Military readiness, new ICBMs top Air Force Secretary's visit
David Murray
Top U.S. Air Force leadership, including Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, paid an uncommon visit to Great Falls last Wednesday, stopping to meet directly with servicemembers at Malmstrom Air Force Base and the Montana Air National Guard’s 120th Airlift Wing.
The delegation, which also included the commander of the 20th Air Force Global Strike Command, surgeon general of the Air Force, deputy director of the Air National Guard and the commander of the Montana National Guard, was hosted by Montana Sen. Jon Tester.
Tester currently serves as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, the body that's responsible for finalizing the budget for the Department of Defense (DoD), which in 2022 amounted to close to $857 billion.
“Very seldom do Air Force Secretaries stop at air guard units. This was an opportunity that I felt we could not pass up,” Tester said during a press briefing following the delegation’s visit. “The fact that we got the Secretary of the Airforce into Montana is really, really good. He gets to understand that when we’re putting the budget together that things like Malmstrom Air Force Base and the Air National Guard unit here in Great Falls are important pieces. We got to really show off the opportunities that Montana has from a national security standpoint.”
Tester and the Air Force commanders discussed a wide range of topics including assessing Air Force’s readiness capabilities, updates on Malmstrom’s response to the Chinese spy balloon incident last February, and progress on the development of a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system to replace the aging Minuteman III system.
Military preparedness
The U.S. military currently faces multiple strategic challenges across the globe. Among these are continued material support to oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the threat of Chinese military aggression against Taiwan, and continued exercises and training near North Korea, which has developed a stockpile of 30 to 40 nuclear warheads and is now testing a ballistic missile capable of reaching most of the United States.
“It’s a very uncertain world right now,” Tester observed following his meeting with Air Force leadership, “but I’m very, very confident that our military can meet the challenges in this world. Now does that mean we can just sit on our hands and take it easy? No, it doesn’t. That’s why we had the budget we did last year, which was a lot of money.”
“We’re going to continue to invest, because I think deterrence is the best possible way to move forward,” he continued. “What we’re trying to do is show our adversaries that you don’t want to go there. That it would be bad for you. If we continue to do that then we’ll be successful.”
However, top House Republicans say the Pentagon’s budget will be on the table as they seek to negotiate spending cuts in exchange for raising the federal debt ceiling. The digital political magazine The Hill reports that House Republicans are pushing to cut the Pentagon’s budget by about $75 billion.
“We will never have enough money to buy everything that’s out there to be had,” Tester said in response. “So there has to be good oversight and we have to be smart. We have to make sure we’re getting the things the military needs to be successful. That’s not easy to do … but I think we’re fully capable of making sure that the taxpayer gets the biggest bang for the buck.”
New ICBMs
The ground-based leg of the U.S. nuclear triad is the 400 Minuteman III ICBMs, of which 150 lie in hardened silos scattered across Montana, maintained and operated by the missileers of Malmstrom Air Force Base. However, the Minuteman III is based upon technology developed in the late 1960s.
The Air Force is now waiting on a new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), the LGM-35A Sentinel weapon system, which is being developed by military contractor Northrop Grumman. The Sentinel weapon system is scheduled to be deployed by 2029 at a total cost of $95.8 billion – a huge sum by any measure.
“We have to continue working to make sure GBSD is continually funded,” Tester said of the ongoing development of the Sentinel. “I’m meeting with the Northrup Grumman folks in the first part of May. We’ll be talking to them about things like housing, manpower, what they’re going to bring, are they going to be hiring folks from around here? Of course, I’m going to be encouraging them to hire Montanans. It’s a big job, so they’re probably going to have to bring in some outside folks, but I want them to use as many Montanans as they can.”
Tester added that development of the Sentinel is on schedule, and that funding levels for the program are currently where they need to be.
Chinese spy balloon
On the first day in February a high-altitude spy balloon, estimated to be 200-feet-tall with a jetliner-sized payload, was spotted by multiple people as it drifted slowly across a clear blue Montana sky. Three days later a U.S. fighter jet shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina.
“It had equipment that was "clearly for intelligence surveillance," including "multiple antennas" that were "likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications," a senior State Department official is quoted as saying.
The brazen incursion into U.S. airspace led to broad condemnation of both the Biden Administration and the U.S. Air Force for not destroying the spy balloon sooner. Tester’s meetings with top Air Force commanders did include a briefing on what more has been learned about the balloon and its capabilities, but Tester did not go into great detail on what was discussed.
“They dealt with just Malmstrom’s role in that Chinese spy balloon,” Tester said of the Air Force briefing. “I will tell you that overall, the sentiment is that they (the Chinese) didn’t get much. What I want is a brief from the time it entered the United States until it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.”
“The balloon invaded our airspace and that’s something we should never accept,” he added.