![]() ![]() It’s a closed communication loop, and a very secure one that brings its own headaches. Those Hardened Intersite Cable Systems, or HICS, cables carry messages back and forth from the missile to the missileer, who receives those messages through a relatively new part of the capsule - a firing control console called REACT, for Rapid Execution and Combat Targeting, that was installed in the mid-1990s. 27, 1962 - the day Cuba shot down a U-2 spy plane at the height of the Cuban missile crisis - the missile has “talked” to its operators through thousands of miles of hard-wiring in cables buried underground. Since the first silo-based Minuteman went on alert at Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base on Oct. The changes could improve efficiency and quality of life on the bases but may also create vulnerabilities that the analog Minuteman missiles have never faced. The overhaul touches almost everything, even including new equipment for military chefs who cook for the missile teams. “Sentinel, I think quite honestly, is struggling a little bit,” he said.īy far, the biggest cultural shift the Sentinel will bring is the connectivity for all those who secure, maintain, operate and support the system. It’s “the biggest thing, in some ways, that the Air Force has ever taken on.” “It’s been a long time since we did an ICBM,” Kendall said in November at a Center for New American Security event in Washington. “Software development is a high risk due to its scale and complexity and unique requirements of the nuclear deterrence mission.”Īir Force Secretary Frank Kendall has acknowledged the challenges the program is facing. “Sentinel is a software-intensive program with a compressed schedule,” the Government Accountability Office reported this summer. The Sentinel is expected to stay in service through 2075, so designers are taking an approach that will make it easier to upgrade with new technologies in the coming years. last used nuclear weapons in war, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, which killed an estimated 100,000 in an instant and likely tens of thousands more over time.įor the Pentagon, there are expectations the modern Sentinel will meet threats from rapidly evolving Chinese and Russian missile systems. nuclear defenses, including new stealth bombers, submarines and ICBMs in the country’s largest nuclear weapons program since the Manhattan Project.įor the Sentinel, silo work could be underway by lead contractor Northrop Grumman as soon as 2025. The Sentinel work is one leg of a larger, nuclear weapons enterprise-wide $750 billion overhaul that is replacing almost every component of U.S. Now everything is getting modernized at once. ![]() Nuclear modernization was delayed for years because the United States deferred spending on new missiles, bombers and submarines in order to support the post 9/11 wars overseas. Commanders hope the modernization of the Sentinel, and of the trucks, gear and living quarters, will help attract and retain young technology-minded service members who are now asked each day to find ways to keep a very old system running. Air Force crews guard them using helicopters that can be traced back to the Vietnam War. Their 60-year old massive mechanical parts break down often. The project is so ambitious it has raised questions as to whether the Air Force can get it all done at once. ![]() The $96 billion Sentinel overhaul involves 450 silos across five states, their control centers, three nuclear missile bases and several other testing facilities. The Sentinel will need to be well protected from cyberattacks, while its technology will have to cope with frigid winter temperatures in the Western states where the silos are located. Making the silo-launched missile more modern, with complex software and 21st-century connectivity across a vast network, may also mean it’s more vulnerable. The 12th MS is one of four missile squadrons in the 341st Operations Group of the 341st Space Wing. In this undated image provided by the Department of Defense, crews construct missile site connections in the 12th Missile Squadron flight area north of Great Falls, Mont. It’s the largest cultural shift in the land leg of the Air Force’s nuclear missile mission in 60 years.īut there are questions as to whether some of the Cold War-era aspects of the Minuteman missiles that the Sentinel will replace should be changed. A new nuclear missile is coming, a gigantic ICBM called the Sentinel. Those underground capsules are about to be demolished and the missile silos they control will be completely overhauled. (AP) - The control stations for America’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles have a sort of 1980s retro look, with computing panels in sea foam green, bad lighting and chunky control switches, including a critical one that says “launch.” Free Press 101: How we practise journalismį.E.
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