The Pentagon allocated about $23.8 million to the consulting company McKinsey & Co.

Inc.

to conduct an assessment of the industrial base involved in the development of the Sentinel ICBM.

Information about this was posted on the US military website.

“(Company -

RT

) McKinsey & Co.

Inc., Washington, was awarded a firm-fixed-price contract in the amount of $23,803,200. The contract provides for an analysis to assess the state of the industrial base of the program (to create intercontinental ballistic missiles. -

RT

) Sentinel of the US Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center," the press stated. - Pentagon service.

The bulk of the analysis should be completed by mid-July 2024.

At the same time, the contract provides for the possibility of conducting additional research, which must be completed no later than March 2026.

The Pentagon's statement was made against the backdrop of reports in the American media about a significant increase in the cost of the Sentinel ICBM program.

  • Pentagon

  • Legion-Media

  • © Piemags

As Bloomberg reported on January 19, the total project estimate increased by 37% and reached $131.5 billion. Previously, it was planned to spend $96 billion for these purposes. This amount includes both the purchase of missiles and the construction of new launch silos, control centers and other objects.

The increase in cost is mainly due to the creation of infrastructure and communication systems, writes Air & Space Forces Magazine (a publication of the Association of the US Air Force and Space Forces).

In particular, the developers planned to use the communication system from the Minuteman ICBM currently in service, but it later turned out that its capacity was insufficient.

As a result, the Pentagon will have to replace cables and other equipment that were not previously included in the estimate.

Under the Nunn-McCurdy Act, which requires the Pentagon to formally justify a project if its cost increases by more than 15 percent, significant cost overruns in a major Pentagon acquisition program constitute a violation and require the Secretary of Defense's office to report it to Congress.

However, a critical violation is considered if the procurement program's unit cost forecasts exceed the original baseline estimate by at least 50% or the current baseline estimate by at least 25%.

The case of the Sentinel program falls under the second point.

Now Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin will have to conduct a review of the program, after which he will have to curtail it or confirm that it is important for national security and the new cost estimates are reasonable, notes the US Department of Defense newspaper Stars and Stripes.

In addition to cost overruns, the US Air Force is also projecting a two-year delay in the program, according to Bloomberg.

According to the latest estimates, Sentinel will enter service no earlier than 2030.

According to analysts, the increase in the project budget is due to an underestimation of its complexity.

“The missiles that the United States now has in service were made back in the 1970s.

During this time, technology has advanced, and now they do not have the necessary components, machines, or specialists.

Apparently, the Pentagon underestimated the difficulties associated with creating a new missile, which led to unnecessary expenses.

As a result, the Sentinel project stalled.

Plans to complete it by 2030, in my opinion, are unrealistic,” said Mikhail Alexandrov, a leading expert at the Center for Military-Political Studies at MGIMO, in a commentary to RT.

"In a changing global environment"

Let us remind you that the American Sentinel missiles should replace the outdated Minuteman III ICBMs, which have been in service with the United States for about half a century.

Northrop Grumman won the tender to create the new system.

In total, as part of the project, Northrop Grumman intends to supply the Pentagon with 634 missiles, of which 450 Sentinel should replace Minuteman III in silos, and 184 will be used for periodic demonstration launches. 

The program also provides for the construction of 450 launch silos, dozens of control posts, maintenance buildings, weapons depots, 56 loading and transport vehicles, and the laying of about 12 thousand km of cables.

American media note that this is one of the largest infrastructure projects in recent decades, not only in the armed forces, but also in the country as a whole.

  • Estimated appearance of the Sentinel ICBM

  • © Northrop Grumman

As reported on the Northrop Grumman website, the need to update nuclear forces is due to the fact that for the first time in its history, the United States is faced simultaneously with two rivals with comparable capabilities.

The company does not specify which countries it is talking about, however, according to analysts, Washington’s opponents can only mean Moscow and Beijing.

“For the first time in history, the United States is faced with two virtually equal adversaries who are rapidly building up and modernizing their nuclear weapons.

Recognizing the need to maintain reliable deterrents in a changing global security environment, the United States is modernizing each component (its nuclear -

RT

) triad,” Northrop Grumman says in its materials.

It is worth noting that the implementation of the Sentinel program is carried out against the backdrop of constant discussions in the US political and expert communities about ways to develop the country's nuclear deterrent forces.

Thus, in January, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker and Senator Debra Fischer published an article in The Wall Street Journal in which they stated that “critical modernization” of the US arsenal was “underfunded and delayed.”

At the same time, they emphasized the inadmissibility of abandoning or reducing the Sentinel program.

The material also notes the growth of China's nuclear arsenal and the presence of the world's largest nuclear forces in Russia.

In turn, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren believes that it would be more advisable not to spend money on a new missile system, but to extend the service life of the Minuteman III.

There are also more radical points of view.

For example, in one of the publications of the Stars and Stripes newspaper, columnist Gabe Murphy said that Washington should not invest in the development of silo-based ICBMs, since submarines with intercontinental missiles on board would be sufficient for nuclear deterrence.

"The US is now behind"

According to analysts, Wicker and Fisher's alarmist statements have serious grounds.

“In the field of strategic aviation and especially ground-based strategic missiles, of course, the United States is far behind.

They didn’t allocate enough money for this, and they launched the program for creating new missiles ten years late,” said Mikhail Alexandrov.

  • Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Maryland

  • globallookpress.com

  • © US Navy

A similar opinion is shared by Konstantin Blokhin, an employee of the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In recent years, the expert believes, the United States has been too busy with wars in the Middle East and creating extensive bases around the world, paying little attention to the modernization of its strategic weapons.

“And we were just busy updating strategic forces and creating hypersonic weapons.

Therefore, the United States is now behind us in this area,” the analyst explained in a conversation with RT.

At the same time, Mikhail Alexandrov considers Warren’s proposal to extend the life of the Minuteman missiles to be untenable, since “there is a certain limit to the service life of both the missile components and the accompanying infrastructure.”

Experts also state that against the backdrop of China’s strengthening nuclear potential, the United States is faced with a fundamentally new situation for itself.

“Russia has nuclear potential equal to the United States.

But China is developing its armed forces by leaps and bounds, so Washington is faced with a challenge much more serious than during the Cold War.

After all, then he was opposed only by the USSR, and now by Russia and China.

They may still be joined by the DPRK, and in the future by Iran,” believes Konstantin Blokhin.

As Mikhail Alexandrov noted, against the backdrop of a changing balance of power in the world, Washington no longer has confidence that it will be able to provide nuclear deterrence to two powerful players.

“Previously, the USSR was in a situation where it was confronted by three nuclear opponents at once - France, Britain and the USA.

Now everything has changed: China has been added to Russia’s potential, which is building up its forces at a rapid pace.

As a result, the United States needs means to repel a theoretical attack from two strong states at once.

But whether Washington can cope with such a challenge is a big question,” the analyst concluded.