The Pentagon told when the LGM-35A Sentinel ballistic missile will replace the Minuteman III
The US Department of Defense has revealed the name of a new intercontinental ballistic missile - LGM-35A Sentinel. It should replace the LGM-30G Minuteman III. "Newspaper.Ru" figured out what was going on with the US nuclear missile program.
The US military department reported that the military will begin receiving the LGM-35A Sentinel from 2029. The new missiles will use the existing infrastructure. The Pentagon noted that rearmament will be cheaper than extending the service life of Minuteman III missiles. The Sentinel itself is planned to be operated until the 2070s.
The LGM-35A Sentinel is being developed as part of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD, "Ground Strategic Deterrence") program. Northrop Grumman has received a contract to develop a rocket in 2020.
According to Dmitry Stefanovich, a researcher at the IMEMO RAS Center for International Security, a military expert, the Minuteman III land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles have been in service since the 1970s and they are "simply impossible to modernize."
"It is absolutely necessary for the United States to restart the program for the development of large solid-fuel engines, because they rested on their laurels too much, a lot of engines were used that remained after the disposal of medium-sized missiles under the INF Treaty(The Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-range Missiles - "Gazeta.Ru»)[/i]. The United States needs to restore production in this area," Stefanovich believes.
In turn, retired RVSN Major General, international security expert Igor Dremov believes that it will be difficult for Washington to regain its position.
- noted Dremov.
According to Konstantin Bogdanov, senior researcher at IMEMO RAS, despite the fact that today's Minuteman III has little to do with those that were in service in the 1970s - it has been updated, it has new rocket engines, new equipment - the rocket has certain design limits that do not allow it to be operated further.
"The missile has been in service for almost 50 years and there is not much to compare it with, because it is one of the oldest systems in nuclear deterrence that exist at the moment. You can carefully recall the Soviet UR-100 rocket, repeatedly upgraded, but it is now also decommissioned - except that it serves as a carrier for Avangard-type units. Minuteman III has exhausted all resources due to the age of service. Discussions about whether a new US ground-based missile was needed have been going on for many years. Now they are over," Bogdanov said.
At the same time, the expert notes that the appearance of the LGM-35A is not the only innovation in the American nuclear program.
"The US nuclear program as a whole is now at the start of the renewal cycle. LRSO strategic cruise missiles for heavy bombers should begin arriving by 2025 to replace the AGM-86 ALCM. This is an old rocket, it is more than 40 years old," Bogdanov said.
"The head of the Nuclear Safety Department of the US Department of Energy, Jill Gruby, once again confirmed that the old plan - 80 cores by 2030 - is unattainable, because production facilities and staffing need to be restored in a number of areas. The United States at one time had a simple production of plutonium and not so much plutonium as products based on it. It's not about technology, but about the fact that they don't have production facilities now," Bogdanov concluded.
Major General Igor Dremov agrees with this position. "Until there are no cores, it is not necessary to talk about new missiles in any case. This issue is being resolved, but at the moment Washington is at an impasse here," he is convinced.
Irina Alshayeva