An April 9 Executive Order from the White House puts the $200 billion+ long-range, land-based missile system dubbed “Sentinel” at risk of cancellation because the program is so far over budget.
The presidential EO directs the Secretary of Defense to complete a “comprehensive review” of all major military acquisition programs. Secretary Pete Hegseth has 90 days, or until early July, to finish the detailed review.
The massive Sentinel project is supposed to replace all 400 Minuteman III intercontinental missiles — along with 40 underground launch control centers and hundreds of miles of buried cables that connect them all to three major Air Force bases — which are now scattered across parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota.
The EO declares that “any program more than 15 percent behind schedule …, 15 percent over cost …, unable to meet any key performance parameters, or unaligned with the Secretary of Defense’s mission priorities, will be considered for potential cancellation.”
A Government Accountability Office review found that the Sentinel’s Air Force contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. was “struggling with staffing shortfalls, supply chain problems and clearance processing delays,” according to the newsletter Defense One. One major cost-savings under consideration is the reuse of much of the underground cable systems connecting the silos, according to Montana’s The Missoulian.
The source DefenseNews.org reported May 6, 2025, that while the Air Force had hoped to reuse existing Minuteman missile silos for the Sentinel, it “has concluded it will have to dig new silos.” The system’s cost instantly ballooned again.
In January 2024, the program blew past the 15% threshold set by the EO, inflating the proposed $77 billion program to $141 billion, or 81% over initial projections. Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden said then that the overruns were due to construction costs and inflation.
After disclosure of the, shall we say, skyrocketing cost overruns, the Air Force fired the head of the program, Col. Charles Clegg.
This past February, the Air Force halted work on parts of the program which will only cause further delays and price hikes. Northrop’s CEO Warden said on January 30 that the Air Force had “paused work on some small infrastructure efforts in the command and launch segment.” Specifically, the service directed Warden “to suspend the design, testing, and construction work” on Sentinel’s “Command and Launch Segment” which was then going on at test facilities in California and Utah.
Mackenzie Knight, a senior research associate for the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists blamed Northrop Grumman for underestimating the costs in order to win Congressional support, telling Defense One online, “At best it comes down to mismanagement and incompetence, and at worst, an intentional effort to downplay the complexities and challenges … to make it appear like it would be the cheaper, easier option.” — Nukewatch staff
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