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Please Support As and Give me a Feed Back to Improve. The U.S. Air Force has dubbed its next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile the LGM-35A Sentinel.
The official name for the United States’ next nuclear missile, which until now has been referred to as the LGM-35A Sentinel Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, was announced by the service.
The Sentinel is to succeed the 5-decade-old Minuteman III beginning in 2029, and it would represent a major upgrade and a costly one, at $100 billion to the ICBM portion of the U.S. nuclear triad. Nuclear-armed bombers, such as the B-52 Stratofortress and the in-development B-21 Raider, as well as submarines make up the other two portions of the nuclear triad.
The LGM-30G Minuteman III was first deployed in 1970. There are now about 400 Minuteman IIIs in hardened silos, designed to withstand attacks, spread out across the country at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, and other sites in Colorado and Nebraska.
Launch crews of two officers are on duty around the clock in underground launch control centers, which are connected to the silos with hardened cables and can be contacted immediately by the president or defense secretary.
The Air Force said the LGM-35A Sentinel will use a modular architecture that can be easily upgraded with new, emerging technologies to meet evolving threats, and will be easier to maintain than the Minuteman. This will save money and keep the Sentinel relevant well into the 2070s and beyond.
The Air Force’s current missile bases will also be the home of Sentinel missiles. Koser said the Sentinel upgrade will modernize more than the missiles themselves; it will also modernize or replace the existing Minuteman-era silos, control centers and ground infrastructure, as well as its flight systems and command-and-control systems.
