This year, America’s Minuteman III nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) will be fifty-five years old, having first entered operational service with the U.S. Air Force back in 1970. (Or, if you wish to nitpick, you could say it’ll be celebrating its fifty-seventh birthday this year, going by the date of the missile’s first test launch on August 16, 1968.)

Back on May 23, 2021, retired U.S. Air Force (USAF) Col. Dana Struckman penned an article for The National Interest titled “Now Is the Time to Replace the Minuteman III ICBM.” Fast-forward to the present day, and the good news for the good colonel and folks who share his viewpoint is that there is finally a replacement nuke being developed, the LGM-35A Sentinel, aka the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD). The not-so-good news? There’s a lack of proper silo space for the up-and-coming Sentinels. Er, oops!

Where the Sentinel ICBM Went Wrong

The news of this kiloton kerfuffle comes to us from Defense One staff writer Audrey Decker in a May 5, 2025, report titled “Sentinel ICBM program needs brand-new silos, Air Force says.” To wit:

“‘The Air Force continues to assess its options and design concepts as part of doing good systems engineering. While no decision has been made, we expect Sentinel to use predominantly [Air Force]-owned real estate to build new missile silos instead of re-using MMIII........

© The National Interest