Trump administration support for Nuclear Triad may lead to Sentinel reprieve

The Northrop Grumman LGM-35A Sentinel future intercontinental ballistic missile may get a reprieve from President Donald Trump’s executive order as DoD re-baselined the program last year after a six-month Nunn-McCurdy review.

President Donald Trump’s April 9 executive order, Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base, speaks of cancellations of Major Defense Acquisition Programs (MDAPs) that are 15% over unit cost or 15% behind schedule. That could include Sentinel, the Air Force’s Northrop Grumman-made intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that would replace Minuteman III as the land leg of the nuclear triad. 

Sentinel breached a threshold of 25% over baseline cost projections in January 2024, triggering a mandatory report to Congress under a law known as Nunn-McCurdy.

However, the program’s six-month Nunn-McCurdy review led then-DoD acquisition chief William LaPlante to certify that the program was essential to strategic deterrence and that there were no cheaper alternatives to meet the joint requirements.

As a result of the Sentinel re-baselining, the program is no longer in breach, as Sentinel awaits a restructuring late this year or early next year for a new Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase decision by DoD. Programs that run afoul of the Nunn-McCurdy guidelines in the fiscal 1983 defense authorization act are in significant breach for 15% unit cost overruns and critical breach for 25%.

The schedule, however, was not in those guidelines.

Jerry McGinn, the executive director of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University, told Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily April 10 that the 90-day MDAP review by DoD “could be a vehicle for the administration to justify cancellation of big programs lower on their priority list and free up big money to address other administration priorities.”

“It’s hard to see them [DoD] cutting one leg of the [nuclear] triad,” McGinn said on Wednesday. “The only one [possible program elimination] that comes to mind is Constellation…At the same time, they [the Trump administration] want to increase shipbuilding.”

Last summer, the Air Force pegged Sentinel cost at $140.9 billion, 81 percent higher than the September 2020 estimate when the program was approved for EMD–a rise that DoD said had less to do with the missile than the command-and-control segment, including silos, launch centers, “and the process, duration, staffing, and facilities to execute the conversion from Minuteman III to Sentinel.”

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

DoD officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have still supported the continuance of the nuclear triad.

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