An Air Force firefighter repels down a training missile silo during a training exercise at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming on Oct. 26, 2024. (Hunter C. Kirkland/U.S. Air Force)

At a memorial service in 2022, veteran Air Force Capt. Monte Watts bumped into a fellow former Minuteman III nuclear missile operator, who told him that she had non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Watts knew other missileers with similar cancers. But the connection really hit home later that same January day, when the results of a blood test revealed that Watts himself had chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“I don’t know if it was ironic or serendipitous or what the right word is, but there it was,” Watts said.

Within the community of U.S. service members who staff nuclear missile silos scatte

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