America’s deterrent nuclear posture requires that the country maintain at least 400 operational ICBMs, and even if all the technological hurdles to extending the Minuteman III’s life could be easily overcome, testing alone will ensure that number can’t be maintained through the foreseeable future, as Uncle Sam simply starts running out missiles to launch. 

“We fully appreciate the magnitude of the costs, but we also understand the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and not addressing the very real threats we confront,” explained Bill LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. 

“Based on the results of the review, it is clear that a reasonably modified Sentinel program remains essential to U.S. national security and is the best option to meet the needs of our warfighters.”

Over a 120-day review, the Pentagon considered options ranging from starting over with a new ICBM program to doing away with permanent silos in favor of road-mobile ICBM launchers like those employed by nations like Russia. However, it was determined that none of these options could meet the nation’s strategic needs without also coming with an even higher price tag. 

But it isn’t all bad news for the Sentinel program. As General Andrew Gebara pointed out, the missiles have actually been progressing well through development, and while this effort is centered around the new ICBM, the vast majority of cost overruns within the program aren’t related to the weapon itself. 

“It is important to remember the program that stage one, two and three of the missile have been successfully test fired already. I’m not going to say that we’ve retired every risk on the missile. But largely the issues of the missile are known issues that can be worked, and are largely okay,” he said.

The problems, it turns out, are almost entirely caused by the exploding costs of building the new missile’s command and launch facilities. While the plan is to reuse as much of the existing launch infrastructure left behind by the Minuteman III as possible, much of the communications systems, command and control infrastructure and even the launch silos themselves will need to be modernized at best and completely replaced at worst. 

Based on the Air Force’s original assessment, this will require the demolition of 45 missile alert facilities (MAF’s) in the existing silo fields, to be replaced by 45 new communications support buildings in their place, with 24 new “launch centers” constructed to support them, as well as a complete renovation of all 450 launch silos. 

The plans also call for the procurement of 62 plots of land, each roughly 5 acres in size, near existing missile fields to erect the same number of new 300-foot-tall communications towers, as well as the construction of some 3,100 miles of new utility corridors for utility lines to be housed entirely below ground, and a whole lot more. 

As of July 8, however, the Pentagon has rescinded the program’s Milestone B decision that would have allowed the Sentinel ICBM to move into the engineering and manufacturing development phase, pending a program revamp meant to keep the program at or beneath their newly projected $140.9 billion figure. Chief among these changes will be a “scaling back” of the planned launch facilities to make them smaller, simpler, and more cost-effective. 

The Air Force also fired Sentinel Systems Director, Col. Charles Clegg, at the end of June, citing a loss of confidence in his ability to lead the effort. The branch said his termination was not related to the Nunn-Mccurdy violation, but was instead because the colonel “did not follow organizational procedures.”

All told, the Air Force believes plotting out the new way forward for Sentinel may take as long as 18-24 months, and during that time, other big-ticket programs within the branch are also finding themselves in flux. The Air Force’s new air superiority fighter, being developed under the name Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD), is still expected to see a contract award this year, but senior Air Force officials have voiced uncertainty about its future, while being clear that it will have to see cost reductions — almost certainly informed by the need to pick up Sentinel’s financial slack. 

Ultimately, the LGM-35 Sentinel is still expected to enter service sometime in the 2030s, though it may be late in the decade before these new weapons finally do come online. Once they’ve finally made it into their silos, these weapons are expected to remain in service until at least the 2070s, with modular systems meant to allow for cheaper and easier updates as the years press on. 

Of course, there remains a growing chorus of dissenting opinions, with some arguing that the U.S. should simply continue to update the Minuteman III and simply reduce the total number of ICBMs kept in service to 300 or even just 100. This would allow for a continued land-based deterrent at a much lower cost, though others argue that doing so would defeat the purpose of using these sprawling missile fields as a conceptual shield for the rest of the nation, and importantly, the rest of the triad. 

Those who contend the Sentinel ICBM program is absolutely essential to America’s deterrent nuclear posture argue that it’s not just about maintaining a large number of targets for adversaries to worry about, but it’s also about distributing the focus — and the resources — of enemy states looking for ways to work around this deterrent nuclear shield. Put simply, with fewer ICBMs to worry about, Russia and China could allocate more money toward funding ways to detect or track America’s ballistic missile submarines, potentially reducing their efficacy in the long term. 

And therein lies the heart of the financial warfare that is nuclear deterrence. For the better part of a century, the United States’ greatest military asset has been a big pile of money that it can use to fuel a wide variety of defensive endeavors, but nowhere is cost a greater factor than when it comes to nuclear weapons — which are vastly expensive systems to develop, to build, and to maintain, despite having absolutely no utilitarian value beyond the threat of their use. 

While new fighters or bombers could be used in a wide variety of conventional combat operations, nuclear weapons have only two potential use cases: Holding off the end of the world, or directly causing it. 

And that makes the value of these high-dollar assets difficult to quantify. After all, there’s really no way to know how many times nuclear war has been deterred by the mere presence of America’s sprawling nuclear triad, if it truly ever has at all. But deterrence only has to fail once to change the face of our planet and civilization forever. 

And while $140 billion is a high price to pay for a few hundred missiles, some would argue that the cost of nuclear deterrence is worth it, no matter how big the price tag. 

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.