As it holds out hope for some role in building the next generation of U.S. nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles, Boeing continues modernizing parts of the existing fleet, including adding the ability to remotely update launch codes at all 450 missile silos.
The maker of the current Minuteman III fleet, which last year exited the Air Force competition to build the replacement Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), this year started manufacturing new cryptography hardware for launch silos located in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. The company plans to deliver the last of the units, which are made in Heath, Ohio, to the Air Force by 2023, said Ted Kerzie, Boeing’s director of strategic deterrent systems.
Boeing Defense, Space and Security, of Huntington Beach, Calif., is building the cryptographic hardware under a fixed-price contract with the Air Force. Work started in 2018 under a letter contract with the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center. The deal includes a one-year base, plus a pair of one-year options, and is worth roughly $124 million through August 2023.
“Currently, what the Air Force has to do is they go out each year and do manual code or cryptography changes every year,” Kerzie said Tuesday in an interview with Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. “So you can envision the number of hours and manpower needed to go visit 450 remote sites.”
The Air Force should begin deploying the new cryptography hardware, which is connected by wire to classified information systems that don’t touch the Internet or wireless networks, by the end of December.
“Our first deliveries should be toward the end of the year,” Kerzie said.
The new cryptography units entered the engineering, development, and manufacturing stage of development in fiscal 2013, according to Air Force budget documents. If installed by 2023, that would make them the product of a decade’s worth of work by the Minuteman III incumbent, which last year shook industry watchers when it apparently ceded the prime contract to build and deploy GBSD to rival Northrop Grumman.
