Comment:  Two stories with interesting juxtaposition.

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/nuclear-missile-funds-excess-air-force-one/

June 27, 2025 | By Rachel S. Cohen

Quote:

The Air Force diverted what it says was excess funding from its delayed new nuclear missile program to modify a former Qatari royal jet for use as President Donald Trump’s Air Force One, the service’s top civilian said June 26.

But Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink insisted the move will “absolutely not” delay Sentinel’s progress, saying that money was “early-to-need” funding the high-priority missile modernization project didn’t use last year.

“We will ensure that those resources are there,” Meink said at a June 26 Senate hearing on the Air Force’s 2026 budget request. “The Sentinel program is fully funded . . . to execute as quickly as possible.”

"A previous tentative design of the next Air Force One is depicted in an artist rendering.
Boeing illustration."

_____________________________________________________________

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-ready-to-deploy-more-nukes-once-arms-control-treaty-ends/

Air Force Ready to Deploy More Nukes Once Arms Control Treaty Ends

June 6, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak and Rachel S. Cohen

Quote:

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on June 5 pressed Air Force officials to show they’re taking the Sentinel program seriously. The new ICBM is the program that has occupied the most of his time since becoming secretary last month, Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink said. It’s one of his top three priorities, he said, if not the highest.

“We’re doing everything we can to get it back on track,” he said.

Quote:

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) questioned why the service has moved $1.2 billion provided for the Sentinel program to fund other priorities in fiscal 2025, and said he’s concerned the new missiles won’t be ready in time to replace the Minuteman IIIs before they’re too old to be effective.

At the Atlantic Council event, Bussiere said Global Strike has a “very deliberate plan” for keeping enough Minuteman III missiles available to meet the minimum number needed for deterrence while transitioning missile launch facilities and control centers to the Sentinel program. It is “a national imperative” to keep Minuteman III functional until Sentinel can replace it, he said.

This is only the second time the U.S. has sought to replace its nuclear enterprise, and the first since the 1980s. Global Strike is now juggling the complex and expensive ICBM modernization at the same time as it brings on the B-21 to replace the B-1 and B-2 bombers, a new air-launched cruise missile and other pieces of the strategic arsenal. That challenge will “take an effort and a lift from everybody,” Bussiere said.

“If we had to do it again,” Bussiere said, “we might look at maybe doing one leg [of the nuclear triad] every 10 years, versus all three legs at the same time.”