A multibillion dollar consider of how, where, and whether to starting the next generation of US nuclear weapons is being forced by rumbling weapon warehouses.
Multiple media outlets reported this month that the US Air Force is now planning to build mostly new silos for the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile ( ICBM ) system, abandoning plans to reuse 55-year-old Minuteman III silos after it realized that doing so poses unacceptable cost, schedule, and performance risks.
Silo utilize has proven impossible following a failed check change at Vandenberg Space Force Base and later analyses under the Nunn-McCurdy Act cost breach review, which was originally thought to be cost-effective when Sentinel was launched a decade ago.
General Thomas Bussiere, the US Air Force Global Strike Command chief, stated in April that reused warehouses would be a financial burden, with delays and technical viability.
In response, the Air Force does construct new silos mostly on officially owned property within existing weapon areas in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
Sentinel, developed by Northrop Grumman, aims to change 400 aging Minuteman III weapons, but its US$ 141 billion start price tag, primarily driven by build infrastructure, has prevented its release beyond 2029.
The US Department of Defense ( DOD ) and its contractor are accused of mismanagement and underestimating the complexity of the program, including the Federation of American Scientists ( FAS ). Sentinel is also regarded as essential to the preservation of the nuclear triad and must deal despite rising costs and logistical difficulties.
Reports from Time and Wall Street Journal ( WSJ) describe nearly daily breakdowns, water intrusion, misaligned doors, collapsed conduits, and obsolete parts, some of which are said to be sourced from museums. According to those reports, the development of silos then necessitates complete reconstruction of command centers and installation of thousands of kilometers of innovative fiber optics.
However, the debate is likewise fueled by disagreements over whether fixed Submarines also fall under the category of “fixed.”
In a War on the Rocks article from October 2018, Steve Fetter and Kingston Reif argued that silo-based ICBMs serve as a” brush” deterrent because an adversary would need to spend hundreds of weapons to use them in a second strike with 450 warehouses spread across vast territory.
They also act as a tripwire, ensuring retaliation if the US homeland is attacked, and protect against potential vulnerabilities in strategic bombers and nuclear ballistic missile submarines ( SSBN ) from attack.
However, they cautioned that set Submarines may be launched within 30 days of an approaching strike, giving the president less than 10 minutes to decide, increasing the chance of mistaken retribution based on imperfect information.
They claimed that if submarines and bombers are already on alert and dispersed, they would have more than enough retaliatory capability, rendering silo-based missiles ineffective in both survivability and flexibility.
However, if an SSBN is destroyed, unable to launch, or in a state of disconnection, its entire missile arsenal is lost. A single loss could cripple a third of the triad, according to Thomas Mahnken and Bryan Clark in a June 2020 The Strategist piece.
Oceans may soon be made transparent thanks to new sensor technologies, which may compromise sea-based deterrents ‘ viability in the future.
In a December 2022 article for European Security and Defense ( ESD ), Sidney Dean noted that they rely on forward bases with fixed locations, making them and their infrastructure vulnerable to preemptive attacks.
According to Dean, bombers may take hours to arrive at their weapon deployment zones, giving adversaries ample time to track, intercept, or mount defenses. ICBMs can reach targets in under 30 minutes. He added that electromagnetic pulse ( EMP ) attacks are common among bombers and are vulnerable to interceptors, enemy air defenses, and interceptors.
The 2023 US Strategic Posture Report recommended that some ICBMs be deployed in a road-mobile configuration to reduce silo limitations due to the mounting vulnerabilities of all fixed, sea, and air triad legs combined with rising costs.
Robert Peters endorsed this strategy in a January 2024 Heritage Foundation article, suggesting that adversaries would find it difficult to target road-mobile Sentinels on transporter erector launchers ( TELs ).
In a crisis or for signaling, Peters suggested that mobile ICBMs could travel on randomized, pre-approved routes, moving hundreds of kilometers per day, making them nearly impossible to target.
He added that mobile ICBMs could travel to launch sites to wait for further orders if an attack was discovered, significantly improving survival.
However, the mobile option comes with risks. In a Real Clear Defense article, Brian Wish argued that mobile ICBMs are more prone to terrorist attacks, politically outlawed if deployed on public roads, and logistically challenging to maintain constant alert.
He argued that they should only supplement a hardened, distributed single-warhead silo-based arsenal, which he believes is the most stable configuration for nuclear deterrence, rather than replace it.