The New Sentinel Intercontinental Missile:
Dangerous, Costly and Unnecessary
Nancy Goldner, Jonathan King, and Richard Krushnic / Massachusetts Peace Action

(April 8, 2025) — The world is awash in nuclear weapons with an astonishing overkill capacity. Just in the US, there are 400 land-based intercontinental missiles, hundreds of nuclear bombs mounted on B52 and B2 bombers, and 14 nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarines, each carrying 24 missiles.

A single submarine-based missile carries eight independently targeted warheads, just one of which is enough to obliterate the major cities of any nation on Earth. Moreover, since withdrawing from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, the US has deployed B61-12 nuclear warheads on bomber forces and air bases in Western Europe.

Despite the “overkill capacity” of the nuclear weapons already deployed on land, sea and in the air, the US Department of Defense plans modernization of this nuclear triad.  The most unsound, dangerous, and destabilizing component of the plan is the replacement of the 400 Minuteman III fixed-silo intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with the new Sentinel ICBMs.

It is also unnecessary as the other components of the nuclear triad, the weapon systems deployed on mobile submarines and airplanes provide a more-than-sufficient deterrence, response and invulnerability to detection in line with current US nuclear defense strategy.

ICBMS are vulnerable to attack because silo sites are fixed and well known. For this reason, nuclear-armed nations assume that precision-guided attacks on silo-based missiles will be successful.  In response, our missiles are kept on high alert with a frightening potential for an inadvertent or accidental firing.

With active monitoring by Russia and China, accidental missile launches could easily be interpreted as a US first strike. If that is believed, they only have a few minutes to decide whether to launch their own counterattack and bring about the onset of a devastating nuclear war.

Despite the demonstrable risk and vulnerability of silo-based ICBMs, members of a strong congressional lobby, The Nuclear Weapons Caucus, and the entrenched and powerful lead defense contractor, Northrup Grumman, ensure their survival.

“ICBMs have been intrinsically tied to money and politics since they were first deployed in the 1960s and rural Midwestern communities witnessed their fortunes changing with the arrival of these weapons of mass destruction.” — Responsible Statecraft

Nuclear missiles gave these neglected communities massive, federally funded, new infrastructure and job opportunities.  To this day, legislators from Utah, Montana, Wyoming, and  North Dakota such as Senators John Hoeven (R-ND) and John Barasso (R-WY) advocate for nuclear weapons development and spending and, especially for the Sentinel program.

On February 15, 2025 at a visit to Minot Air Force base with Gen. James Slife, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, Senator Hoeven stated:  “Our nuclear forces are a vital deterrent to our adversaries and we need to keep our modernization efforts moving forward…we continue making the case for the Air Force to keep the Sentinel program on track.”

The Sentinel program will produce 659 missiles, and 450 missile silos located in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota will be refurbished and rehabilitated.  The plan also includes the manufacture of W87-1 nuclear warheads, 80 plutonium pits that produce the radioactive cores that trigger nuclear explosions, and all the associated infrastructure such as communication equipment, facilities for launch control, maintenance and weapons storage located in Colorado and Nebraska.

To date, the Sentinel program has cost $200 billion according to Robert Hurd, legislative Aide to Rep.John Garamendi, Co-chair of the Congressional Arms Control and Arms Control Working Group (Sentinel Program meeting, March 28, 2025).  It is projected to cost $315 billion over the lifetime of the program.

In January 2024, the Air Force notified Congress that the Sentinel program would cost 37 percent more than originally expected. Now, the projected cost has jumped to 81 percent more than expected and it is going to take two years longer to build and deploy.

Cost overruns and delays of this magnitude trigger congressional review under the Nunn-McCurdy statute and a program must be terminated unless the Department of Defense certifies to Congress that the program meets established criteria. Despite failing to meet the statutory requirement, the Sentinel program was certified, although the Air Force was directed to restructure the program to address the root causes of the breach.

Not only would national security not be enhanced by replacing our existing ICBMs with the Sentinel, but canceling this program now would generate a peace dividend that, applied to improving the lives of ordinary citizens, would actually offer real security. At an online meeting on March 28, 2025 with nuclear weapons activists from MAPA and other groups seeking to cancel the Sentinel program,

Justin Smith and Robert Hurd, defense specialists on the staff  of Rep Garamendi, suggest a four part strategy to organize and launch a national movement to cancel the Sentinel:
•  educate the most approachable legislators on where the Sentinel is today and the ineffectiveness of land-based missile defene
•  support the efforts of the Congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group to reform the Nunn-McCurdy statute to return fiscal control to the Congress,
•  monitor the provisions of the National Defense Appropriation Act (NDAA) and
•  generate grass roots support for amendments being proposed by Rep. Garamendi to reduce nuclear weapons spending.