Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) wants the Air Force to ensure that its upcoming 2026 budget has funds to update weapons storage for the future AGM-181 long-range standoff nuclear-tipped missile, as well as for the intercontinental ballistic missile bases.

The budget would also need to ensure that the service upgrades its three intercontinental ballistic missile bases concurrently to accommodate the Northrop Grumman LGM-35A cruise missile, Hoeven said.

Hoeven is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel. The three intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) bases are Minot Air Force Base (AFB), N.D.; Malmstrom AFB, Mont.; and F.E. Warren AFB, Wyo. He has pushed for an acceleration of Sentinel and a reduction in program cost through simultaneous upgrades to the three ICBM bases and through an Air Force identification of construction savings.

On Jan. 18 last year, the Air Force said that it notified Congress that Sentinel had breached Nunn-McCurdy cost guidelines, primarily due to construction design changes, and then DoD acquisition chief William LaPlante ordered a root-cause analysis. The latter led last summer to the DoD decision to continue the program, due to its stated importance to strategic deterrence, but also to the rescinding of the Sentinel Milestone B engineering and manufacturing development go ahead from 2020.

Last summer, the Air Force pegged Sentinel cost at $140.9 billion, 81 percent higher than the September 2020 estimate when the program was approved for engineering and manufacturing development –a rise that DoD said has less to do with the missile than the command-and-control segment, including siloes, launch centers, “and the process, duration, staffing, and facilities to execute the conversion from Minuteman III to Sentinel.”

The latter is to be significantly larger than Minuteman III and may require new siloes.

Initial operational capability (IOC) for Sentinel now looks to be years past the Air Force’s initial goal of May 2029 for Sentinel IOC.

The Air Force has said that it wants its long-range standoff missile to be operational in the early 2030s.