That’s the opinion of U.S. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (Republican from Mississippi) and Senator Debra Fischer (Republican from Nebraska): “America’s nuclear weapons are dangerously outdated. Our security depends on funding and timely deployment of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile.”
U.S. lawmakers believe this makes maintaining the U.S. nuclear shield non-negotiable:
“But critical upgrades to our arsenal are underfunded and behind schedule. Congress and the White House must act quickly to address these problems and prevent new ones from arising.”
Indeed, the ground-based component of the US nuclear triad is based on 400 silo-based LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBMs. These missiles are clearly not new: they have been on active duty since 1970-1977, i.e. they are on average fifty years old. The Minuteman III solid rocket motors will become obsolete between 2029 and 2035. And without re-equipping with new engines, the rockets will be phased out of service.
Minuteman III should be replaced by the LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM. At the same time, the development timeline has already been thwarted. Initial operational capability was scheduled for 2029, but has now been delayed to the 2030s. The U.S. is 10 years behind Russia in the ground-based component of the Strategic Nuclear Forces.
However, the problem is not the funding, as US lawmakers write, but the engineering competences and the ability of the main contractor for the Sentinel project, Northrop Grumman, to meet the requested funding by meeting the deadlines agreed with the Pentagon.
The Sentinel programme has already increased in price by 37%. Its total cost is now estimated at $131.5 billion. Such a rise in cost may lead to a Pentagon review to assess the prospects of the project as a whole. It is one thing to master the military budget, and another to make an intercontinental ballistic missile within the given technical parameters. And it seems that Northrop Grumman is not very good at it.
By the way, the same company is leading a project to create a promising strategic bomber B-21 Raider. And it is two years behind in terms of deadlines.
Elena Panina