The first months of President Donald Trump’s second administration has had a theme of cutting government pork, but there’s at least one notable exception.
That’s the $140.9 billion upgrade of America’s nuclear arsenal to Sentinel missiles, which will replace the nation’s aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Everything is full steam ahead when it comes to upgrading the nation’s land-based leg of its nuclear program, located for the last half century in a tri-state area that includes Wyoming and is overseen by F.E. Warren Airforce Base in Cheyenne.
Stephen Kravitsky, director of the Sentinel Site Activation Task Force (SAFT) Detachment 10, is in charge of the project at F.E. Warren. He has 22 people working to prepare for the incoming Sentinels.
A visitor to the base would see lots of activity now, he told Cowboy State Daily.
“The Sentinel program is certainly not on hold,” he said. “Currently, we’re building a wing command center. We’re building a missile handling complex with a transportation storage administration area. We’re building our SAFT facility. These are all items that are actually going on right now.”
There’s even more activity outside the base.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Air Force Civil Engineering Center, for example, are working to secure property out in the missile field, while others are surveying and acquiring land for new fiber optic cables that will replace the old system.
“An old copper system is used to communicate with the system right now,” Kravitsky said. “And so, we believe at the end of 2027, 2028, we’ll start laying that new fiber.
“Northrup Grumman did a static test fire of their first stage in March,” Kravitsky continued. “And I believe they’re getting ready for qualification testing. Where I sit, it’s full steam ahead.”
There’s also concurrent activity at Hill Air Force Base as well as at the Air Force Global Strike command in Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
“We’re not the only ones focused on this,” Kravitsky said. “We’re a very small piece that has a very large job on the ground, once we start the deployment.”
Construction is ongoing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base with a team of 22 people preparing for incoming Sentinel nuclear missiles. (Courtesy Photo) 
Steven Kravitsky, center, talks about construction work at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in preparation for Sentinel nuclear missiles. (Courtesy Photo) 
(Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily)
The ‘Easy’ Stage
That very small piece is busy , but this stage is nonetheless what Kravitsky calls the “easy” phase.
The hard stuff comes later once the Sentinels begin arriving.
“There’s a formal missile wing commander here,” he said. “And it’s critical that I stay in lockstep with the wing to make sure our activities aren’t interfering with their activities, because they have an operational mission today, and that’s the Minutemen ICBM mission that they have to focus on day-in, day-out.”
Readiness will have to be maintained for a time for both systems at once, Kravitsky added.
“This is one of the largest and most complex programs the Air Force has ever undertaken,” he said. “It’s unique in size and scope. To be quite honest with you, we don’t have an analogy for it.”
The deployment of the system in the 1960s is the closest, but isn’t comparable, Kravitsky said.
“When we deployed that system initially, we were bringing assets on alert,” he said. “Today, we have to balance maintaining the Minuteman weapon system on alert while bringing Sentinel on alert.
“So, we’re going to be managing two different systems that are on alert to meet the United States Strategic Commander’s requirements.”
Right now, Kravitsky has just 22 people on the ground under his umbrella. That force is going to grow significantly as the project progresses to more like 200 people.
“That’ll be Global Strike Command personnel, it will be operational folks,” he said. “You’ll have the systems program office from Hill (Air Force Base). They’re engineers, they’re the acquirers. They’ll acquire the system.”
There will also be construction managers, engineers and people from the Defense Contract Management Agency, Air Force, Civil Engineering Center and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“It’ll be a large organization here, all working together, synchronized to make this happen,” Kravitsky said. “It is a big, big ordeal.”
Key Piece Of Nation’s Nuclear Triad
The nation’s land-based nuclear missiles are part of what’s called the “nuclear triad” intended to deter anyone from striking the United States with nuclear missiles.
The three legs of the triad for delivering America’s nukes is by land (like the silos managed by F.E. Warren), by submarine and by air with strategic bombers.
As Col. Jared Nelson, then commander of the 90th Operations Group, explained it during an Aeronautics Conference in Casper in 2023, deterrence is used a little differently by the military than others.
“It’s a nuclear term that means we’re going to make it worse on our enemies, the attackers,” he said. “And my job as the Operations Group commander is to be ready to make that come true.”
Being ready at all times has meant keeping a force ready to go around the clock at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, and that has worked well for the last 50 years.
But the Minutemen III missiles were designed to last about 10 years, and have now been in service for about a half century.
“We have essentially wholesale replaced that missile several times over the past 50 years,” Nelson said. “It gets to the point where it doesn’t work as well.
“So, we’ve put a lot of money into the modernization, and the Department of Defense about five years ago looked at this missile and they said it’s less expensive to replace the entire thing than to continue replacing parts.”
The upgrade to Sentinels will be one for the history books, Nelson added.
“The Sentinel is going to be the fifth ICBM that has been on alert at F.E. Warren Air Force Base,” he said. “No other base has ever had five ICBMs, so we are going to be the first one to do that.”
New Schedule Coming
The Sentinel modernization project was initially projected to cost around $78 billion, but a more recent estimate is that the replacement will cost $140.9 billion.
That’s in part because of inflation, but also due to infrastructure upgrades and unforeseen complexities, including real estate acquisition and having to redo all of the underground cabling.
The Air Force also had hoped to retrofit and reuse existing Minuteman III silos, but it turns out that won’t work. So, new silos will have to be dug, as reported by Defense News.
The cost overrun triggered a Nunn-McCurdy review, legislation that required the Department of Defense to report to Congress if a major acquisition program is going to exceed cost estimates by either 25% over a current baseline estimate, or 50% over the original baseline.
Any program that’s 30% over cost triggers a review by the Secretary of Defense, who may either cancel it or determine it’s necessary for national defense and that there’s no reasonable, cheaper alternative.
That kept the Sentinel program on the books, though it also triggered a process to restructure the project to control costs to the extent possible. The results of that were announced July 2024 and determined that the program had met the statutory criteria to continue, despite the significant cost increase.
Kravitsky told Cowboy State Daily that a new schedule is being prepared, which he expects to have sometime in 2027.
Community Is Getting Ready Too
The Sentinel program is expected to bring $2.6 billion in construction money to southeast Wyoming, as well as thousands of new people who will be converging on the region to accomplish the project.
Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce CEO Dale Steenbergen has been told to expect between 2,000 to 5,000 people on site at peak construction.
Steenbergen has been coordinating regular conference call for the last two and a half years so that the communities in the region can coordinate and be ready for what’s coming.
“We are doing a lot to get ready for Sentinel,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “We are working with contractors on workforce training to make sure we’re going to be set up with that. We’ve got a couple of housing projects that we’re working on to make sure housing is there.
“And we’re constantly tracking numbers as we get them to make sure the math adds up.”
The working group is also coordinating with Homeland Security, various county commissioners, ambulance services and hospitals to ensure that everyone is on the same page and well-prepared for the influx of people that will come with the Sentinel’s construction.
The military has always been a major driver for Cheyenne’s economy, Steenbergen added, but this is also huge for Wyoming’s economy overall.
“Not by just a little, but a lot,” he said. “Sentinel does a couple of things for us over the next 50 years. It makes sure that the economic foundation of our economy remains in place. No. 2, it grows that possibility. It’s a wonderful opportunity to grow our economy, both in Cheyenne and Wyoming, and to celebrate the pride we have in our Air Force and the mission we have.
“It’s the oldest running Air Force base in the United States arsenal. And we are very, very proud of that.”
Steenbergen added that he is glad Kravitsky is the one in charge of activities on the ground at F.E. Warren.
“He’s absolutely the right guy to lead this thing in the right direction,” Steenbergen said. “He’s a guy who knows Cheyenne. He knows the missile field out in Nebraska.
“He was a commander here. He knows our people. He knows the culture here. So, it’s going to be a great fit, and we’re really looking forward to moving forward on this project.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
