The Air Force and Army Corps of Engineers broke ground May 28th at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., on a construction project for the future Northrop Grumman LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
The project is a $26 million Commercial Entrance Control Facility (CECF) – the so-called “Gateway to Sentinel” – which, once built in 2028,would give contractors and their heavy machinery direct access for to sites related to the future ICBM, according to a statement by the Army.
Malmstrom is the home of the 341st Missile Wing. CECF will support “nearly $1 billion in future project work by providing a modern, secure and efficient gateway for the influx of personnel, equipment and materials required to upgrade and revitalize the nation’s ICBM arsenal from the aging Minuteman III to Sentinel ICBMs,” according to the Corps of Engineers.
“The Sentinel program will bring a steady stream of contractors, materials and construction traffic to Malmstrom over the next decade – this could overwhelm the installation’s existing gates that were not designed to handle such a sustained, high-volume construction traffic,” the statement said. “The new CECF is being built on a separate, dedicated campus, allowing Sentinel-related traffic to no longer impact the daily flow of service members, families and civilians who live and work on base.”
The Northrop Grumman-made Sentinel ICBM will eventually replace the Boeing-made Minuteman III as the Air Force’s silo-based, nuclear-armed ICBM. That is expected sometime in the 2030s while the Minuteman III is still commissioned. The new missile will initially carry W87-0 warheads provided by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, before transitioning to the W87-1 warheads being made at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.