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The U.S. Air Force's new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program has gone over its planned costs and will need certification from the secretary of defense to continue, according to national reports.
The reports say the next generation missile program being developed by the Air Force and Northrop Grumman has a price that is at least 37% or more than expected and could take at least two years longer than previously projected before it is initially at operational capability. This would mean extending the life of some of the current Minuteman III ICBMs.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday the projected cost of replacing the aging missiles buried in underground silos in the Great Plains has soared by more than a third to $107 billion, according to the Pentagon. It also reported the increased costs of the Sentinel is adding pressure on funding for other defense programs.
Minot Air Force Base is one of three bases scheduled to receive the new missile program to replace the current Minuteman ICBM. The current schedule is for the Minot missile field to get the missile program in the 2032 timeframe. F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming, and Malmstrom AFB, Montana, missile fields also would receive the new missile program.
Mark Jantzer, chairman of Task Force 21, Minot's base retention and new mission group, commented on Friday about the new development in regard to the Sentinel ICBM program, saying, "It is not surprising that costs have escalated on the Sentinel program. We've all seen significant increases, particularly in construction costs over the last three or four years. We're experiencing that here in North Dakota, in the city of Minot and everywhere you look.
"Fortunately, the cost increases are not particularly because of technology problems or the actual building of the missiles. It's primarily due to construction costs and part of that is labor, obviously, which everybody understands in workforce challenges. My hope is that this review that's required by the law will be conducted fairly quickly and that the secretary of defense will make a determination that this Sentinel modernization is indeed necessary to continue and that the costs will have to be dealt with in order to do that," Jantzer said.
The Nunn-McCurdy Act requires the Department of Defense to report to Congress whenever a major defense acquisition program has cost overruns exceeding certain thresholds.
If there is a critical breach, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment is required to submit certification to Congress to avoid termination of the program. A critical breach occurs when the cost increases 25% or more over the current baseline or 50% or more over the original baseline.
Congress was notified about the breach on Thursday.
The Sentinel was originally called the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, or GBSD, in its early stages of development. The current Minuteman III ICBMs have been in service for more than 50 years.