Nuclear modernization one of top challenges Lohmeier plans to address

Nuclear modernization, including the Northrop Grumman LGM-35A Sentinel future intercontinental ballistic missile, and space resilience are top Department of the Air Force challenges that Matthew Lohmeier, the nominee for undersecretary of the Air Force, said he plans to address.

“If confirmed, I suspect that the modernization of the nuclear portfolio and ensuring the resilience of our space-based architecture will be the most pressing challenges,” Lohmeier wrote in response to advance policy questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) before his Thursday confirmation hearing.

“If confirmed in this role, I believe that my greatest contribution will be on communicating that nuclear modernization is not an option,” Lohmeier continued. “It is the very foundation of our national security strategy—and we must get it right.”

The Air Force is restructuring Sentinel to reduce program costs.

On Jan. 18 2024, the service said it notified Congress that Sentinel had breached Nunn-McCurdy guidelines, primarily due to construction design changes, and then DoD acquisition chief William LaPlante ordered a root-cause analysis. The latter led last summer to the DoD decision to continue the program, due to its stated importance to strategic deterrence, but also to the rescinding of the Sentinel Milestone B engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) go-ahead from 2020.

Last summer, the Air Force pegged Sentinel cost at $140.9 billion, 81% higher than the September 2020 estimate when the program was approved for EMD–a rise that DoD said has less to do with the missile than the command-and-control segment, including silos, launch centers, “and the process, duration, staffing, and facilities to execute the conversion from Minuteman III to Sentinel.”

Initial operational capability for Sentinel will now likely be years past the Air Force’s initial goal of May 2029.

Air Force plans have called for a Sentinel launch center for at least 24 of the missile alert facilities and for 3,100 miles of new utility corridor for Sentinel.

The civil works for Sentinel may also include hardening silos to account for improved accuracy of Russian and Chinese nuclear missiles.

In late March and early last month, Air Force leaders held community town halls in Kimball, Neb.; Pine Bluffs, Wyo., and Raymer, Colo. at which the service said that it would build new silos for Sentinel, which has a significantly larger design than its predecessor 1960s-era Minuteman missile series. The service had planned to renovate the 450 Minuteman silos.

The provision of multiple warheads, countermeasures, and increased range to hit China means the Sentinel design is significantly larger than that of the current Boeing Minuteman III.

In addition to new silos for Sentinel, the Air Force has said it plans to begin digging up the old, Hardened Intersite Cable System (HICS) copper wires for Minuteman III in 2027 to replace HICS with fiber optic cables for Sentinel by 2030.

At the Thursday SASC confirmation hearing for Lohmeier, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) called Sentinel “probably the most complex and important defense project that’s ever been undertaken by the Pentagon.”

In Lohmeier’s prepared responses before the hearing, he wrote that “on resilient space architectures, I believe that we must continue to build partnerships with the commercial sector, leveraging what is available and only building what we absolutely must.”

Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that his biggest concern in the Department of the Air Force’s fiscal 2025 budget was the shortfall of funding for counter space. Lohmeier wrote in his prepared answers before the Thursday SASC hearing that U.S. Space Force gaps are most concerning to him.

“We must develop both offensive and defensive space control for any potential conflict and for day-to-day operational freedom,” Lohmeier wrote.

In May 2021, then Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting–now the four-star head of U.S. Space Command–fired then Lt. Col. Lohmeier as the commander of the 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Space Force Base, Colo.. This came after Lohmeier aired his views opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives during a conservative podcast.

Before the Space Force, Lohmeier served as an Air Force F-15C pilot. Democratic senators at Thursday’s SASC hearing questioned Lohmeier’s judgment for that podcast appearance and for a posting on X last Aug. 9 that the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol was a “gov’t [government]-led false flag and hoax at the Capitol.” The post, which is still on Lohmeier’s X site, says that after Jan. 6, 2021, the former Biden-Harris administration “demonized the men and women in uniform” and then “purged conservatives and Christians with their [COVID-19] shot mandates.”

This article was first published in Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily.