This fall, the Defense Department may approve an updated acquisition strategy for the Northrop Grumman [NOC] LGM-35A Sentinel future ICBM before a possible re-approval of the program for engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) by early to mid-2027.
“We are definitely making sure we get the restructure of the program right,” Brig. Gen. William Rogers, program executive officer for ICBMs, said on Monday. “We are really looking, based on the analysis, to early-to-mid 2027.”
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink has said that he has spent considerable time considering the restructuring of the program since taking the helm of the Department of the Air Force in May.
“I am much more confident of the [Sentinel] program than when I first got in the job,” Meink told reporters on Monday. “We also have to remember this is probably one of the largest public works programs since we did the last ICBM fielding.”
The 659 Sentinel missiles–including 25 test–are to replace 450 Boeing [BA] Minuteman IIIs–400 deployed and 50 reserve–fielded in the 1970s.
Acting Air Force acquisition chief William Bailey, who also serves as the director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, said that “while this [restructuring] is going on, the work continues on the program” and that “we’ve had plenty of time working out with industry as to what the scope is and how we get that done.”
Bailey said that “we have frequent interactions” with Pentagon acquisition boss Michael Duffey, who would be responsible for the necessary re-approval of EMD, which DoD first gave in 2020, but then rescinded last year after a critical Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breach (Defense Daily, July 8, 2024). Then Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter said that it would take 18 to 24 months to develop a new Sentinel acquisition program baseline and restructure the program.
Nevertheless, the Air Force said that it has continued work on the Sentinel missile, including its command and launch systems, and the wing command centers, while initially pausing launch silo and launch center infrastructure work.
“With the launch silos and launch centers, we’ve turned Northrop back on on the concept design work,” Rogers said.
Northrop Grumman said on Tuesday that it has tested “every segment of Sentinel, including recent static fire qualification tests on Stage 1 and Stage 2 segments.”
“We’ve resumed silo design work and made progress designing and testing support equipment,” the company said. “We will continue to work closely with the Air Force to restructure the program to meet the Air Force’s cost and schedule requirements.”
Initial operational capability for Sentinel was May 2029, but that has shifted to the end of 2033.
Air Force options include sustaining Minuteman III until 2050, but Rogers on Monday said that the service is examining removing the final Minuteman III well before that date.
The Sentinel silos are to be new rather than re-furbished Minuteman silos as the Air Force had planned, in part because of the larger Sentinel, but also because of environmental conditions in Minuteman III silos, including asbestos, lead paint, and tilting in a small number of silos due to variations in their concrete thickness. This year, the Air Force used a former ICBM silo, Launch Facility 04, at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., to inform its analysis.
Why did the Air Force initially think it could re-use Minuteman III silos for the service’s future ICBM? The latter became Ground Based Strategic Deterrent in 2016 before its re-designation as Sentinel in 2022.
“Back in the 2013-14 time frame when we were getting the program going, we baked into our acquisition strategy the assumption we’d reuse the silos,” Rogers said. “That was based on early estimates of what back then it would have taken to re-drill, rebuild the silo. They came back high. We continued under restructure to do more market research. Technologies advanced.”
“We also realized that some of the ‘as builts’ weren’t as accurate, given they were done in the 1960s,” he said. “There was more asbestos and some different things at each of the silos, such as unexpected variations in the concrete.”
An “as built” is a record of the state of final construction of a site.
Rogers said that the Air Force re-examined the business case for refurbished Minuteman III silos, including the new estimates for asbestos and lead paint remediation.
“The business case was actually better in terms of cost and schedule for just rebuilding new [Sentinel silos] on the same site,” he said.
A new Sentinel silo “also mitigates some risk in terms of the air vehicle itself because the one thing the [Minuteman III silo] reuse assumption did is maybe contain our appetite on the size of the air vehicle,” according to Rogers. “While I think we could use that [Minuteman III] silo size, there is some technical risk in the pressure as it [Sentinel] leaves the silo. So, while we have the opportunity, we could do other things like mitigate the risk. While the [Sentinel] rocket is larger, it’s not that much bigger than Minuteman III, and it would also allow us to potentially give more space [in the silo] for our maintainers of the system.”
