Warren and Malmstrom Sentinel missile wings construction plans OK’d, Hoeven says

Construction plans have been approved for the Sentinel missile wings at F.E. Warren Air Force Base (AFB), Wyo. and Malmstrom AFB, Mont., Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) told the Exchange Monitor in the Senate speaker’s lobby Tuesday.

The 90th wing and the 341st wings at these bases would make up two out of three missile wings for the Northrop Grumman LGM-35A Sentinel. These are also the two wings Gen. Thomas Bussiere, the most recent head of the Air Force Global Strike Command, said he approved in May or June. Hoeven also said Minot AFB, N.D., which has the 91st wing, is “very close.”

When asked Hoeven said while it’s “not final,” the construction plans would “in all likelihood” be for “green fields,” or brand new silos, instead of reusing the old silos.

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 the majority of his time. Whether “green fields” 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. 

Lt. Gen. Andrew Gebara, deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration for the Air Force, said in a webinar last month that new silos would be “more cost effective.” However, Hoeven in a past interview with Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily said driving down costs would have to involve concurrent construction between all three wings.

“You’re talking relatively rural areas, and if you go in and flood the zone and try to do one [wing] all at once you’re going to drive up the costs, you’re not going to be able to get the services, you don’t have the housing, you don’t have the emergency response,” Hoeven said in an interview with Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily off the Senate floor. “The way you get your costs down and keep it [Sentinel] on schedule is you work across the three [missile wings].”