US nuclear project ‘years’ behind schedule – WSJ

Rebuilding silos for Sentinel missiles is creating headaches for the Pentagon

Refurbishing the decades-old missile silos will cost billions of dollars more than originally thought and may not start for five years, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing Pentagon officials.

The US Department of Defense decided last month to press on with the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program, even though its estimated cost has almost doubled from the original $78 billion. Replacing the aging Minuteman III missiles has no alternative, the Pentagon said.

It could be “five years or more before work starts” on modernizing some 450 existing silos for the new missiles, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing a recent town meeting in Kimball, Nebraska. The community of less than 3,000 residents is surrounded by “one of the biggest missile fields” in the world.

“There are a lot of unknowns here, and I understand the frustration,” Brigadier-General Colin Connor told residents earlier this month. 

Minuteman III missiles entered service in the early 1970s and were supposed to be replaced after a decade. Washington finally greenlit the Sentinel program in 2020, awarding the initial $13.3 billion contract to Northrop Grumman, after Boeing dropped out. The Sentinel project manager, Colonel Charles Clegg, was sacked in June for unspecified reasons. 

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Along with the new missiles, which are still on the drawing board, the project envisions modernizing the 50-year-old silos and command centers. Construction involves, among other things, laying down thousands of kilometers of fiber-optic cables.

However, shutting down the silos or the command facilities is impossible, because the nuclear doctrine requires them to be available at a moment’s notice. Some silos may also need to be rebuilt from scratch.

The scale, scope and complexity of the Sentinel project is “something we haven’t attempted as a nation for over 60 years,” Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante told reporters last month, insisting that it had to be done nonetheless.

The US Air Force is looking for ways to reduce the project’s complexity, but it might take up to 18 months to decide on the changes, LaPlante said, hoping for sometime in early 2025.

Such delays may cause problems of another kind for the Pentagon, according to the WSJ. The US government has already negotiated about a third of the real-estate deals needed for laying down thousands of kilometers of fiber-optic cables. But some of them may need to be redone in light of the new timeline.

Meanwhile, the rising costs of construction and raw materials have made early cost estimates “be unreliable and unrealistic,” Pentagon officials have said.