Sentinel design changes considered in Minuteman III silos, Cramer says

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said Tuesday the U.S. Air Force may be able to re-use some Minuteman III silos to house the future Northrop Grumman LGM-35A Sentinel.

Cramer, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces panel, also said the Air Force is increasingly discussing possible concurrent upgrades to house Sentinel at the three intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) bases–Malmstrom Air Force Base (AFB), Mont., F.E. Warren AFB, Wyo., and Minot AFB, N.D.

The Air Force plan has been to conduct sequential upgrades of the bases with Minot being the third and final base.

“We get briefed on it [Sentinel] a lot actually, as you might imagine, and they are talking more and more like there’ll be more like concurrent infrastructure development, which I think is great,” Cramer told Exchange Monitor-affiliate Defense Daily off the Senate floor.

“I was just up there [at Minot] a few weeks ago,” Cramer said. “When we went down into one of the silos and looked at the Minuteman, it’s really kind of remarkable how much of that infrastructure is in great shape. To the degree that it’s possible yet to modify the design of Sentinel to utilize existing silos, it would be a tremendous opportunity. We’ll see. Some of them [silos] are gonna have to be [replaced]. Some of them are full of water.”

The Sentinel design is significantly larger than Minuteman III and may require new silos.

“I don’t know why you’d make a bigger missile when you had a certain sized silo,” Cramer said. “The current [Sentinel missile] design is bigger [than Minuteman III]. I do think they’re gonna use the existing footprint, however. If you’ve ever been up to one [Minuteman III site], you know how much room there is inside the fence line. There may be some opportunity for [Sentinel missile] design change. We’ll see.”

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, has pushed for an acceleration of Sentinel and a reduction in program cost through simultaneous upgrades to the three ICBM bases and through an Air Force identification of construction savings.

Initial operational capability (IOC) for Sentinel now looks to be years past the Air Force’s initial goal of May 2029 for Sentinel IOC.

The Air Force is restructuring the program after a Nunn-McCurdy cost breach.

This article was first published by Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily.