Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink could gain the authority to transfer funds appropriated for non-ICBM programs to the LGM-35A Sentinel future ICBM and the existing Minuteman III, under the fiscal 2027 House Armed Services Committee (HASC) proposal by Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.).
The transfer authority would last from fiscal 2027 through fiscal 2030, according to Rogers’ mark of the bill, which the full committee is to take up on June 4.
The markup of the National Defense Authorization Act would take place at 10 a.m. June 4.
Under the proposal, Air Force could draw from appropriated amounts in research and development, other Air Force procurement, Air Force missile procurement, and Air Force operations and maintenance to go toward Sentinel, Minuteman III, re-entry vehicles, or other ICBM features. The transfer would be “for the purposes of modernizing, mitigating risk relating to, or otherwise enhancing, the intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities of the United States.,” according to the document.
To gain approval for the transfer, the language stipulates that Meink and future Air Force secretaries submit to the congressional defense committees a “written notification containing a detailed description of the proposed transfer. ” Also, 15 days pass after that notification during which legislators could presumably protest the transfer.
The Air Force has been restructuring the Sentinel program since July 2024, and expects Pentagon acquisition chief Michael Duffey to re-certify Sentinel for engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) this year–months ahead of the Air Force’s earlier estimate of early to mid-2027.
The Defense Department approved Sentinel to enter EMD in 2020, but then rescinded that decision in 2024 after a critical Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breach.
A version of this article was originally published by Exchange Monitor sister publication Defense Daily.