The next chapter of America’s nuclear story is already being written in Wyoming. Matt Korda has been watching the story unfold high up in the sky, thanks to an array of satellite imagery that’s publicly available. This week, he dropped in on Wyoming to talk all things LGM-35A Sentinel, the new missiles that will be replacing the aging Minuteman III missiles.
Korda is with the Federation of American Scientists and is co-author of the Nuclear Notebook, which is an open-source analysis that includes both global nuclear forces and trends.
The Federation of American Scientists was created by members of the Manhattan Project who worked on the first nuclear weapons in 1945 and 1946, and, as such, is the oldest nuclear policy organization in the world.
Korda is traveling to all of the states where America’s nuclear weapons have been placed, to share information about the world’s nuclear weapons, as well as the $141 billion upgrade to the Minuteman III missiles which has already begun.
“They set up this organization to try and think about responsible ways we can prevent an arms race, to prevent nuclear war,” Korda said. “And really what that mission has evolved into over the past three decades is … the nuclear information project.”
The project uses publicly available information to flesh out the global nuclear landscape as much as possible.
“Things like satellite imagery, budgetary information, Freedom of Information Act requests, programmatic documents,” he said. “Really anything we can get our hands on to try and acquire data about global nuclear arsenals and then use that data to empower folks in the public.”
The group doesn’t advocate for particular policies, Korda added.
“I have my personal views on nuclear policy,” he said. “But really this is about just making sure that everyone is armed with the information necessary to hold lawmakers to account, to be a watchdog, to do journalism and just be educated on this stuff.”
America Is Falling Behind In Global Arms Race
The biggest trend that Korda sees right now as he’s watching things unfold from satellite images and programmatic documents is a huge, global, nuclear arms race underway in multiple countries.
“The United States and Russia have approximately 90% of the global number of nuclear weapons in the world, and that percentage is actually shrinking,” he said. “And it’s not because the U.S. and Russian stockpiles are getting smaller. It’s because other countries’ stockpiles are actually growing.”
The most dramatic increase is being seen in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which, according to the Department of Defense (DoD) spent an estimated $330 to $450 billion in 2024 on ramping up its military capabilities.
The country already had at least 600 nuclear warheads, according to data compiled by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit based in Chicago, but has since surpassed that, according to the Department of Defense’s 2024 annual report to Congress.
“DoD estimates the PRC has surpassed 600 operational nuclear warheads in its stockpile as of mid-2024 and will have over 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030, much of which will be deployed at higher readiness levels,” the DoD report says. “The PRC will continue growing its force through at least 2035.”
China’s aims include accelerating its capabilities and concepts to “fight and win wars” against a “strong enemy,” as well as counter-intervention by third parties, to pursue “national rejuvenation” and a “community of common destiny” by its centenary in 2049.
China has ramped up its manufacturing capabilities alongside its increase in nuclear weapons. That manufacturing includes many military aspects.
It’s nearly self-sufficient for all shipbuilding needs, for example, and it’s the fourth-largest arms supplier in the world. It can supply nearly every category of conventional military equipment, whether that’s fighter aircraft and drones, or submarines and guns.
More Countries Have Become Nuclear Powers
China’s not the only country taking bigger swings in the nuclear weapons sector.
“We have India and Pakistan that are in this sort of direct competition with each other,” he said. “And that means they’re sort of slowly growing their arsenals. North Korea is growing quite substantially, and even countries like the UK, which previously had been on a multi-decade period of decreasing its arsenal suddenly has, over the past few years, said, ‘You know what, we’re actually going to start increasing once again.’”
But it’s not just the quantity of the nuclear arsenal that’s growing. The capabilities are also growing.
“Every single nuclear-armed country is modernizing its nuclear arsenal,” Korda said.
The term itself refers to increased capabilities of one kind or another, like longer ranges, as well as increased longevity.
Where before, missiles were expected to last around 10 years, the new ones are being designed, in many cases, to last in the 50- to 70-year range.
Sentinel, which will be replacing the aging Minuteman III missiles at F.E. Warren Air Force Base will be using a modular design, to ease system upgrades, making them more “plug and play.”
“You can basically patch in new upgrades to the system as older things become obsolete,” Korda said. “So, when they talk about this being a longer lifespan missile it’s because they think they’ll be able to do that.”
Alongside the rise in nuclear weapons, transparency has been decreasing, Korda said.
In theory, under the New START Treaty between Russia and the United States, for example, each country was supposed to make certain data disclosures.
“Russia stopped complying a few years ago,” Korda said. “And the U.S. took what it called legal reciprocal countermeasures, and then also stopped complying in that same way.”
That’s made it hard to get current data for what’s happening with nuclear missiles, but the United States did declassify its stockpile size in 2023.
Korda has also seen an increase in recent years of public nuclear signaling, something which he hadn’t been seen for a while, since the end of the Cold War.
“For example, the U.S. will conduct bomber overflights, nuclear exercises in conjunction with other countries,” he said. “They will surface their ballistic missile submarines and then publicize it. That’s something that, like, never happens, because the whole point of these submarines is they’re meant to be invulnerable, you’re not supposed to know where they are.”
Wyoming Will Be First
Wyoming will have an important part to play in America’s nuclear sector, as it will be the first to get the new Sentinel missiles. F. E. Warren Air Force Base oversees nuclear missiles that span Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado.
Korda is already seeing construction activities in satellite images for F.E. Warren Air Force Base.
“There’s going to be 18 new communications towers, which are about 300 feet tall,” Korda said. “They have a footprint of about 5 acres each.”
A substantial amount of new, off-base construction is also planned.
“There’s going to be a new workforce hub in Kimball, Nebraska, and that’s going to be about 50 to 60 acres for an (expected) influx of about 2,500 to 3,000 new residents over the next three to five years,” Korda said. “There will also be these different, sort of smaller construction staging areas across the three states (Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming).”
More land easements will be needed by the Air Force since all of the cabling is going to be replaced with newer fiber-optic cables.
Warren Air Force Base will be the first base where the Minuteman III missiles will be replaced with Sentinels. As such, they will be charged with figuring out the best practices and lessons learned for the remaining missile replacements at other bases in North Dakota and Montana.
Part of that process has already begun, with the first Minuteman III missile silo already taken offline.
Military experts have speculated the silo was probably one that didn’t have a missile and will be used to game out the nitty-gritty nuts and bolts of how the process of replacing the Minuteman III missiles should proceed.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
