The Air Force’s two most expensive nuclear modernization programs are seeing notable year-over-year declines in their budget lines, driven less by program slowdowns than by the absence of one-time congressional funding infusions and a broader restructuring of acquisition timelines.
Northrop Grumman’s LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile’s engineering and manufacturing development budget in particular would receive $4.5 billion, a cut of $300 million in comparison to the fiscal 2026 enacted funding. Sentinel’s procurement spending also would experience a drop from $176 million in fiscal 2026 to $108 million in the fiscal 2027 request, a cut of $68 million.
The figures cited are drawn from the Air Force’s so-called “P-1” and “R-1” budget justification documents — commonly referred to as the “dash-ones.” These documents provide line-by-line breakouts of procurement (P-1) and research, development, test and evaluation funding (R-1) across every major defense program. The documents are typically where analysts spot program-level increases, cuts or restructuring that may not be obvious in topline budget summaries.
“Sentinel was rephased in fiscal FY27 as part of the revised acquisition strategy to support a Milestone B decision by the end of [calendar year 2026] and deploy initial capability in the early 2030s,” an Air Force spokesperson told Exchange Monitor in an email this week.
“The Sentinel program’s FY26 budget includes a $2,189.0M ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ allocation in FY26 RDT&E [research, development, test and evaluation] for prototyping and risk reduction activities which was fully allocated in FY26. The FY27 PB [president’s budget request] appropriately funds the Sentinel program to continue making steady, measurable progress on development, targeting initial capability for the early 2030s,” the spokesperson added.
The funding profile could reflect a broader effort by the Air Force to stabilize the program following cost growth and schedule pressure that triggered a critical breach under the Nunn-McCurdy statute last year, forcing a restructuring of the acquisition strategy and closer oversight from the Pentagon. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), when questioned by Exchange Monitor at the Capitol this week, said further reasoning for the cuts was classified.
Similarly, the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider bomber procurement line shows a steep decline when compared to fiscal 2026 enacted levels, though much of that drop is attributable to the absence of supplemental funding provided through reconciliation legislation.
The B-21 procurement account was cut by over $4.2 billion compared to the fiscal 2026 enacted amount. While the base amount was similar in discretionary funding — $2 billion in fiscal 2026 versus $2.2 billion requested for fiscal 2027 — the fiscal 2026 total was significantly boosted by $4.5 billion in mandatory funding provided through the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
“The $4.5 billion in the One Big Beautiful Bill was a one-time infusion to support the 25% rate acceleration through production capacity investment. It was never intended to be a sustained year-over-year funding benchmark. The FY27 PB appropriately funds the B-21 program to support on-time delivery,” the spokesperson said.
Given the potential increase from 100 B-21s to 145 or more, the line item number has still raised questions by analysts. Taken together with Sentinel, the changes underscore how comparisons between fiscal years can be distorted by one-off funding measures like the reconciliation bill, even as the Air Force insists both programs remain on track.
The B-21 is designed to have the dual capability of carrying both conventional and nuclear weapons, which the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is responsible for producing and maintaining. As of October 2024, the 2025 Stockpile Stewardship Management Plan said that the B61-12 life extension program, which completed its last production unit in December 2024, is continuing to certify the B-21 to carry the gravity bomb. The Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, meanwhile, will replace the Minuteman III as the Air Force’s silo-based, nuclear-armed missile and be tipped with warheads also made by NNSA.