The Northrop Grumman [NOC] LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM may have trouble making its planned date for initial operational capability (IOC), U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said on Apr. 27.
“There was just an adjustment to the [Sentinel] program that [Air Force] Acquisition Executive Andrew Hunter worked with [DoD Acquisition] Undersecretary [Bill] LaPlante,” Kendall said on Apr. 27 at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee in response to a question from Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) for an update on the “scheduling problems” with Sentinel. “The program is realizing some risk areas. What they’re doing on the program is trying to address all the possible ways that the program could get in trouble, not just the ones currently on the critical path, and trying to move forward as efficiently as possible.”
“It’s a very complicated, very large program, both of which adds a lot of risk to the program,” Kendall testified. “It’s also been a very long time since we did an ICBM like this so we don’t have the sort of recent experience we’d like to have. At this point as far as I know, we are still holding to the schedule for IOC, but my sense of this is that I think it’s gonna be a challenge to make that.”
DoD has targeted Sentinel IOC for May, 2029. “The [Sentinel] schedule is of utmost importance to us…given that we have a no bid/no competition contractor so we’re gonna watch it closely,” Garamendi told Kendall, who is recused from making decisions on Sentinel because of his previous consulting work for Northrop Grumman.
A Selected Acquisition Report released last year noted that the Sentinel program, previously known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, has had schedule difficulties related to cleared personnel staffing, classified information technology infrastructure, and booster electronics development.
Last month, Northrop Grumman said that it had recently completed the first full-scale static test of a Sentinel solid rocket motor at the company’s test facility in Promontory, Utah, as the company readies for possible first flight of a Sentinel prototype this year (Defense Daily, March 16).
A Defense Department report sent to Congress in September indicated a possible 10-month delay in the estimated $95.8 billion Sentinel development effort, yet Air Force Brig. Gen. Ty Neuman, the service’s director of concepts, said in February that Northrop is still on track to perform a full-scale inaugural flight test in 2023.
Sentinel features a three-stage booster rocket. Northrop Grumman, which has an in-house solid rocket motor business, will make the missile’s first- and second-stage solid motors.
Aerojet Rocketdyne [AJRD] will make the third-stage motor.
Sentinel will initially carry the W87-0 thermonuclear warhead, refurbished versions of the W87 from the Minuteman missiles it will replace. Later in its fielding, the new missiles will be tipped with the W87-1 warhead, a newly manufactured copy of the Minuteman’s W78 warhead, but with a fresh plutonium pit. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will provide both warheads.