The U.S. Air Force is now considering extending the service life of the existing LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile, which has been in service since 1970, all the way to 2050.
And this is despite the fact that the United States has a new program for the LGM-35 Sentinel ICBM to replace the LGM-30G Minuteman III. But according to new data from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO), the project has turned out to be such a failure.
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Thus, if earlier the service life of the Minuteman III ICBMs, first deployed in the 1970s, was defined until 2026, now they plan to extend it by another 24 years. This conclusion comes after the missile program office conducted an analysis and determined that such a scenario is quite realistic.
Although there are several reasons for the failure of the Sentinel project, including the critical increase in the projected cost of the program, the main factor is considered to be the unviable plan to reuse the existing ground infrastructure, including silos, command centers, and communications networks, according to Defense One.
Moreover, the U.S. Air Force had been studying the possibility of extending the service life of Minuteman missiles even before the Sentinel program was temporarily suspended in 2024. It has now been determined that, given the current situation, Minuteman III test launches will continue until 2045.
The GAO report also states that the Air Force generally does not conduct thorough planning to avoid additional costs if problems arise. It is also emphasized that the Pentagon agreed with the GAO's findings regarding the current situation.
It should be recalled that while at the start the cost of the new LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM project was estimated at less than $80 billion, in 2024 it more than doubled exceeding $160 billion — for a rather banal reason: underestimating the cost of the infrastructure required to operate the program.
Earlier, Defense Express reported that iran now appears to have its own ICBM capable of reaching the United States.
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