The latest Air Force Minuteman III test on Tuesday featured multiple unarmed re-entry vehicles,according to the Air Force Global Strike Command said Wednesday.
Air Force Global Strike Command’s (AFGSC) launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., of the Glory Trip 255 test at 11:01 p.m. Pacific time on Tuesday included “two test re-entry vehicles,” AFGSC said in a press release Wednesday.
“This test not only focused on the performance of the ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] but also the performance of its multiple reentry vehicles, which are primarily used to increase missile effectiveness and overcome enemy defenses,” according to the command.
The Sentinel ICBM, being built by Northrop Grumman, will eventually replace the 56-year-old 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. Either the W78 warhead or the W87-0 warhead, with plutonium pits made by the National Nuclear Security Administration, currently tips each of the Minuteman III missiles, though the missile was originally designed for multiple reentry vehicles.
The last Minuteman III was originally expected to be decommissioned by the mid-2030s, but an Air Force official told the Exchange Monitor in 2024 that it would now be decommissioned by at least 2050.
For unarmed Minuteman III “Glory Trip” (GT) test launches, the Air Force has used test silos at Vandenberg, including Launch Facility 10, which first launched an unarmed Minuteman III test missile in 1987.
The last such test before Tuesday was GT 254 on Nov. 5 last year during which the 625th Strategic Operations Squadron used the Airborne Launch Control System from aboard a U.S. Navy E-6B Mercury aircraft. The E-6B “initiated the launch, testing the effectiveness and continuous availability of the ALCS, a backup command and control system for the ICBM force,” AFGSC said.
In addition to the Mk12A re-entry vehicles, developed in the 1970s by General Electric’s Philadelphia site, the Air Force is awaiting development of Lockheed Martin’s Mk21A re-entry vehicle for the LGM-35A Sentinel future ICBM by Northrop Grumman.
Lockheed Martin has received Mk21A contracts worth nearly $1.5 billion for work in King of Prussia, Pa., through September 2032.
Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily first published a version of this story.