Quoted:
One of the interesting turns in Minuteman history was how the cable system developed.
The 341st MW at Malmstrom AFB, MT is called Wing I. First wing built, 1962. Also the biggest. They overestimated the size and accuracy of Soviet systems and therefore placed all the sites at least 10 nautical miles away from every other site.
800 of the 1000 Minuteman launch facilities built used/uses a redundant cable system to communicate. That means that each of the 165 sites (150 launch facilities and 15 launch control centers) was connected in such a way that there is at least two paths to each site.
Given those two facts--10nm apart and redundant cable-they realized that the cable system was going to be a LOT of work, and bloody expensive. We're talking 2,400 miles of cable at Malmstrom.
For example, here's the schematic for FE Warren's field, the 90th Missile Wing.
https://www.minutemanmissile.com/images/HICSCableConnectivitySchematic.jpg
Which is why Malmstrom is the only wing that big, and the others were all much smaller--they shortened the distance between to 3nm. Saved a lot of cable--Warren only uses about 1,800 miles, Minot (with only three squadrons) uses about 1,500.
The last 200 missiles were added on a little later, and built by a different contractor (Sylvania instead of Boeing). Sylvania was charged with coming up with a better--read, cheaper--way to communicate, and developed a cable/radio system (single cable line running through the squadron--in Oscar's example, connecting the five LCCs in the squadron in the order K-O-N-L-M with offshoots to the individual LFs off of that, with a backup medium frequency radio data link), which significantly reduced the cost and effort to communicate, and made it more survivable. Which, of course, meant the Sylvania system was one of the first wings to be shut down during the drawdown of the 1990s.
The Grand Forks wing, and the 564th Missile Squadron at Malmstrom (northwestern most squadron), were Sylvania systems. The MF radio rack sits right behind the deputy's chair (the one without the plastic covers over the drawers in one one of your pictures).
Cable connectivity is REALLY important--if you can't talk to the missile, you don't know what it's doing, and more importantly, what's going on out there security-wise. The "two person concept" for control of nuclear weapons at the remote launch facilities is fulfilled by the number of LCCs that can see status from that missile, so if no one can see it, no one's controlling it.