Skyrocketing cost of US nuclear missile program spurs reckoning
BY BRAD DRESS - 03/05/24 5:00 AM ET
This is the first story in a series about Sentinel, the Air Force’s nuclear missile modernization project. Other stories will touch on how the project is impacting local communities and tension over plutonium pit production for the new missiles.
In the last years of the Obama administration, a debate rippled across Washington. The U.S. could continue life-extending the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which at the time had been deployed for close to 50 years, or modernize the system in a major overhaul.
While the estimated trillion-dollar price tag drew headlines, the actual cost of the unprecedented effort could far exceed that amount, given the ICBM modernization — now called Sentinel — continues driving up costs.
The latest alarm rang in January, when the Air Force overshot its projected budget by 37 percent, triggering a critical breach that requires the Pentagon to step in and review Sentinel.
Sentinel has reopened a debate in Congress and in the nuclear security world about the role and necessity of ICBMs, viewed as the most destabilizing part of the U.S. triad because they are easy targets, invite a devastating attack in the U.S. heartland and give the president only 30 minutes to respond in the event of an attack.
The Air Force insists there is no other option but to address the issues and keep moving with Sentinel, which is overseen by defense contractor Northrop Grumman, a company experiencing its own troubles with staffing and workforce requirements.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4506250-sentinel-icbm-air-force-skyrocketing-cost/
