The U.S. Air Force is prepared to put multiple nuclear warheads atop its new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles if called to do so, according to the officer in charge of fielding the new missile.
Brig. Gen. Colin Connor, the Air Force’s director of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) modernization, said on Wednesday that the new LGM-35 Sentinel, formerly known as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, can carry several of the W87-0 or W87-1 warheads.
The existing Minuteman III missiles that Sentinel will replace are already configured for multiple independent re-entry vehicles or MIRVs. The National Nuclear Security Administration is in the midst of a major buildup to manufacture at least 80 plutonium pits per year. The first run of new pits will be for Sentinel warheads.
“MIRV capability right now … the Air Force has the capability to do that,” Conner told the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center during an online discussion Wednesday. “We all have that capability. We exercise that capability on a routine basis, that can be done. Our maintainers are trained to do it, the system would support it just like it has. But I think it’s a policy discussion at this point in time. And I think once the policymakers make that determination, the Air Force and global strikers are ready to execute what they direct us to do.”
When first deployed, Sentinel will carry the W87-0 warhead and later the W87-1.
W87-0 will be a version of the existing W87 adapted for flight on Sentinel missiles. W87-1 will be a newly manufactured copy of the W78 warhead currently deployed on Minuteman III missiles, except with a fresh plutonium pit cast at the Los Alamos National Laboratory sometime around 2030.
While the Air Force has said that Sentinel will begin flight testing by the end of this year, service Secretary Frank Kendall told the House Armed Services Committee in April that it will be a challenge for Sentinel to reach initial operational capability on time.
