BARKSDALE AFB, La.— Gen. Thomas Bussiere, head of the Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) , told Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily he is working on approving three plans to replace Minuteman III silos for the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile.
Bussiere, the head of AFGSC since December 2022, discussed the command’s modernization efforts in an interview with Defense Daily on Monday. Prominent on the list is the Northrop Grumman LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which has occupied much of U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink’s program time in his first month on the job.
Meink is also visiting AFGSC at Barksdale in his first visit to a service major command.
The Air Force is restructuring the program after a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach announced by the service in January 2024r, and that restructuring/new integrated schedule is to happen by next summer.
A decade ago up until the Nunn-McCurdy breach, Pentagon leaders thought that they could re-use the old Minuteman III silos–and their steel and concrete–to build the then called Ground Based Strategic Deterrent more quickly and cheaply.
Now, however, the service is examining the extent it will be able to use existing infrastructure, as well as a “green fields” approach, or starting from scratch, for new silos to replace Boeing Minuteman III silos that the service judges as too costly to renovate and upgrade.
“I approved two of the three wings’ plans several weeks ago” with the third to follow soon, Bussiere said.
The three missile wings are the 90th at F.E. Warren Air Force Base (AFB), Wyo.; the 91st at Minot AFB, N.D.; and the 341st at Malmstrom AFB, Mont.
“I’ve never seen the enthusiasm for recapitalizing the nuclear enterprise as high as it is now,” Bussiere said. “There’s an understanding of the urgency of the mission.”
The New Start Treaty between Russia and the United States lapses next February, which may lead to a rethinking of minimum deterrence levels for the U.S. and whether multiple independent re-entry vehicles will be a way forward for the ICBM force. AFGSC has operated under the minimum deterrence rubric of 400 Minuteman III operational missiles with 50 in reserve.
As the U.S. prepares to counter anti-access, area denial strategies by China, Air Force leaders believe that the service is well positioned, and DoD leaders have spoken of the vulnerability of carrier battle groups to Chinese missiles.
A version of this story first ran in Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily.
