The program to replace America’s aging nuclear ICBM arsenal, known as the LGM-35A Sentinel, is already projected to go at least 81 percent over budget, which represents tens of billions of dollars in anticipated cost overruns. Yet, despite the program’s ballooning expenses, the Pentagon has reaffirmed its commitment to the effort, calling its continuation, “essential to national security.”

To many outside of the Defense apparatus, the Sentinel ICBM program may seem unnecessary. After all, the United States already maintains a standing arsenal of more than 400 nuclear-armed Minuteman III ICBMs, each of which can deliver its nuclear payload to targets more than 8,000 miles away, traveling at speeds over Mach 23. These weapons lay in wait, housed in hardened underground silos spanning Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota, and represent only the land-based portion of America’s traditional nuclear triad.

A bevy of nuclear gravity bombs, spanning in yield from as low as 0.3 kilotons to as high as 1.2 megatons, serve alongside long-range air-launched nuclear cruise missiles as the airborne leg of the triad, delivered via a laundry list of bombers and fighters. And then, most importantly, a fleet of 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, each carrying 20 Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with multiple warheads onboard, serve as the at-sea leg of the triad while also representing the majority of America’s deployed nuclear arsenal.

The land-based Minuteman III fleet is often seen as the least important facet of America’s deterrent nuclear posture, with many experts and analysts dismissing these weapons and their hardened silos as little more than a “warhead sponge,” meant to give adversary nations such a long and daunting list of targets for any potential first strike that there will have little hope of blunting the edge of America’s nuclear response. But while this might make these ICBMs seem less important than the Navy’s deployed SLBMs, for instance, the truth is, using these isolated facilities as a “warhead sponge” might make all the difference in a nuclear conflict.

The known and permanent locations of these ICBM silos give enemy nations a list of hundreds of targets to focus on, allowing America’s missile subs and nuclear-capable aircraft to retaliate with less interference.

In other words, with hundreds of nuclear ICBMs........

© The National Interest