On June 24, U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. John Newberry, the head of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland AFB, N.M., dismissed Air Force Col. Charles Clegg, the head of the Sentinel Systems Directorate at Hill AFB, Utah since the summer of 2022.
“The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center Commander removed the Sentinel Systems Director from his position on June 24th due to a loss of confidence in his ability to lead the directorate,” the Air Force said in a statement. “He was removed because he did not follow organizational procedures. This removal action is not directly related to the Nunn-McCurdy review.”
When asked, the Air Force did not specify which “organizational procedures” Clegg did not follow, and Defense Daily was unable to reach Clegg by phone for comment on June 26.
“It is difficult to believe Col. Clegg’s dismissal is not related to the Sentinel program’s Nunn McCurdy breach,” Dan Grazier, senior fellow for the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center, wrote in a July 26 email.
“Such a move echoes the 2010 firing of [U.S. Marine Corps] Maj. Gen. David Heinz from his leadership position in the Joint Strike Fighter program which occurred when that program suffered its own breach,” Grazier wrote. “I fear Col. Clegg has become the Air Force’s scapegoat ahead of the congressional hearing about the program on July 24. The leadership shakeup certainly gives the appearance of a cynical move on the Air Force’s part to show someone is being held accountable for the program’s shortcomings.”
Defense Daily also reached out to the offices of Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.)–a critic of Sentinel who is spearheading the July 24 congressional hearing. Defense Daily will add any comments received from them or others on what “organizational procedures” Clegg did not adhere to.
Past directors of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent/Sentinel program have included Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey, now the Department of the Air Force’s integrating Program Executive Officer (PEO) for command, control, communications and battle management, who headed Sentinel from April 2018 to May 2020, and Brig. Gen. Jason Bartolomei, the PEO for weapons and the head of the Air Force’s armament directorate at Eglin AFB, Fla., who headed the Sentinel program from May 2020 until Clegg took over in August 2022.
Bloomberg News first reported Clegg’s dismissal on June 25.
The Air Force told Congress in January that the bill for Sentinel had risen above the Nunn-McCurdy’s 25 percent critical cost breach threshold to an estimated $125 billion, a 37 percent increase from the previous $95 billion estimate.
The per-unit cost for missiles rose to $162 million from $118 million in 2020 in what Air Force officials have attributed to unforeseen construction costs, including new silos and wiring (Defense Daily, March 11).
Air Force Brig. Gen. Colin Connor heads the task force as AFGSC’s director of ICBM modernization at Barksdale AFB, La.
The Pentagon office of Cost Analysis and Program Evaluation and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are to have major input into Sentinel’s future.
Department of the Air Force budget officials have been combing through small, medium, and big ticket programs to find funding to plug the Sentinel budget hole for fiscal 2026.
Among the options are cancelling or delaying the manned Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) sixth generation fighter and postponing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning aircraft. Air Force officials have also examined the feasibility of putting Sentinel in a DoD-wide nuclear modernization account to free up funds for the department’s highest priorities.
In Congress, some lawmakers want to retain the Air Force’s 32 Block 20 F-22 fighters and modernize them as a hedge against a significant change to the manned NGAD program.