Comment: With the delayed town halls and stepping back to rethink and buy more land for new silo sites, this blazing article from FAS quotes Air Force leaders blaming the need for new silos on the cancer risks in the old silos. The debate fires up as the costs continue to climb and the tough critical thinking required to catch all of the misplaced assumptions continues to be divulged and hit the press. This article is extremely researched and makes a lot of valid points on how we got to where we are with Sentinel.
https://fas.org/publication/the-two-hundred-billion-dollar-boondoggle/
"The Two-Hundred Billion Dollar Boondoggle"
06.24.25|17 MIN READ|TEXT BY MATT KORDA & MACKENZIE KNIGHT-BOYLE
Quote:
Nearly one year after the Pentagon certified the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program to continue after it incurred critical cost and schedule overruns, the new nuclear missile could once again be in trouble.1
An April 16th article from Defense Daily broke the news that the Air Force will have to dig new holes for the Sentinel silos.2 The service had been planning to refurbish the existing 450 Minuteman silos but recently discovered, as noted in a follow-up article from Breaking Defense, that the silos will “largely not be reusable after all.”3 Brig. Gen. William Rogers, the Air Force’s director of the ICBM Systems Directorate, cited asbestos, lead paint, and other issues with the existing silos that make refurbishment difficult.4 Air Force officials also stated that an ongoing study into missileer cancer rates played a role in the decision to build new silos.5
This news comes shortly after reports that the Air Force is planning to extend the life of the currently deployed Minuteman III ICBMs until “at least” 2050—roughly 20 years beyond their intended service lives—due to delays in the Sentinel program.6
"New rendering of Sentinel launch facility. (Source: Northrop Grumman)"
