The U.S. Air Force’s $270,000,000,000 Sentinel ICBM Nightmare Has Just Arrived

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Key Points and Summary: The U.S. is developing the Sentinel ICBM to replace the aging Minuteman missiles, forming the ground-based leg of its nuclear triad. Expected to cost $270 billion over 50 years, the Sentinel faces scrutiny as a potentially wasteful investment, given its limited practical use outside of nuclear deterrence.

-While Russia and China are modernizing their arsenals, critics question the necessity of maintaining a “missile sponge” strategy reminiscent of Cold War doctrine.

-Proposals to shift nuclear deterrence budgeting to a separate “deterrent service” could alleviate pressure on Air Force and Navy budgets, potentially paving the way for future arms control agreements.

Sentinel ICBM: The $270 Billion Question for U.S. Defense

The United States has embarked upon the development of its first new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in decades. Within the next decade, new missile silos could blossom in the most desolate parts of the Lower Forty-Eight. Unfortunately, a combination of politics and bureaucratic inertia is preventing a careful look at the need for this exceedingly expensive weapon system. What is the Sentinel, and why is it beginning to eat the Air Force’s budget?

We Present the Sentinel ICBM

The Sentinel is a next-generation ICBM designed to replace the 450 existing Minuteman missiles that constitute the ground-based element of America’s nuclear deterrent. A solid-fueled, silo-housed missile, the Sentinel is initially expected to carry a single 300+ kiloton (KT) warhead but will be flexible enough to adapt to a variety of payload possibilities. The Sentinel is expected to serve for some fifty years and cost (over its entire life cycle) some $270 billion.

Why buy an ICBM at this point?  The Minuteman missile is some fifty years old and has served as the core of the ground-based deterrent since the 1970s. Since the development of accurate submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) ICBMs have been justified largely as “missile sponges,” targets for soaking up vast numbers of enemy missiles and thus sparing more critical targets from destruction. As just one of three legs of the US deterrent, they are not strictly necessary for the destruction of Russia or China.

Why Build This Nuclear Missile Anyway?

Of course, inertia isn’t the only reason the USAF is building the Sentinel. Advanced missile defense systems, as demonstrated in the Israel-Hamas War and the Russia-Ukraine War, have seen some success at defeating incoming ballistic missile attacks, albeit not of ICBMs and not at a rate that would be useful in times of nuclear war.

The current ICBM fleet is old, although not yet, to the point of non-functionality. China has been hard at work increasing the size and extent of its ICBM force, and Russia also appears to be in the midst of a modernization cycle. Yet, there is a distinct sense that the United States needs new ICBMs simply because it has had ICBMs for a very long time. This plays out both in terms of the strategic debate (“giving up ICBMs would make us look weak to the Russians and the Chinese”) and in the domestic political debate (“these desolate Plains communities require military bases in order to survive”). This is a problem because, of course, the Sentinel ICBM will cost a great deal of money that could go to other priorities.

Squeezing Priorities

The Air Force faces the same issue with Sentinel that the Navy faces with the Columbia class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). The best case scenario for both services is that the massive investment they have made in nuclear deterrence is never actually used; the missiles they have assiduously maintained are never fired, and the crews that have trained over many career lifespans are never asked to do their primary job.

To do this, both services must refrain from buying weapons and training operators for missions with actual military utility. The Navy and Air Force both understand the need for nuclear deterrence, but there is a palpable sense that money and time spent on nuclear missiles are essentially flushed, of no use to anyone, and never to be seen again.

A different proposal involves the US creating a “deterrent service” which would shift some of the burden of budgeting for the nuclear deterrent off the balance sheet of both the USAF and the USN. This wouldn’t actually cost any less (the systems are what the systems are).

Russian Mobile ICBMs. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Still, it would shift decision-making to a different bureaucratic level and ease some of the anxiety in the Navy and the Air Force regarding the huge bite that nuclear modernization takes out of their budgets. This could also give civilians a more direct influence on the trade-offs that the military services make with respect to nuclear preparedness.

What Happens Next on the Sentinal ICBM?

The United States is reluctantly trudging into a deeply wasteful decision concerning the ground-based nuclear deterrent. Even if we are at the cusp of the Second Cold War, we do not need to replay every scenario from the First Cold War. The “missile sponge” effect, in which countries fire huge numbers of ICBMs at the ICBMs of the enemy, could be achieved by just deciding not to build ICBMs, a strategy which would save everyone a lot of money and generally reduce tensions.

The United States is not quite in a nuclear arms race with either Russia or China, although it could find itself in one in the next five years, and while relations with both Moscow and Beijing seem to be at a low point, the potential for all-around cost-savings is obvious.

Indeed, an aggressive step in the direction of tripartite arms control might be just the thing to break the downward spiral of Moscow-Beijing-Washington relations while at the same time-saving taxpayers the need to plant missiles in the Great American Desert. 

About the Author: Dr. Robert Farley

Dr. Robert Farley has taught security and diplomacy courses at the Patterson School since 2005. He received his BS from the University of Oregon in 1997, and his Ph. D. from the University of Washington in 2004. Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), the Battleship Book (Wildside, 2016), Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020), and most recently Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages (Lynne Rienner, 2023). He has contributed extensively to a number of journals and magazines, including the National Interest, the Diplomat: APAC, World Politics Review, and the American Prospect. Dr. Farley is also a founder and senior editor of Lawyers, Guns and Money.