The Department of the Air Force’s $217.5 billion fiscal 2025 budget requests $3.7 billion for the Northrop Grumman [NOC] LGM-35A future ICBM–an amount even with last year’s ask, as the department looks at cost saving alternatives and faces possible fielding delays to address a Nunn-McCurdy breach.
The latter occurs when programs exceed 25 percent program acquisition unit cost growth.
In January, the Air Force informed Congress of a 37 percent unit cost Nunn-McCurdy program breach on Sentinel–an increase in unit cost per missile from $118 million in 2020 to $162 million due not to missile development, but to unpredicted military construction costs in what will be a massive civil works project (Defense Daily, Jan. 24). One Air Force officer said that such unforeseen costs include new Sentinel silos and cables, and rising concrete costs. The total program cost estimate is now more than $125 billion compared to more than $95 billion earlier.
The DAF fiscal 2025 funding request “was not changed as a result of [the] Nunn-McCurdy [breach] so we still have the funding we needed for ’25,” Kristyn Jones, acting undersecretary of the Air Force, told reporters in a pre-budget release briefing on March 8. “It’s gonna be [fiscal] ’26 and out that we need to be looking. Some of the things that we rolled out as part of our Great Power Competition effort directly relate to some of the changes that will benefit us with Sentinel–making the Nuclear Weapons Systems Center a three-star [billet], having a PEO at the two-star level for ICBMs. That more senior level leadership is going to be helping us to make sure that we’re looking more holistically. This is a massive program. It’s like five ACAT-Is combined, so we looked at the things we needed to do from a leadership perspective. We’re also in the middle of relooking our governance and how we make sure we have the right governance to identify issues and get those results quickly.”
“As far as any trades in the Nunn-McCurdy, I can’t really talk to that now, as we’re in the middle of the process, but we are relooking at the requirements, looking at are there other, more cost effective alternatives,” Jones said. “That will play out over the next couple of months. We’ll have the results by July so you’ll see where we have any tradeoffs and any rephasing that’s required for the budget.”
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall is recused from decisions on Sentinel due to past consulting work for Northrop Grumman.
Like Sentinel, much of the U.S. Air Force’s budget for fiscal 2025 is level due to Fiscal Responsibility Act constraints, the service said.
Kendall said that he prioritized research and development funding for next generation systems to counter China, for example $2.7 billion for Next Generation Air Dominance–$800 million more than fiscal 2024, at the expense of procurement.
The Air Force budgets $1.2 billion for 42 Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35As in fiscal 2025, versus $1.4 billion for 48 F-35As last year, and nearly $2.4 billion for 18 Boeing [BA] F-15EX fighters in fiscal 2025, a decrease of more than $1 billion and six F-15EXs from the fiscal 2024 request.
In at least one case, the Air Force’s budget contains a significant cost savings. The service requests about $825 million for the second year of a Multi-Year Procurement for 550 AGM-158B and AGM-158B-2 Lockheed Martin Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles-Extended Range (JASSM-ER). Last year, the service said it asked for nearly $1.7 billion for 550 JASSM-ERs.