Public meetings to gather community input on the U.S. Air Force’s future LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by Northrop Grumman are to restart this month.
The town halls will restart as the service prepares a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) brought on by the program’s 2024 Nunn-McCurdy critical cost breach and the resulting program restructure, which has included a move to all new silos for the Sentinel missile, which is larger than the current 1970s era Minuteman III ICBMs by Boeing.
The Air Force deemed refurbishing and reducing environmental hazards in the Minuteman III silos to house Sentinel significantly more costly than new, modular silos for Sentinel.
The service aims to draft the SEIS by fall next year and to publish the final one in the spring of 2028.
The Air Force has hoped that DoD acquisition chief Michael Duffey would re-certify the Sentinel program for the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase by the end of this year. DoD rescinded that 2020 EMD certification nearly two and a half years ago in July, 2024 after the Nunn-McCurdy breach in January that year.
The upcoming town halls touch on the Sentinel plans for the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren AFB, Wyo.–the wing that is to be the first to field Sentinel in the early 2030s. The four town halls are Nov. 30 at the Joint Forces Readiness Center in Cheyenne, Wyo., Dec. 1 at Eastern Wyoming College in Torrington, Wyo., Dec. 2 at the Sagebrush restaurant/event venue in Kimball, Neb., and Dec. 3 at the Cheyenne County Fairgrounds in Sidney, Neb. The other two missile wings are the 341st at Malmstrom AFB, Mont., and the 91st at Minot AFB, N.D.
For the 450 new silos, 24 new launch centers, and more than 5,000 miles of fiber optic cable, the Air Force has said that it “is trying to avoid using more private land than is necessary…but it is very likely that the use of some additional private property is necessary for Sentinel.”
“The Air Force will use existing easements to the maximum extent possible,” the service has said. “However, there may be circumstances that require the Air Force to re-route fiber optic communication lines if required by the final design.”
Acquisition of private land may have to happen for “up to 30 new [silo] sites at F.E. Warren, and up to 60 new [silo] sites at Malmstrom and Minot,” the Air Force has hinted.
In September, Air Force Gen. Dale White, the direct reporting portfolio manager for critical major weapon systems, said that the Sentinel ground support segment “has really turned the corner.”
Last month, the Air Force said it conducted a test launch of a Lockheed Martin unarmed Mk21A aboard a Minotaur I rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., as part of the Mk21A EMD phase. The Mk21A is to be the reentry vehicle for Sentinel.
Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily first published a version of this story.
