There are "pretty good chances" that the Pentagon will cancel the Sentinel nuclear missile program after its review, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense (DoD), told Sputnik commenting on a recent firing of a top official overseeing the program.
The project, whibc is "well over budget and far behind schedule," is supposed "to deliver 400 ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] at a taxpayer cost of $325 million each, and employs personnel mainly in Utah," Kwiatkowski recalled.
The program could be put on hold for at least three reasons, she said.
"Utah Senators and the handful of Utah Congressmen are not in a powerful position to save the program."
"The wide domestic publicity of the cost overruns and the recent firing of the program manager further reduces the political firepower" of the project.
"As the services realize that budget constraints on the DoD are coming, they are looking for public sacrifices in order to fund better liked and more politically profitable programs."
Land or ground-based missiles in the nuclear triad, which includes ICBMs, bombers and submarines, "are deployed and funded largely based on the idea that they will never be used, or if they are used, no government would survive those launches intact," the former DoD analyst noted.
These missiles "are expensive to build, test and maintain, they lack pizzazz and tend to remain in the budgetary background. I suspect that Northrup Grumman is hoping to shift some of the Sentinel budget onto the more glamorous, and more globally marketable, B2 fighter bomber replacement program, and I expect they have already greased the Congressional skids to do this," she concluded.
The Sentinel program, which aims to develop brand-new missiles to replace the more than 50-year-old Minuteman III ICBMs, was projected to cost $62.3 billion in 2015. Five years later, when the contract was awarded to Northrop Grumman, the project's price tag jumped to $96 billion. To date, it has ballooned to $131 billion, or 37% more than the previous estimate.
The program has also experienced delays caused by supply chain and workforce issues at the manufacturing company, according to Breaking Defense.
Under the Nunn-McCurdy Act of 1982, if the cost of a weapons project rises 25 percent or more above the baseline estimate, that constitutes a "critical" breach - the Pentagon must review the program.