.Gen. Dale White, the director of critical major weapons systems at the Pentagon, said the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program will have an official cost estimate by this summer as a result of the program restructuring.

“Cost Estimation will be completed in the summer,” White said while testifying Monday at a Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee hearing on atomic energy defense activities in the fiscal 2027 budget.  “We’ve already gone through some of the requirements process with some of the folks on the panel here with me here today, and then getting to a place like what we’re doing with the launch silo, and actually having a prototyping effort that we just started in February.” 

White reiterated that restructuring of the program, as a result of a Nunn-McCurdy breach from January 2024 for exceeding cost projections by well over the 25% threshold, would be done in 2026. He also confirmed the first pad launched flight test for the Sentinel would be aimed for 2027, “and we’ll enter the milestone B phase and get that completed statutorily, but more importantly, getting everyone aligned on a vision of what we need to do.” 

White was responding to a question by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), ranking member of the subcommittee, on getting the Sentinel program “back on schedule” and delivered before the Minuteman III missiles are decommissioned.

The Northrop Grumman-made Sentinel ICBM will eventually replace the Boeing-made Minuteman III as the Air Force’s silo-based, nuclear-armed ICBM. That is expected sometime in the 2030s while the Minuteman III is still commissioned. The new missile will initially carry W87-0 warheads provided by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, before transitioning to the W87-1 warheads being made at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the fiscal 2026 national defense authorization bill would require Sentinel to reach initial operational capability by the end of fiscal 2033. The Sentinel program is undergoing a restructuring to allow it, once again, to enter Milestone B engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) – a 2020 EMD go ahead that DoD rescinded in July 2024 after the critical Nunn-McCurdy program unit cost breach.

Chairwoman Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), whose state silos the Minuteman III ICBMs, later asked how White was ensuring “we’re going to have a capable Minuteman III until Sentinel’s going to be fully deployed.”

“Well, first and foremost, as you’ll see in the ‘27 budget, we resource it,” White said. “That’s step one, and we have done that. You’ll also see an increase over time as we start getting more RDT&E [Research, Development, Test and Evaluation] to get modernization programs in place to ensure that that system not only remains sustainable, but in an area where it’s maintainable.”

White added that “you’ll have my commitment and the commitment of my team to make sure we continue that, and you’ll see the Air Force standing with me side by side on making sure we get that done. So there’s certainly no confusion on the importance of making sure that it is maintainable, sustainable and online."