Conversion of 400 LGM-30 Minuteman III ICBM silos to accommodate Northrop Grumman’s Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles will draw lessons from recent work by the company’s team in Utah.
Parsons Corp., an original designer of the Minuteman silos, is a subcontractor to Northrop Grumman on the conversion of the Minuteman III silos for the Sentinel program.
“Out in Promontory, Utah, about a year and a half, almost two years ago, there was a Minuteman III launch facility that was built from the ground up,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Lutton, the commander of Twentieth Air Force, told a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies’ virtual forum on Jan. 24. “The [Northrop Grumman] contract team has taken that Minuteman III launch facility that they built and used it to experiment with how they are going to convert the existing launch facilities out in the missile complex. I think that is an effort that will put some time back on the clock.”
Northrop Grumman said that one of its heritage companies, Thiokol, bought swathes of land near Promontory in 1956-57 to build static test solid-fuel rocket motors. Thiokol conducted the first static test fire of a Minuteman I stage in 1957.
Lutton said that the Air Force will do Sentinel maintenance near the missile fields instead of hauling them back to bases, as service does for Minuteman III.
“I would anticipate an effort where you’ll have smaller, logistics sustainment hubs forward out in the [missile] complex so you cut down the amount of time the contractors are transiting back and forth from a main base, like an F.E. Warren, to western Nebraska, or northern Colorado, or eastern Montana,” Lutton said. “Those little efficiencies, I think, are critical when you look at the macro scale.”
F.E. Warren AFB, Wyo., is to be the first recipient of Sentinel by the end of the decade. The first Sentinel missiles will carry W87-0 warheads provided by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. The weapons will be taken from existing Minuteman III missiles and adapted for the Sentinel fleet. The Air Force had scheduled the first Sentinel test flight for December.
A version of this story first appeared in Exchange Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily.
