhead. Two designs were tested in 1957, Alpha Draco and the Boost Glide Reentry Vehicle. These used long and skinny arrow-like shapes that provided aerodynamic lift in the high atmosphere, and could be fitted to existing missiles like Minuteman.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The shape of these reentry vehicles required more room on the front of the missile than a traditional reentry vehicle design. To allow for this future expansion, the Minuteman silos were revised to be built deeper. Although Minuteman would not deploy a boost-glide warhead, the extra space proved invaluable in the future, as it allowed the missile to be extended and carry more fuel and payload.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: During Minuteman's early development, the Air Force maintained the policy that the manned strategic bomber was the primary weapon of nuclear war. Blind bombing accuracy on the order of was expected, and the weapons were sized to ensure even the hardest targets would be destroyed as long as the weapon fell within this range. The USAF had enough bombers to attack every military and industrial target in the USSR and was confident that its bombers would survive in sufficient numbers that such a strike would utterly destroy the country.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Soviet ICBMs upset this equation to a degree. Their accuracy was known to be low, on the order of , but they carried large warheads that would be useful against Strategic Air Command's bombers, which parked in the open. Since there was no system to detect the ICBMs being launched, the possibility was raised that the Soviets could launch a sneak attack with a few dozen missiles that would take out a significant portion of SAC's bomber fleet.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: In this environment, the Air Force saw their own ICBMs not as a primary weapon of war, but as a way to ensure that the Soviets would not risk a sneak attack. ICBMs, especially newer models that were housed in silos, could be expected to survive an attack by a single Soviet missile. In any conceivable scenario where both sides had similar numbers of ICBMs, the US forces would survive a sneak attack in sufficient numbers to ensure the destruction of all major Soviet cities in return. The Soviets would not risk an attack under these conditions.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Considering this "countervalue" attack concept, strategic planners calculated that an attack of "400 equivalent megatons" aimed at the largest Soviet cities would promptly kill 30% of their population and destroy 50% of their industry. Larger attacks raised these numbers only slightly, as all of the larger targets would already have been hit. This suggested that there was a "finite deterrent" level around 400 megatons that would be enough to prevent a Soviet attack no matter how many missiles they had of their own. All that had to be ensured was that the US missiles survived, which seemed likely given the low accuracy of the Soviet weapons. Reversing the problem, the addition of ICBMs to the US Air Force's arsenal did not eliminate the need, or desire, to attack Soviet military targets, and the Air Force maintained that bombers were the only suitable platform in that role.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Into this argument came the Navy's UGM-27 Polaris. Launched from submarines, Polaris was effectively invulnerable and had enough accuracy to attack Soviet cities. If the Soviets improved the accuracy of their missiles this would present a serious threat to the Air Force's bombers and missiles, but none at all to the Navy's submarines. Based on the same 400 equivalent megatons calculation, they set about building a fleet of 41 submarines carrying 16 missiles each, giving the Navy a finite deterrent that was unassailable.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: This presented a serious problem for the Air Force. They were still pressing for the development of newer bombers, like the supersonic B-70, for attacks against military targets, but this role seemed increasingly unlikely in a nuclear war scenario. A February 1960 memo by RAND, entitled "The Puzzle of Polaris", was passed around among high-ranking Air Force officials. It suggested that Polaris negated any need for Air Force ICBMs if they were also being aimed at Soviet cities. If the role of the missile was to present an unassailable threat to the Soviet population, Polaris was a far better solution than Minuteman. The document had long-lasting effects on the future of the Minuteman program, which, by 1961, was firmly evolving towards a counterforce capability.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Minuteman's final tests coincided with John F. Kennedy entering the White House. His new Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, was tasked with continuing the expansion and modernisation of the US nuclear deterrent while limiting spending. McNamara began to apply cost/benefit analysis, and Minuteman's low production cost made its selection a foregone conclusion. Atlas and Titan were soon scrapped, and the storable liquid fueled Titan II deployment was severely curtailed. McNamara also cancelled the B-70 bomber project.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Minuteman's low cost had spin-off effects on non-ICBM programs. The Army's Nike Zeus, an interceptor missile capable of shooting down Soviet warheads, provided another way to prevent a sneak attack. This had initially been proposed as a way to defend the SAC bomber fleet. The Army argued that upgraded Soviet missiles might be able to attack US missiles in their silos, and Zeus would be able to blunt such an attack. Zeus was expensive and the Air Force said it was more cost-effective to build another Minuteman missile. Given the large size and complexity of the Soviet liquid-fueled missiles, an ICBM building race was one the Soviets could not afford. Zeus was canceled in 1963.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Minuteman's selection as the primary Air Force ICBM was initially based on the same "second strike" logic as their earlier missiles: that the weapon was primarily one designed to survive any potential Soviet attack and ensure they would be hit in return. But Minuteman had a combination of features that led to its rapid evolution into the US's primary weapon of nuclear war.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Chief among these qualities was its digital computer. This could be updated in the field with new targets and better information about the flight paths with relative ease, gaining accuracy for little cost. One of the unavoidable effects on the warhead's trajectory was the mass of the Earth, which contains many mass concentrations that pull on the warhead as it passes over them. Through the 1960s, the Defense Mapping Agency (now part of National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) mapped these with increasing accuracy, feeding that information back into the Minuteman fleet. The Minuteman was initially deployed with a circular error probable (CEP) of about , but this had improved to about by 1965. This was accomplished without any mechanical changes to the missile or its navigation system.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: At those levels, the ICBM begins to approach the manned bomber in terms of accuracy; a small upgrade, roughly doubling the accuracy of the INS, would give it the same CEP as the manned bomber. Autonetics began such development even before the original Minuteman entered fleet service, and the Minuteman II had a CEP of . Additionally, the computers were upgraded with more memory, allowing them to store information for eight targets, which the missile crews could select among almost instantly, greatly increasing their flexibility. From that point, Minuteman became the US's primary deterrent weapon, until its performance was matched by the Navy's Trident missile of the 1980s.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Questions about the need for the manned bomber were quickly raised. The Air Force began to offer a number of reasons why the bomber offered value, in spite of costing more money to buy and being much more expensive to operate and maintain. Newer bombers with better survivability, like the B-70, cost many times more than the Minuteman, and, in spite of great efforts through the 1960s, became increasingly vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles. The B-1 of the early 1970s eventually emerged with a price tag around $200 million (equivalent to $ million in ) while the Minuteman IIIs built during the 1970s cost only $7 million ($ million in ).


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Air Force countered that having a variety of platforms complicated the defense; if the Soviets built an effective anti-ballistic missile system of some sort, the ICBM and SLBM fleet might be rendered useless, while the bombers would remain. This became the nuclear triad concept, which survives into the present. Although this argument was successful, the number of manned bombers has been repeatedly cut and the deterrent role increasingly passed to missiles.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The LGM-30A Minuteman I was first test-fired on 1 February 1961 at Cape Canaveral, and entered into the Strategic Air Command's arsenal in 1962. After the first batch of Minuteman I's were fully developed and ready for stationing, the United States Air Force (USAF) had originally decided to put the missiles at Vandenberg AFB in California, but before the missiles were set to officially be moved there it was discovered that this first set of Minuteman missiles had defective boosters which limited their range from their initial to . This defect would cause the missiles to fall short of their targets if launched over the North Pole as planned. The decision was made to station the missiles at Malmstrom AFB in Montana instead. These changes would allow the missiles, even with their defective boosters, to reach their intended targets in the case of a launch.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The "improved" LGM-30B Minuteman I became operational at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, Minot AFB, North Dakota, F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming, and Whiteman AFB, Missouri, in 1963 and 1964. All 800 Minuteman I missiles were delivered by June 1965. Each of the bases had 150 missiles emplaced; F.E. Warren had 200 of the Minuteman IB missiles. Malmstrom had 150 of the Minuteman I, and about five years later added 50 of the Minuteman II similar to those installed at Grand Forks AFB, ND.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Minuteman I's length varied based on which variation one was to look at. The Minuteman I/A had a length of and the Minuteman I/B had a length of . The Minuteman I weighed roughly , had an operational range of with an accuracy of about .


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Minuteman I Autonetics D-17 flight computer used a rotating air bearing magnetic disk holding 2,560 "cold-stored" words in 20 tracks (write heads disabled after program fill) of 24 bits each and one alterable track of 128 words. The time for a D-17 disk revolution was 10 ms. The D-17 also used a number of short loops for faster access to intermediate results storage. The D-17 computational minor cycle was three disk revolutions or 30 ms. During that time all recurring computations were performed. For ground operations, the inertial platform was aligned and gyro correction rates updated.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: During a flight, filtered command outputs were sent by each minor cycle to the engine nozzles. Unlike modern computers, which use descendants of that technology for secondary storage on hard disk, the disk was the active computer memory. The disk storage was considered hardened to radiation from nearby nuclear explosions, making it an ideal storage medium. To improve computational speed, the D-17 borrowed an instruction look-ahead feature from the Autonetics-built Field Artillery Data Computer (M18 FADAC) that permitted simple instruction execution every word time.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: At its introduction into service in 1962, Minuteman I was fitted with the W59 warhead with a yield of 1 Mt. Production for the W56 warhead with a 1.2 Mt yield began in March 1963 and W59 production was ended in July 1963 with a production run of only 150 warheads before being retired in June 1969. The W56 would continue production until May 1969 with a production run of 1000 warheads. Mods 0 to 3 were retired by September 1966 and the Mod 4 version would remain in service until the 1990s.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: It's not clear exactly why the W59 was replaced by the W56 after deployment but issues with "... one-point safety" and "performance under aged conditions" were cited in a 1987 Congressional report regarding the warhead. Chuck Hansen alleged that all weapons sharing the "Tsetse" nuclear primary design including the W59 suffered from a critical one-point safety issue and suffered premature tritium aging issues that needed to be corrected after entry into service.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The LGM-30F Minuteman II was an improved version of the Minuteman I missile. Its first test launch took place on September 24, 1964. Development on the Minuteman II began in 1962 as the Minuteman I entered the Strategic Air Command's nuclear force. Minuteman II production and deployment began in 1965 and completed in 1967. It had an increased range, greater throw weight and guidance system with better azimuthal coverage, providing military planners with better accuracy and a wider range of targets. Some missiles also carried penetration aids, allowing the higher probability of kill against Moscow's anti-ballistic missile system. The payload consisted of a single Mk-11C reentry vehicle containing a W56 nuclear warhead with a yield of 1.2 megatons of TNT (5 PJ).


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Minuteman II had a length of , weighed roughly , had an operational range of with an accuracy of about .


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: System modernization was concentrated on launch facilities and command and control facilities. This provided decreased reaction time and increased survivability when under nuclear attack. Final changes to the system were performed to increase compatibility with the expected LGM-118A Peacekeeper. These newer missiles were later deployed into modified Minuteman silos.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Minuteman II program was the first mass-produced system to use a computer constructed from integrated circuits (the Autonetics D-37C). The Minuteman II integrated circuits were diode–transistor logic and diode logic made by Texas Instruments. The other major customer of early integrated circuits was the Apollo Guidance Computer, which had similar weight and ruggedness constraints. The Apollo integrated circuits were resistor–transistor logic made by Fairchild Semiconductor. The Minuteman II flight computer continued to use rotating magnetic disks for primary storage. The Minuteman II included diodes by Microsemi Corporation.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The LGM-30G Minuteman III program started in 1966 and included several improvements over the previous versions. Its first test launch took place on August 16, 1968. It was first deployed in 1970. Most modifications related to the final stage and reentry system (RS). The final (third) stage was improved with a new fluid-injected motor, giving finer control than the previous four-nozzle system.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Performance improvements realized in Minuteman III include increased flexibility in reentry vehicle (RV) and penetration aids deployment, increased survivability after a nuclear attack, and increased payload capacity. The missile retains a gimballed inertial navigation system.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Minuteman III missiles used D-37D computers and completed the 1,000 missile deployment of this system. The initial cost of these computers ranged from about $139,000 (D-37C) to $250,000 (D-17B).


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The existing Minuteman III missiles have been further improved over the decades in service, with more than $7 billion spent in the 2010s to upgrade the 450 missiles.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: In December 1979 the higher-yield W78 warhead (335–350 kilotons) began replacing a number of the W62s deployed on the Minuteman IIIs. These were delivered in the Mark 12A reentry vehicle. A small, unknown number of the previous Mark 12 RVs were retained operationally, however, to maintain a capability to attack more-distant targets in the south-central Asian republics of the USSR (the Mark 12 RV weighed slightly less than the Mark 12A).


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Guidance Replacement Program replaces the NS20A Missile Guidance Set with the NS50 Missile Guidance Set. The newer system extends the service life of the Minuteman missile beyond the year 2030 by replacing aging parts and assemblies with current, high reliability technology while maintaining the current accuracy performance. The replacement program was completed 25 February 2008.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Beginning in 1998 and continuing through 2009, the Propulsion Replacement Program extends the life and maintains the performance by replacing the old solid propellant boosters (downstages).


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Single Reentry Vehicle modification enabled the United States ICBM force to abide by the now-voided START II treaty requirements by reconfiguring Minuteman III missiles from three reentry vehicles down to one. Though it was eventually ratified by both parties, START II never entered into force and was essentially superseded by follow-on agreements such as SORT and New START, which do not limit MIRV capability. Minuteman III remains fitted with a single warhead due to the warhead limitations in New START.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Beginning in 2005, Mk-21/W87 RVs from the deactivated Peacekeeper missile were replaced on the Minuteman III force under the Safety Enhanced Reentry Vehicle (SERV) program. The older W78 did not have many of the safety features of the newer W87, such as insensitive high explosives, as well as more advanced safety devices. In addition to implementing these safety features in at least a portion of the future Minuteman III force, the decision to transfer W87s onto the missile was based on two features that improved the targeting capabilities of the weapon: more fuzing options which allowed for greater targeting flexibility, and the most accurate reentry vehicle available, which provided a greater probability of damage to the designated targets.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Minuteman III missile entered service in 1970, with weapon systems upgrades included during the production run from 1970 to 1978 to increase accuracy and payload capacity. , the USAF plans to operate it until 2030.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The LGM-118A Peacekeeper (MX) ICBM, which was to have replaced the Minuteman, was retired in 2005 as part of START II.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: A total of 450 LGM-30G missiles are emplaced at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming (90th Missile Wing), Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota (91st Missile Wing), and Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana (341st Missile Wing). All Minuteman I and Minuteman II missiles have been retired. The United States prefers to keep its MIRV deterrents on submarine-launched Trident Nuclear Missiles In 2014, the Air Force decided to put fifty Minuteman III silos into "warm" unarmed status, taking up half of the 100 slots in America's allowable nuclear reserve. These can be reloaded in the future if necessary.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Minuteman III missiles are regularly tested with launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base in order to validate the effectiveness, readiness, and accuracy of the weapon system, as well as to support the system's primary purpose, nuclear deterrence. The safety features installed on the Minuteman III for each test launch allow the flight controllers to terminate the flight at any time if the systems indicate that its course may take it unsafely over inhabited areas. Since these flights are for test purposes only, even terminated flights can send back valuable information to correct a potential problem with the system.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The 576th Flight Test Squadron is responsible for planning, preparing, conducting, and assessing all ICBM ground and flight tests.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Airborne Launch Control System (ALCS) is an integral part of the Minuteman ICBM command and control system and provides a survivable launch capability for the Minuteman ICBM force if ground-based launch control centers (LCCs) are destroyed.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: When the Minuteman ICBM was first placed on alert, the Soviet Union did not have the number of weapons, accuracy, nor significant nuclear yield to completely destroy the Minuteman ICBM force during an attack. However, starting in the mid-1960s, the Soviets began to gain parity with the US and now had the potential capability to target and successfully attack the Minuteman force with an increased number of ICBMs that had greater yields and accuracy than were previously available.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Studying the problem, SAC realized that in order to prevent the US from launching all 1,000 Minuteman ICBMs, the Soviets did not have to target all 1,000 Minuteman missile silos. The Soviets needed to launch only a disarming decapitation strike against the 100 Minuteman LCCs – the command and control sites – in order to prevent the launch of all Minuteman ICBMs. Even though the Minuteman ICBMs would have been left unscathed in their missile silos following an LCC decapitation strike, the Minuteman missiles could not be launched without a command and control capability.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: In other words, the Soviets needed only 100 warheads to fully eliminate command and control of the Minuteman ICBMs. Even if the Soviets chose to expend two to three warheads per LCC for assured damage expectancy, the Soviets would have had to expend only up to 300 warheads to disable the Minuteman ICBM force – far less than the total number of Minuteman silos. The Soviets could have then used the remaining warheads to strike other targets they chose.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Faced with only a few Minuteman LCC targets, the Soviets could have concluded that the odds of being successful in a Minuteman LCC decapitation strike were higher with less risk than it would have been having to face the almost insurmountable task of successfully attacking and destroying 1000 Minuteman silos and 100 Minuteman LCCs to ensure Minuteman was disabled. This theory motivated SAC to design a survivable means to launch Minuteman, even if all the ground-based command and control sites were destroyed.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: After thorough testing and modification of EC-135 command post aircraft, the ALCS demonstrated its capability on 17 April 1967 by launching an ERCS configured Minuteman II out of Vandenberg AFB, CA. Afterward, ALCS achieved Initial Operational Capability on 31 May 1967. From that point on, airborne missileers stood alert with ALCS-capable EC-135 aircraft for several decades. All Minuteman ICBM Launch Facilities were modified and built to have the capability to receive commands from ALCS. With ALCS now standing alert around-the-clock, the Soviets could no longer successfully launch a Minuteman LCC decapitation strike. Even if the Soviets attempted to do so, EC-135s equipped with the ALCS could fly overhead and launch the remaining Minuteman ICBMs in retaliation.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Now that the ALCS was on alert, this complicated Soviet war planning by forcing the Soviets to target not only the 100 LCCs, but also the 1,000 silos with more than one warhead in order to guarantee destruction. This would have required upwards of 3,000 warheads to complete such an attack. The odds of being successful in such an attack on the Minuteman ICBM force would have been extremely low.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Today, the ALCS is operated by airborne missileers from the Air Force Global Strike Command's (AFGSC) 625th Strategic Operations Squadron (STOS) and United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM). The weapon system is now located on board the United States Navy's E-6B Mercury. The ALCS crew is integrated into the battle staff of the USSTRATCOM "Looking Glass" Airborne Command Post (ABNCP) and is on alert around-the-clock. Although the Minuteman ICBM force has been reduced since the end of the Cold War, the ALCS continues to act as a force multiplier by ensuring that an adversary cannot launch a successful Minuteman LCC decapitation strike.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Mobile Minuteman was a program for rail-based ICBMs to help increase survivability and for which the USAF released details on 12 October 1959. The Operation Big Star performance test was from 20 June to 27 August 1960 at Hill Air Force Base, and the 4062nd Strategic Missile Wing (Mobile) was organized 1 December 1960 for 3 planned missile train squadrons, each with 10 trains carrying 3 missiles per train. During the Kennedy/McNamara cutbacks, the Department of Defense announced "that it has abandoned the plan for a mobile Minuteman ICBM. The concept called for 600 to be placed in service—450 in silos and 150 on special trains, each train carrying 5 missiles." Kennedy announced on 18 March 1961 that the 3 squadrons were to be replaced with "fixed-base squadrons", and Strategic Air Command discontinued the 4062nd Strategic Missile Wing on 20 February 1962.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Air Launched ICBM was a STRAT-X proposal in which SAMSO (Space & Missile Systems Organization) successfully conducted an Air Mobile Feasibility Test that airdropped a Minuteman 1b from a C-5A Galaxy aircraft from over the Pacific Ocean. The missile fired at , and the 10-second engine burn carried the missile to 20,000 feet again before it dropped into the ocean. Operational deployment was discarded due to engineering and security difficulties, and the capability was a negotiating point in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: From 1963 through 1991 the National Command Authority communication relay system included the Emergency Rocket Communication System (ERCS). Specially designed rockets called BLUE SCOUT carried radio-transmitting payloads high above the continental United States, to relay messages to units within line-of-sight. In the event of a nuclear attack, ERCS payloads would relay pre-programmed messages giving the "go-order" to SAC units.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: BLUE SCOUT launch sites were located at Wisner, West Point and Tekamah, Nebraska. These locations were vital for ERCS effectiveness due to their centralized position in the US, within range of all missile complexes. In 1968, ERCS configurations were placed on the top of modified Minuteman II ICBMs (LGM-30Fs) under the control of the 510th Strategic Missile Squadron located at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The U.S. Air Force has considered using some decommissioned Minuteman missiles in a satellite launching role. These missiles would be stored in silos, for launch upon short notice. The payload would be variable and would have the ability to be replaced quickly. This would allow a surge capability in times of emergency.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: During the 1980s, surplus Minuteman missiles were used to power the Conestoga rocket produced by Space Services Inc. of America. It was the first privately funded rocket, but saw only three flights and was discontinued due to a lack of business. More recently, converted Minuteman missiles have been used to power the Minotaur line of rockets produced by Orbital Sciences (nowadays Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems).


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: L-3 Communications is currently using SR-19 SRBs, Minuteman II Second Stage Solid Rocket Boosters, as delivery vehicles for a range of different re-entry vehicles as targets for the THAAD and ASIP interceptor missile programs as well as radar testing.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The basic tactical unit of a Minuteman wing is the squadron, consisting of five flights. Each flight consists of ten unmanned launch facilities (LFs) which are remotely controlled by a manned launch control center (LCC). A two-officer crew is on duty in the LCC, typically for 24 hours. The five flights are interconnected and status from any LF may be monitored by any of the five LCCs. Each LF is located at least three nautical miles (5.6 km) from any LCC.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: Control does not extend outside the squadron (thus the 319th Missile Squadron's five LCCs cannot control the 320th Missile Squadron's 50 LFs even though they are part of the same Missile Wing). Each Minuteman wing is assisted logistically by a nearby Missile Support Base (MSB). If the ground-based LCCs are destroyed or incapacitated, the Minuteman ICBMs can be launched by airborne missileers utilizing the Airborne Launch Control System.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: A request for proposal for development and maintenance of a Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) next-generation nuclear ICBM, was made by the US Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, ICBM Systems Directorate, GBSD Division on 29 July 2016. The GBSD would replace MMIII in the land-based portion of the US Nuclear Triad. The new missile to be phased in over a decade from the late 2020s are estimated over a fifty-year life cycle to cost around $86 billion. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman were competing for the contract.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: On 21 August 2017, the US Air Force awarded 3-year development contracts to Boeing and Northrop Grumman, for $349 million and $329 million, respectively. One of these companies will be selected to produce this ground-based nuclear ICBM in 2020. In 2027, the GBSD program is expected to enter service and remain active until 2075.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: On 14 December 2019, it was announced that Northrop Grumman had won the competition to build the future ICBM. Northrop won by default, as their bid was at the time the only bid left to be considered for the GBSD program (Boeing had dropped out of the bidding contest earlier in 2019). The US Air Force said: "The Air Force will proceed with an aggressive and effective sole-source negotiation." in reference to Northrop's bid.


title: LGM-30 Minuteman

text: The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota preserves a Launch Control Facility (D-01) and a launch facility (D-09) under the control of the National Park Service. The North Dakota State Historical Society maintains the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Site, preserving a Missile Alert Facility, Launch Control Center and Launch Facility in the WS-133B "Deuce" configuration, near Cooperstown, North Dakota.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: "Final Fantasy XVI" is set on Valisthea, a world divided between six nations who hold power through access to magical Crystals and Dominants, humans who act as hosts for each nation's Eikon. Tensions between the nations escalate as a malady dubbed the Blight begins consuming the land. Clive Rosfield, guardian to his younger brother Joshua, witnesses his kingdom destroyed when and goes on a revenge quest in pursuit of the dark Eikon Ifrit.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: Beginning concept development in 2015, the staff included Naoki Yoshida as producer, Hiroshi Takai as main director, artists Hiroshi Minagawa and Kazuya Takahashi, Kazutoyo Maehiro as creative director and lead writer, Masayoshi Soken as composer, and Capcom veteran Ryota Suzuki as battle designer. Yoshida's aim was for a dark fantasy storyline which would have broad appeal and reinvigorate the series. Its production and promotion was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and later by the invasion of Ukraine.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: "Final Fantasy XVI" is an action role-playing game in which players take control of protagonist Clive Rosfield and a rotating party of AI-controlled companions through segmented open areas across the continents of Valisthea. Combat revolves around a combination of melee and magic attacks, with Clive able to dodge. During the game Clive ends up in battles with summoned monsters called Eikons, with their battles having dedicated mechanics. After defeating them, Clive gains access to powers and fighting techniques themed around them. Recurring "Final Fantasy" elements, such as the galliform Chocobo and monster types, are included in the game world. The game has two separate modes; a "Story" mode which offers accessories to simplify combat and strengthen the characters, and a normal mode which presents a greater challenge. There is also going to be a New Game+ which allows players to carry over their statistics and equipment into a campaign with increased difficulty.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: "Final Fantasy XVI" is set on Valisthea, a world split between the two continents Ash and Storm scattered with magical Mothercrystals which provide aether energy to the population, though overuse causes magic users to petrify. In the backstory, a technologically-advanced sky-based civilization once dominated the world. 1500 years before, a great war caused the sky civilization to collapse, with remnants of it scattering across Valisthea. In the present, the sky civilization is treated as a legend. The Mothercrystals become focuses for later civilization, with six nations controlling Valisthea by the game's events. A powerful force in Valisthea are the Eikons, magical creatures based on summoned monsters from the "Final Fantasy" series. The known Eikons−Pheonix, Shiva, Titan, Garuda, Leviathan, Bahamut, Odin and Ramuh−each represent one element and typically never fight each other. A seemingly-impossible second Eikon of fire, Ifrit, drives the main plot by disrupting this balance.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: The core nations of Valisthea are the Grand Duchy of Rosaria, the Holy Empire of Sanbreque, and the Dhalmekian Republic on the Storm continent, the Kingdom of Waloed which dominates the Ash continent, and the neutral Crystalline Dominion sitting between Ash and Storm. An outlier is the Iron Kingdom, an isolated nation off the coast of Storm overseen by the Crystalline Orthodox which speaks its own language. By the game's events, Valisthea is suffering from a depletion of aether dubbed the Blight, driving the nations into conflict with each other. A key part of the nations' politics and military are Dominants, humans who can use magic without crystals and manifest Eikons, though they are more at risk from petrification. Depending on where they are born, Dominants are hailed as political leaders, tolerated due to their power, or suffer abuse and are either killed or used as weapons of war.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: The game's protagonist is Clive Rosfield (voiced by Benn Starr/Yuma Uchida), firstborn son of Rosaria's ruling family who is passed over as successor when his younger brother Joshua (voiced by Logan Hannan/Natsumi Fujiwara) becomes the Dominant of Phoenix; while not a Dominant, Clive can acquire and wield the power of multiple Eikons in combat. A childhood friend and future companion is Jill Warrick (voiced by Charlotte McBurney/Megumi Han as a child, and Susannah Fielding/Megumi Han as an adult), the eventual Dominant of Shiva who spends much of her life as a political hostage. During his travels Clive is joined by his dog Torgal; and Cidolfus Telamon (voiced by Ralph Ineson/Hiroshi Shirokuma), the Dominant of Ramuh who seeks to establish a nation to shelter victimised magic users, and an incarnation of a recurring "Final Fantasy" character. Other prominent characters include Barnabas Tharmr (voiced by David Menkin/Gotaro Tsunashima), king of Waloed and Dominant of Odin; Benedikta Harman (voiced by Nina Yndis/Akari Higuchi), a Waloed spy and Dominant of Garuda; Hugo Kupka (voiced by Alex Lanipekun/Yasuhiro Mamiya), Dominant of Titan and key political figure in the Dhalmekian Republic; and Dion Lesage (voiced by Stewart Clarke/Yuichi Nakamura), crown prince of Sanbreque and the Dominant of Bahamut.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: Clive begins the game as Joshua's bodyguard during a time of growing unrest in Valisthea. While Clive is not Phoenix's Dominant, Joshua shares the power of Phoenix with him. The Duchy is attacked with tragic results, and in the ensuing chaos the dark Eikon Ifrit manifests. Ifrit's actions push Clive on a path of revenge, pulling him into the growing conflict between the nations and the first war to have Eikons fighting each other directly.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: "Final Fantasy XVI" was produced by Creative Business Unit III, a development studio within franchise developer and publisher Square Enix. The staff included members from the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) "Final Fantasy XIV", and multiple veterans of the Ivalice universe. The producer, Naoki Yoshida, is known for his work on "Final Fantasy XIV" as both producer and director. The main director was Hiroshi Takai, known for his work on the "SaGa" series and "The Last Remnant". Kazutoyo Maehiro acted as creative director and lead writer. Hiroshi Minagawa acts as art director, while the characters were designed by Kazuya Takahashi. The logo, portraying the Eikons Phoenix and Ifrit in battle and tying into the game's themes and story, was designed by long-time illustrator Yoshitaka Amano.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: Concept work for the game began in 2015 after Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda approached Yoshida to develop the next mainline "Final Fantasy". Yoshida, who was finishing up production on the "Final Fantasy XIV" expansion "", understood the choice as Creative Business Unit I had begun work on "Final Fantasy VII Remake", but he needed to balance his work between "Final Fantasy XIV" and "Final Fantasy XVI". To lay the groundwork, Yoshida assembled a small planning team made up of himself, Maehiro and lead game designer Mitsutoshi Gondai. Yoshida decided to become producer as his duties as both producer and director for "Final Fantasy XIV" were too time-consuming to take on a second large-scale project. Takai, who had also worked with Yoshida on "Final Fantasy XIV", was picked as main director for his experience on the series, his popularity among the development team and his experience on visual effects. Full production on "Final Fantasy XVI" began in 2016 following Patch 3.4 of "Heavensward", when Takai and Maehiro had trusted replacements in place for the next expansion "".


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: Takai's main goal for the game was an action-based combat that was easy to use, and a mature narrative that would tackle difficult themes and aim for a higher-than-average age rating. Yoshida wanted the game to cater to neither children or adults but rather something that will reach "players of all generations". It was initially developed as a PlayStation 5 exclusive, with a PlayStation 4 version being considered but abandoned so as not to limit the team's ambitions. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the staff needed to move to remote working, and production ended up half a year behind schedule due to communication issues with both Square Enix's head office and outsourcing companies. By late 2020, basic work on development and game scenarios was complete and work was continuing on "large scale" resources like boss battles and development tools. By April 2022, development was in its final stages, with the team finalising side quests. It was fully playable from start to finish by June of that year, with development focusing both on polishing the game and voice recording for different languages.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: When choosing the game's combat system, Yoshida conducted surveys within the "Final Fantasy" community, finding a division between fans of action-based and more traditional turn-based combat. After considering the potential impact on sales and modern gaming trends, he opted for a real-time action-based battle system. Yoshida admitted that this approach alongside other gameplay decisions risked polarizing series fans, but believed that trying to please every fan by incorporating every element possible would "run the risk of creating a half-baked compromise of a game". During its early production, the growing team had a system of designing gameplay tests and completely scrapping those that did not work, with Square Enix's upper management getting frustrated with the team's slow pace. The team decided against an open world, as it would have extended development time beyond a practical limit. Clive was made the only controllable character, with other party members driven by AI to simplify the player's control needs, though commands were included to allow for limited control.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: Outside the "Kingdom Hearts" team, Square Enix had little experience designing action combat. Yoshida sought out Ryota Suzuki, a Capcom veteran who had worked on the "Devil May Cry" series, as battle designer. The battle system was designed around the idea of turning the ability system of "Final Fantasy V" into a real-time combat system. The Eikon battles all had unique mechanics that were not used again in-game. One of the earliest completed Eikon battles was with Garuda, with its foundation remaining mostly unchanged throughout production. There were no loading screens related to this setpiece battles, with gameplay and dialogue all being mixed together seamlessly. During the first half of development, an Eikon-based job system was intended for Clive, but it was dropped due to its restrictions on Clive's in-game appearance. Classic "Final Fantasy" jobs was used as a design inspiration for enemies and some NPCs.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: Yoshida brought Maehiro on board due to liking his writing style and world-building. While he accepted, Maehiro was also busy working on the "Heavensward" scenario, only starting full work in 2016. Maehiro created the initial script, which was checked and completed by Michael-Christopher "Koji" Fox. In addition to the scenario, all the game's dialogue was written before any of the game design was finalised. The script was written first in Japanese, then translated into English for initial dialogue and cutscene recording. The traditional medieval setting and style was chosen because a lot of the core members really enjoy that style from classic "Final Fantasy" games the most. The shift was also done in response to a growing feeling among fans and critics that the series was moving too far towards science fiction, and that this style was causing the series to become "static". Working from the concept of Eikons having prominence, Maehiro created the world map and based the nations around their local geography before creating the story around that setting. While initially Chocobos and Moogles were not included, staff protests prompted Maehiro to adjust his world design to allow for their logical incorporation.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: While the game had a large cast and prominent female characters, the game was always considered as Clive's story and the relationships he forms with different people through the warring nations. The story's central theme was the clashing of values. Clive and Dion were designed as aesthetic opposites, built around the archetypes of princes of darkness and light respectively. Crystals, a recurring feature in the series, were portrayed here as an analogy to depleted fossil fuels, while Dominants and Eikons acted as analogies for weapons of mass destruction. A recurring marketing tagline, "The legacy of the crystals has shaped our history for long enough", was meant to symbolise both a break from the science fiction style of recent entries and a questioning of the crystal's role of bestowing power on humans. The Eikons were based on established fan favorite summons from across the "Final Fantasy" series, with Ifrit given a prominent role to contrast his earlier portrayal as a summon for beginners. Most of the story was told using real-time cutscenes and in-game dialogue, though pre-rendered CGI scenes were featured. These scenes were directed by Takeshi Nozue. Compared to other recent "Final Fantasy" titles, there was no plan for "tertiary content" such as downloadable content and books, instead having the entire story told within the game.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: Speaking on the portrayal of ethnic diversity in the game's world, Yoshida stated that its relative lack of diversity fitted into both its Medieval European setting and the in-universe isolation of the lands. He admitted potential representation issues, but foresaw problems with both breaking player immersion in the setting and problematic stereotypes being associated with ethnic minority protagonists or antagonists. The team ultimately decided to focus on the characters' personalities and narratives over their appearance. The localization is being directed by Fox, who also leads the localization of "Final Fantasy XIV". While the script was written in Japanese, in contrast to earlier entries it was translated and motion captured in English. Yoshida stayed away from the recording process both due to company policy and out of "respect" for the writers as he would likely contradict their decisions and cause issues. All the English voice work was done by European actors, a non-standard approach to appeal to the North American market.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: The music is being composed by Masayoshi Soken. Soken had worked with Yoshida and Takai on "Final Fantasy XIV", and was brought on board due to his familiarity with Yoshida, Takai and Maehiro's world design style. Having worked for a long time on the MMORPG "Final Fantasy XIV", which used multiple styles and paid homage to the entire series, Soken had trouble adjusting to composing for a single-player with a central narrative and musical theme. One recalled episode from the music writing was a bardic song performed both in spoken and sung form by a trained singer and actor that would change depending on Clive's position in the story. The songs proved difficult as they needed localizing in several languages and recording a cappella, which resulted in issues with the pitch and tempo.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: Rumors emerged in late 2019 about "Final Fantasy XVI" due to reports that Creative Business Unit III had finished groundwork for a major new title. The game was officially announced in September 2020. The trailer used real-time footage instead of pre-rendered cutscenes to show the game was well into development and not too far from release. The second trailer, released in June 2022 and showcasing the Eikons and related gameplay and story scenes, was ready that March. Due to the invasion of Ukraine the previous month, the team decided to hold off releasing the trailer due to the game's portrayal of warring nations. Yoshida recorded a message to preface the trailer to separate it from world events. There was some brief online controversy around the game's perceived lack of ethnic diversity and the team's explanation for it. A third trailer, featuring more gameplay content and the release date, was published in December at The Game Awards 2022.


title: Final Fantasy XVI

text: "Final Fantasy XVI" is set for a worldwide release on June 22, 2023. It was notably given high age ratings in each major region (CERO's D rating, PEGI's 18 rating, and the ESRB's Mature rating). It will be a timed exclusive for six months following its release. The game had digital and physical Delux and Collector's Editions available for sale through Square Enix's online store, featuring additional in-game items and accessories such as an art book and steelcase with unique art.


title: Dell Curry

text: Wardell Stephen Curry (born June 25, 1964) is an American former professional basketball player. He played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1986 until 2002 and retired as the Charlotte Hornets' all-time leader in points (9,839) and three-point field goals made (929). Curry currently works as a color commentator, alongside Eric Collins, on Charlotte Hornets television broadcasts. He is the father of NBA players Stephen Curry and Seth Curry.


title: Dell Curry

text: Born in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Curry was raised in Grottoes and played high school basketball at Fort Defiance, where he used his coach's barn to practice shooting daily. He finished as the all-time leading scorer in school history, and was named a McDonald's All-American in 1982. Curry also played baseball, and won state championships in both sports; he was selected by the Texas Rangers in the 1982 Major League Baseball draft.


title: Dell Curry

text: Curry was a four-year starter at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg along with contemporaries Bobby Beecher, Perry Young, Al Young, and Keith Colbert. The Hokies appeared in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in 1983 and 1984, finishing third in the latter. Although the team qualified for at-large bids to the NCAA tournament in 1985 and 1986, it lost in the first round on both occasions. In his senior season in 1986, Curry was named the player of the year in the Metro Conference. Prior to the 1986–87 season, NCAA basketball did not feature a three-point line; Curry's accurate long-range shooting was not rewarded, as it would be later in his NBA career. (In the early and mid 1980s, the three-point line was introduced in many conferences at varying distances, but it was not recognized by the NCAA.)


title: Dell Curry

text: Curry also played baseball for Virginia Tech. He was selected by the Baltimore Orioles in the 14th round of the 1985 MLB draft but opted to continue playing basketball.


title: Dell Curry

text: Curry finished his Virginia Tech career with 2,389 points (second all-time) and 295 steals (all-time leader) in basketball, and a 6–1 record with a 3.81 ERA in baseball.


title: Dell Curry

text: Curry was selected with the 15th overall pick by the Utah Jazz in the 1986 NBA draft. He played one season in Utah before being traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 1987, where he spent the 1987–88 season. He was left unprotected by Cleveland for the 1988 NBA expansion draft and was the second player selected, the first by the Charlotte Hornets. Curry spent 10 seasons in Charlotte, mostly coming off the bench to provide instant offense with three-point shooting. He was a regular in the discussions for Sixth Man of the Year and won the honor in the 1993–94 season. He was once the franchise's all-time statistical leader in points, games played, three-point field goals made and attempted, and three-point field goal percentage. When he left the team in 1998, he was the last player remaining from its inaugural season 10 years earlier.


title: Dell Curry

text: Curry played one season for the Milwaukee Bucks before playing his final three seasons in the NBA for the Toronto Raptors. He holds career averages of 11.7 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 1.8 assists. Curry retired as the all-time leading scorer in Hornets history with 9,839 points.


title: Dell Curry

text: On June 18, 2007, Curry was named an assistant coach of the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats, but he stepped down before the season began so that he could attend his sons' basketball games.


title: Dell Curry

text: In 2009, Curry started working as a commentator, alongside longtime play-by-play announcer Steve Martin, for the Charlotte Bobcats (now Charlotte Hornets).


title: Dell Curry

text: In 2016, Curry was the recipient of the Bobby Jones Award at the Athletes in Action All Star Breakfast, which is held each year at the NBA All Star Weekend.


title: Dell Curry

text: On June 21, 1991, Curry and Charlotte Hornets teammate Muggsy Bogues appeared in a Minor League Baseball game for the Gastonia Rangers of the South Atlantic League. George Shinn, as owner of both teams, arranged the publicity stunt. Curry allowed only one run and struck out four batters in a three inning start.


title: Dell Curry

text: In 1995, Dell and his wife, Sonya ( Adams), founded the Christian Montessori School of Lake Norman, a preschool in Huntersville, North Carolina.


title: Dell Curry

text: In 1998, Curry established a charitable foundation, the Dell Curry Foundation, which is a youth oriented program in Charlotte, North Carolina. The foundation runs five learning centers in Charlotte to provide educational training and drug abuse counseling.


title: Dell Curry

text: Curry married his college sweetheart Sonya in 1988. They have three children, Stephen, Seth, and Sydel. Stephen is the starting point guard for the Golden State Warriors. While he has been with them, they have won four NBA championships alongside 2 NBA MVP Awards. Stephen is married to Ayesha Curry. Seth currently plays for the Brooklyn Nets. He is married to Callie Rivers, sister of current NBA player Austin Rivers and daughter of former NBA player and current NBA coach Doc Rivers. Curry's daughter Sydel played volleyball at Elon University and is married to NBA player Damion Lee. She was featured on "Say Yes to the Dress" in 2018.


title: Dell Curry

text: On August 23, 2021, Curry and his wife, Sonya, announced that they were divorcing after 33 years of marriage.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Trader Joe's is an American chain of grocery stores headquartered in Monrovia, California. The chain has over 569 stores across the United States.


title: Trader Joe's

text: The first Trader Joe's store was opened in 1967 by founder Joe Coulombe in Pasadena, California. The chain was owned by German entrepreneur Theo Albrecht from 1979 until his death in 2010, when ownership passed to his heirs. The company has offices in Monrovia and Boston, Massachusetts.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Trader Joe's is named after its founder, Joe Coulombe. The company began in 1958 as a Greater Los Angeles area chain known as Pronto Market convenience stores. Coulombe felt the original Pronto Markets were too similar to 7-Eleven, which he described as the "800-pound gorilla of convenience stores", concerned the competition would be too much.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Coulombe developed the idea of the Trader Joe's South Seas motif while on vacation in the Caribbean. The Tiki culture craze was still widespread in the United States in the 1960s, so in a direct nod to the fad, the Trader Joe's name itself was a spoof on Trader Vic's, the famous tiki-themed restaurant that had opened its first southern California location in the Beverly Hilton in 1955. Trader Vic's in Beverly Hills was notoriously expensive to eat at, but the Trader Joe's in Pasadena provided an irreverent and less expensive offering of food and drink. Coulombe noted two trends in the US that informed the merchandising of his new store concept: one, the number of college-educated people was rising steadily, due in part to the G.I. Bill, and two, with new jumbo jets due to premiere in 1970, international travel would be accelerating as well. A better educated, more well-traveled public were acquiring tastes they had trouble satisfying in American supermarkets at the time.


title: Trader Joe's

text: The first store branded as "Trader Joe's" opened in 1967 in Pasadena, California; it remains in operation. In their first few decades, some of the stores offered fresh meats provided by butchers who leased space in the stores, along with sandwiches and freshly cut cheese, all in-store.


title: Trader Joe's

text: In 1979, German Theo Albrecht (owner and CEO of Aldi Nord) bought the company as a personal investment for his family. Coulombe was succeeded as CEO by John V. Shields in 1987. Under his leadership, the company expanded into Arizona in 1993 and into the Pacific Northwest two years later. In 1996, the company opened its first stores on the East Coast in Brookline and Cambridge, both outside Boston. In 2001, Shields retired and Dan Bane succeeded him as CEO.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Since its inception, Trader Joe's has continued to expand across the United States. In 2004, "BusinessWeek" reported that Trader Joe's quintupled its number of stores between 1990 and 2001 and increased its profits tenfold. In February 2008, "BusinessWeek" reported that the company had the highest sales per square foot of any grocer in the United States. Two-and-a-half years later and in 2016, "Fortune" magazine estimated sales to be $1,750 in merchandise per square foot, more than double the sales generated by Whole Foods.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Joe Coulombe, the namesake of the brand, died in 2020. His memoir and business guide, "Becoming Trader Joe", was published in 2021.


title: Trader Joe's

text: , Trader Joe's had 530 stores in the United States with stores being added regularly. Most locations averaged between 10,000 and . California has the largest number of stores with 192 open in the state.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Each location is designed to represent its respective area. Every store has its staff members create artwork to represent the surrounding neighborhood. Some store locations have their own "find the mascot," and children can obtain a unique collectible prize when they tell a staff member where it is "hiding," and choose a new hiding location.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Individual stores may deviate from the standard theme of the chain by including props to blend into the local area; for example, a surf theme for a store near the beach. Aesthetic choices typically include red shopping carts and painted murals along store walls. Along with their interior, stores supply products that are specialized to the people of that location.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Trader Joe's sells many items under its own private labels, at a significant discount to brand-name equivalents, and requires its brand-name suppliers not to publicize this business relationship. Trader Joe's labels are sometimes named in accordance with the ethnicity of the food in question, such as "Trader Jose's" (Mexican food), "Baker Josef's" (flour and bagels), "Trader Giotto's" (Italian food), "Trader Joe-San's" (Japanese food), "Trader Ming's" (Asian food), "JosephsBrau" (beer), and "Trader Jacques'" (French food and soaps). By selling almost all of its products under its own labels, Trader Joe's "skips the middle man" and buys directly from both local and international vendors.


title: Trader Joe's

text: While a typical grocery store may carry 50,000 items, Trader Joe's stocks about 4,000 items, 80% of which bear one of its brand names. Products include gourmet foods, organic foods, vegetarian foods, frozen foods, imported foods, domestic and imported wine and beer (where local law permits), and "alternative" food items, such as vegan and vegetarian options.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Trader Joe's discontinues individual products more often than larger grocery chains. A product may be discontinued because of a variety of reasons: it may be a seasonal product; the cost of producing the item may have increased, thereby also increasing its cost; or the item wasn't selling strongly enough. New items are introduced every week, so Trader Joe's may remove current items to make room for new products on its shelves. Stores often have a "new items" case with 10 to 15 products (that can also be found in the rest of the store), indicating an intentional high turnover of products.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Product selection and prices may also differ from state to state. For freshly-prepared items (e.g., deli, bakery, dairy and juice), Trader Joe's tries to source products as close to the stores as possible, which may result in variations with recipes and prices. State laws, taxes, deposit requirements, and distribution costs can also influence how products are priced in each location.


title: Trader Joe's

text: In February 2016, because of customer feedback, Trader Joe's announced their goal "to have all the eggs [they] sell in western states (CA, OR, WA, AZ, NM and CO) come from cage-free suppliers by 2020 and all the eggs [they] sell nationally to come from cage-free suppliers by 2025".


title: Trader Joe's

text: Trader Joe's is the exclusive retailer of Charles Shaw wine, popularly known as "Two Buck Chuck" because of its original $1.99 price tag in California (local prices vary). Of the wine selection at Trader Joe's, Coulombe has said, "We built Trader Joe's on wine first, then food. I tasted 100,000 wines, and most weren't wonderful. They were submitted to us by desperate vintners". Along with Charles Shaw, Trader Joe's stocks a selection of California and New World wines.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Trader Joe's states that "a continuing focus of [their] sustainability initiatives is maintaining product integrity and preventing food waste."


title: Trader Joe's

text: Trader Joe's has been taking steps to make its products more environmentally friendly. In 2019, Greenpeace delivered a petition of 100,000 signatures for Trader Joe's to phase out single-use plastics. In response to customer pressure, Trader Joe's committed to stop offering single-use carryout bags nationwide; replace its produce bags with biodegradable and compostable options; replace styrofoam trays; and sell more loose, unwrapped produce.


title: Trader Joe's

text: In 2021, as part of an ongoing effort to improve packaging, Trader Joe's stated that it had improved over 200 products by eliminating excess components, and increasing the amount of recycled and sustainably sourced materials. The company also removed over 4 million pounds of plastic packaging from their products in 2021. Examples of improvements include removing plastic mesh packaging from produce, converting plastic clamshells for produce to sealed fiber trays, and increasing the number of frozen entrees in a plastic tray with a compostable option.


title: Trader Joe's

text: In October 2007, amid customer concerns, Trader Joe's began to phase out foods imported from China, and from February to April 2008, Trader Joe's phased out single-ingredient products from China because of customer concerns. Between 2012 and 2013, Trader Joe's moved from 15th on Greenpeace's CATO (Carting Away the Oceans) scale to third by removing six unsustainable species of fish from its shelves and getting involved in efforts to protect the Bering Sea Canyons.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Trader Joe's claims that in 2021, approximately 99.5% of all products were sold in stores, donated to food recovery partners, or composted. Through its "Neighborhood Shares Program," Trader Joe's donates 100% of the unsold products to local food recovery organizations. In 2021, this amounted to more than $349 million worth of products to non-profit partners, and nearly 63 million meals served to local communities.


title: Trader Joe's

text: In May 2009, "Consumer Reports" ranked Trader Joe's the second-best supermarket chain in the United States (after Wegmans). In June 2009, "MSN Money" released its annual Customer Service Hall of Fame survey results, in which Trader Joe's ranked second in customer service. From 2008 to 2010, "Ethisphere" magazine listed Trader Joe's among its most ethical companies in the United States, but it did not make the list in 2011. In 2014, "Consumer Reports" again ranked Trader Joe's a top-scoring supermarket chain. The company ranked number 23 among the 2019 Glassdoor best places to work in the US, and number 14 in 2020.


title: Trader Joe's

text: The retailer has been characterized as "notoriously secretive" and it has also been criticized for a lack of transparency by management about the sources of products such as organic milk. Trader Joe's scores the lowest on Green America's chocolate scorecard, as the retailer shares very little about addressing child labor or deforestation caused by the chocolate it sells.


title: Trader Joe's

text: In a 2016 settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice, Trader Joe's violated the Clean Air Act by emitting high global warming potential (GWP) and ozone-depleting refrigerants. The company was tasked with reducing its emissions and creating a process to track and repair refrigerants, and was required to use refrigerants with an ultra-low GWP in 15 stores. Since then, the company has not shared its progress to reduce leak rates or publicly report its climate emissions.


title: Trader Joe's

text: In September 2013, in response to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Trader Joe's stated that it would require part-time employees to work an average of 30 hours per week in order to qualify for medical insurance (with free coverage for basic dental and vision care still being available for all crew members who work an average of 15 hours or more per week). Part-time employees who were not qualifying for medical insurance would now be eligible for plans which were available under the ACA (but they would only be made available to those employees whose employers do not offer them an insurance plan). Those employees who were working full-time were unaffected. Maeg Yosef, a union organizer who has worked for 18 years at the Hadley, Massachusetts store, said the company cut contributions to employee retirement plansfrom the equivalent of 15% of an employee's annual pay down to nothingsince she started there. Workers at the Trader Joe's grocery store in Hadley announced in an open letter dated May 14, 2022 to the company's CEO their intent to push for unionization citing stagnated wages and a desire for better pay, benefits and workplace conditions.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Trader Joe's has been accused of union busting when a store in Hadley, Massachusetts organized for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board.


title: Trader Joe's

text: In 1977, the company began introducing international-sounding variants of its brand for some of its private label ethnic food items, such as "Trader José", "Trader Joe San", and "Trader Giotto" for Mexican, Japanese, and Italian products respectively. The company also referenced other cultures with branding like "Trader Ming's", "Arabian Joe's", and "Pilgrim Joe" for Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Thanksgiving-themed American products. In July 2020, during the George Floyd protests, an online petition signed by 5,300 people asked the company to rename these products, criticized their labeling as "racist" and accusing the company of promoting "a narrative of exoticism that perpetuates harmful stereotypes".


title: Trader Joe's

text: The company reacted by stating that it was already in the process of reverting a number of international foods back to Trader Joe's branding, and that this decision had already been made several years earlier. Trader Joe's later clarified that some branding referenced in the petition will remain, stating: "We disagree that any of these labels are racist. We do not make decisions based on petitions." The petition itself has been criticized on social media for promoting cancel culture and for "wasting time on a trivial issue".


title: Trader Joe's

text: Trader Joes is known for having a friendly and highly personable brand personality. The store brands itself as quirky and creative with the signage through out the aisles, the company's private label products, and the packaging. Trader Joes' personality is also embodied in the employees as they are very eccentric, friendly, kind, and sociable, which helps to connect consumers to the brand and increase brand loyalty.


title: Trader Joe's

text: In spite of being known as a "neighborhood store" with affordable options, Trader Joe's locations are mostly in well-off neighborhoods. In 2022, the typical Trader Joe's customer was a married person living in an urban area, between 25 and 44 years old, earning at least $80,000. When deciding where to open locations, the chain typically looks for areas where the median household income is over $100,000. In effect, this systemically contributes to the "food desert" phenomenon, where residents in certain areas may have limited access to nutritious food.


title: Trader Joe's

text: Conversely, Trader Joe's has also faced opposition for contributing to gentrification. Between 1997 and 2014, Zillow found that homes grow more rapidly in value if they are closer to a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, with such homes consistently being worth more than the mean U.S. home. In 2014, Trader Joe's agreed to halt plans to open a store in a historically black neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, following protests led by the Portland African American Leadership Forum. The organization objected to the $2.4 million subsidy offered by the city to Trader Joe's and emphasized that they were not against Trader Joe's, but instead were pushing back against the city's history of displacing African Americans. In 2015, along with a proposal to build new affordable housing, the city announced that a different store, Natural Grocers, would be built on the vacant lot.


title: Moons of Jupiter

text: There are 80 known moons of Jupiter, not counting a number of moonlets likely shed from the inner moons. All together, they form a satellite system which is called the Jovian system. The most massive of the moons are the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, which were independently discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius and were the first objects found to orbit a body that was neither Earth nor the Sun. Much more recently, beginning in 1892, dozens of far smaller Jovian moons have been detected and have received the names of lovers (or other sexual partners) or daughters of the Roman god Jupiter or his Greek equivalent Zeus. The Galilean moons are by far the largest and most massive objects to orbit Jupiter, with the remaining 76 known moons and the rings together composing just 0.003% of the total orbiting mass.


title: Moons of Jupiter

text: Of Jupiter's moons, eight are regular satellites with prograde and nearly circular orbits that are not greatly inclined with respect to Jupiter's equatorial plane. The Galilean satellites are nearly spherical in shape due to their planetary mass, and so would be considered at least dwarf planets if they were in direct orbit around the Sun. The other four regular satellites are much smaller and closer to Jupiter; these serve as sources of the dust that makes up Jupiter's rings. The remainder of Jupiter's moons are irregular satellites whose prograde and retrograde orbits are much farther from Jupiter and have high inclinations and eccentricities. These moons were probably captured by Jupiter from solar orbits. Twenty-three of the irregular satellites have not yet been officially named.