AURORA, Colorado—The Pentagon won’t have new cost estimates for the way-over-budget Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program until year’s end, officials said, though they expressed optimism and dismissed concerns in a new Government Accountability Office report as out of date.
“My hope, and hope not being a strategy, is that I can accurately predict exactly what the funding is,” Air Force Gen. Dale White told reporters on Wednesday. “And [Air Force] Secretary [Troy] Meink and the department has, by and large, said that this is one of our highest priorities. I don’t foresee any funding challenges.”
White was appointed in December as the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s new direct reporting portfolio manager for critical major weapon systems, a move that took responsibility for Sentinel and other top Air Force programs out of the service’s hands.
Two years ago, the Pentagon informed Congress that Sentinel’s estimated cost had ballooned 81 percent, largely because the Air Force had discovered that it would not be able to reuse the missile silos used by today’s Minuteman ICBMs. Officials revoked the decision to move the program into its engineering and manufacturing development, or EMD, phase, and began to rewrite funding, construction, and schedule plans.
Now the program is on track to return to the EMD phase—Milestone B, in acquisition parlance—by year’s end, a program official told reporters in a separate briefing.
The new price tag, however, remains unknown.
“Cost is one of the things that we are working towards as we restructure the program, so we have not fully baked up the cost,” the official said. “We will, as we go to our next milestone, which is planned for the end of this year, actually fully document the cost.”
Talking about the Sentinel program was a major focus for officials at the Air & Space Forces Association symposium here. Air Force, Sentinel, and Northrop Grumman officials held one media briefing, while military leaders from Air Force Global Strike Command, the Pentagon, and U.S. Strategic Command held another.
Construction is already underway on the program, which is becoming one of the largest government projects of this century. The work includes decommissioning old silos, building prototypes for new ones, and pouring concrete for new command centers and facilities. More than 5,000 miles of fiber-optic cable will connect new launch centers scattered across 32,000 square miles in five states, officials said. Most of Sentinel’s footprint and infrastructure will be on existing government property, but it will also require the military to acquire national or privately-owned acreage to support the 450 nuclear missiles that make up the land-based arm of the nuclear triad.
The Air Force said last week it plans a test launch by 2027 and deliver the initial ICBM by the early 2030s.
The Government Accountability Office is skeptical of that timeline. Concerns included delays to crucial software development and the failure to create a risk management plan, the GAO said in a February update.
“The transition from Minuteman III to Sentinel involves a complex, total weapon system replacement. But the Air Force hasn’t developed a risk management plan for the most complex project the service has ever undertaken,” the report said. “A very large project that costs $1 billion or more, affects 1 million or more people, and runs for years may be referred to as a megaproject. Megaprojects are extremely risky ventures, notoriously difficult to manage, and often fail to achieve their original objectives.”
White said that while building a new ICBM was “something that hasn’t been done in six decades,” he remains confident in Sentinel’s new schedule and cost. He said the GAO report “does not reflect where we are today.”
The GAO report acknowledged that the program has moved swiftly since the Nunn-McCurdy breach in 2024, but said that risks remain.
“As a result of delays to Sentinel, the Air Force may need to operate Minuteman III through 2050, 14 years longer than planned,” the GAO report said. “Prolonged operation of the aging system presents sustainment risks. Addressing these risks in a transition risk management plan would help ensure the system meets requirements during the transition.”
In September, Air Force Global Strike Command confirmed it took its first Minuteman III silo offline. Program and service officials told reporters that decommission the silo helped inform the Air Force of what parts and maintenance will be necessary to seamlessly swap one ICBM for the next-generation missile.
“The goal with taking the silo off alert was to get learning. To understand how long it takes to take a Minuteman III launch facility down and decommission it, what hardware is in there that needs to be put back into the Minuteman supply system to help support Minuteman today,” the program official said. “How do we get deliberate in what our timing is of when we take Minuteman down versus when we are ready to start fielding Sentinel.”
The swap between the two ICBMs is happening during heightened global tensions. Earlier this month, the 14-year-old New START agreement, which put strict limits on the U.S. and Russia’s nuclear weapons, lapsed.
Navy Adm. Rich Correll, head of U.S. Strategic Command, told reporters on Wednesday that “nothing’s changed” since the expiration of the New START treaty and adversary threats underscore the need for Sentinel.
“Modernization of the Minutemen III capability to the Sentinel capability continues to contribute what we need from the land link for that capability, and counts for the future threat environment,” Correll said. “So it’s not optional. It’s essential.”
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