NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Every stage of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile has been tested at this point by the Air Force and Northrop Grumman, a company executive said here Monday.
Ben Davies, corporate vice president and president of Defense Systems at Northrop Grumman made the remark during a panel discussion on modernizing the nuclear triad, specifically Sentinel and the B-21. The Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference is being held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center.
According to Davies, Northrop Grumman is at the “point in Sentinel where we now start to see the models come to life, where we’ve now had the opportunity to prototype and test every stage of the missile,” which “gives us confidence as we push forward on the path” of programming the flight test.
Davies also said that Northrop Grumman alone has invested around $13.5 billion so far into the program.
One of the more recent tests was a qualification test of a stage-two solid rocket motor over the summer. While the flight test for the missile has been delayed to 2028 instead of its original 2025 date, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office from earlier in the year, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration Lt. Gen. Andrew Gebara said in a webinar in August the first Sentinel flight test would be “well prior to” 2028.
Sentinel is an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that will eventually replace the Boeing-made Minuteman III as the Air Force’s silo-based, nuclear-armed ICBM 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.
With the Sentinel program’s longstanding Nunn McCurdy review announced in January 2024, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink has said restructuring the program and figuring out where to cut costs has taken up most of his time. Whether “green fields” silos, or brand new silos, would cut costs as opposed to figuring out how to reuse the Minuteman III silos that are differently sized and at a different angle than needed for Sentinel, remains undecided.
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) told the Exchange Monitor earlier this month that while it’s “not final,” construction plans for Sentinel silos would “in all likelihood” be “green fields.” Meanwhile, Davies alluded Monday to the Sentinel program being “one of the largest, most complex programs ever taken on” because “it’s not just replacing the 400 on-alert missiles we have today in Minuteman,” but is replacing “all of the ground infrastructure,” which is nearly 500 sites across 30,000 square miles.