July 26, 2024

Bulletin 348: Sentinel rumors

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Previously: Bulletin 347 (07/10/2024): Plutonium pit/Sentinel warhead overview and discussion by Zoom 7/15/24, 1 pm MDT // NNSA/DOE Santa Fe Town Hall July 22, please come

Dear friends and colleagues --

I am currently returning from Washington, DC to New Mexico.

On July 8, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante announced that the initial Sentinel deployment would be delayed "several years." The estimated program cost was increased to $141 billion (B), in 2020 dollars (i.e. $172 B in 2024 dollars). In future ("then-year") dollars, the estimated cost will be higher still.

The initial (deployment) cost of the Sentinel program per missile, assuming 450 missiles are deployed, works out to $382 million in 2024 dollars.

Upon information and belief, Sentinel prospects are actually darker than publicly announced, and the costs much higher. We now believe that the initial Sentinel capability -- of a few missiles only -- will not be available until some time in the late 2030s, and that very few Minuteman silos will turn out to be re-usable. These well-sourced intimations, assuming they are true, have many implications.

Also:

• Each new W87-1 warhead for the Sentinel system will cost more than $100 million, most of which will be incurred in making the plutonium core ("pit") of the warhead at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), which is the only place W87-1 pits will be made. We show our work supporting this cost conclusion in slides 29-38 here. (See also "Los Alamos to make plutonium cores ("pits") for new ICBM, Savannah River to make pits for new submarine missile warhead," Apr 17, 2024.) These warhead costs greatly increase the unit cost of deployed Sentinel missiles, to the extent they are equipped with W87-1 warheads rather than the available W87-0/Mark 21 RVs. Eliminating the W87-1 warhead and its supporting pit production would save more than $40 B in infrastructure and program costs at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Deploying each Sentinel missile with 3 new W87-1 warheads would cost about $700 million per missile.
  

• But there are also many other budget lines necessary for Sentinel which are also not included in Sentinel's alleged "$141" B cost. That is, DoD's Sentinel cost is actually much higher, even without adding NNSA's costs. We have not had time to explore this fully and do not list those additional DoD costs here.
  

Fixing Sentinel, if the program it is continued at scale, will have a significant negative impact on other Air Force acquisition programs, even in the assumption that the U.S. economy remains strong and the program continues to be supported.

Best wishes, more on other subjects as soon as possible, be encouraged,

Greg