Solid rocket motors for the first five Air Force flight tests of the Northrop Grumman LGM-35A Sentinel future intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) are in construction, the company said on Monday.
“Every propulsive element of the Sentinel missile has been prototyped and tested,” according to the company press release. “Northrop Grumman has assembled the first three-stage Sentinel booster, verifying design, processes and technologies, and solid rocket motors for the first five flight tests are already in production.”
In addition, “two interstage separation tests were conducted to demonstrate the ability of the missile to cleanly separate the spent solid rocket motor stages one and two from the rest of the vehicle,” Northrop Grumman said. “A shroud fly-off test tested and validated the design of the shroud–a protective cover for the missile’s payload.”
Finally, according to the company, Sentinel’s guidance and control hardware “was stress tested through an initial mass model sled test which exposed the Navigation Inertial Measurement System hardware to flight-like conditions to evaluate performance.”
“Passing this test means the hardware will survive the environmental stresses induced during the missile’s flight, critical for Sentinel’s accuracy and overall mission success,” Northrop Grumman said.
The Sentinel missile will replace the Boeing Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s plutonium pit production program at Los Alamos National Laboratory plans to make the fissile cores for the W87-1 warhead, which will top the Sentinel missile.
The first full flight test of Sentinel from a silo is not until March 2028 – four years later than the Air Force had planned.
Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily first published a version of this story.