Garamendi, Warren Press Air Force on Significant Cost and Schedule Overruns of Nuclear Missile Program
WASHINGTON, DC–Representative John Garamendi (D-CA08), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and co-chair of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Under Secretary of the Air Force Kristyn Jones pressing the Air Force to provide a thorough analysis of its Sentinel program.
On January 18, 2024, Congress was notified of a “critical” Nunn-McCurdy breach on the Sentinel program, which is triggered if a program incurs a cost or schedule overrun of more than 30 percent. The lawmakers are calling on the Air Force to address serious concerns related to its Sentinel program and provide clarity on the Minuteman III service life extension program.
“The Sentinel (GBSD) program is in deep trouble. The program has a cost overrun of at least 37%, with an estimated future cost of at least $130 billion and many years of delay. The recent Nunn-McCurdy breach demands the Air Force provide long overdue clarity on the status of the entire program, including detailed reprogramming, estimated total expenditures, alternatives, timelines, as well as what other Air Force programs must be cut to continue to pay for the Sentinel,” wrote the lawmakers.
From its inception, the program has lacked basic building blocks for good program management and pursued a “schedule [that] is aggressive and compressed” compared to prior Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) programs.” These management weaknesses have led Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante to point to Sentinel as an important example of how programs “can be smarter about doing [things that] potentially will save time later.”
The lawmakers then argued that the Department of Defense has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars and a decade of time on the Sentinel program while building a weapon that many agree is unnecessary. They urged the Air Force to explore all possible alternatives to the Sentinel program, including the extension of the Minuteman III program, which Air Force leaders have stated is viable until the mid-2030s.
“The recent Nunn-McCurdy breach underscores the critical need for dramatically improved planning, analysis, and transparency. It is imperative that the Air Force think critically and creatively about the way forward. Given its scale and expense, nothing about this program should be seen as predetermined and we must evaluate every decision to determine if the expense truly provides for the national defense,” continued the lawmakers.
The lawmakers are asking the Air Force to answer a set of questions about the cost overrun of the Sentinel program and provide clarity on the Minuteman III service life extension program by March 27, 2024.
Garamendi is a longtime critic of the Sentinel program and has consistently raised concerns about the misuse of taxpayer dollars and the failure to address national security needs. In 2021, he introduced the “Investing in Commonsense Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) Act,” which would pause the development of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program until 2031 and extend the service life of the Minuteman III missiles to 2040 that the GBSD program is intended to replace. As the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee and co-chair of the Nuclear Security Working Group, Garamendi has advocated for reforms to rein in the excessive costs associated with the Sentinel program.
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