Nuclear missile
Put this nuclear missile on the back of a truck — but we still don't need it
The issue plaguing the new Sentinel is not the expensive silo, it's just land-based ICBMs aren't necessary anymore, period.
Analysis | Military Industrial Complex
military industrial complex nuclear weapons
Gabe Murphy
Oct 10, 2025
Last week, analysts from three think tanks penned a joint op-ed for Breaking Defense to make the case for mobilizing the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program, a pivot from one exceedingly costly approach to nuclear modernization to another.
After Sentinel faced a 37 percent cost overrun in early 2024, the Pentagon was forced to inform Congress of the cost spike, assess the root causes, and either cancel the program or certify it to move forward under a restructured approach. The Pentagon chose to certify it, but not before noting that the restructured program would actually come in 81 percent over budget.
The Pentagon later revealed that a major driver of the program’s cost growth was a faulty assumption that it could refurbish existing missile silos for Minuteman III, the current generation of ICBMs, to accommodate the needs of Sentinel. Now, the Pentagon is planning to build entirely new silos, at a significantly higher cost.
The three analysts from the Hudson Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute — we’ll call them the Three Missileers — essentially argue that the restructured plans for the Sentinel ICBM are so over budget that mounting Sentinel on heavy trucks instead of in fixed silos would now cost less than building new silos for Sentinel. Their case rests on two assumptions. The first is that taking Sentinel on the road will cost less than building new silos, a dubious and unsubstantiated claim. The second and more fundamental assumption is that the United States needs ICBMs to maintain an effective nuclear deterrent. It doesn’t.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/sentinel-mobile-silo/
