As they age, intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) systems such as the Minuteman require regular maintenance to keep pace with technology. The ground-based nuclear ICBM, in its current iteration as the LGM-30G Minuteman III, has been in operation for more than 50 years but is still a major military deterrent.
To keep the missile flying, the U.S. Air Force awarded, and the Air Force Nuclear Weapon Center (Hill Air Force Base, Utah) announced, a contract modification worth as much as $651 million to BAE Systems Technology Solutions & Services (Rockville, Md.). The modification is in regard to the LGM-30G Minuteman III and LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM systems.
The contract extension supports engineering services (see image above) that will maintain and upgrade software and hardware as needed for the Minuteman III, built by The Boeing Company, as well as for its successor, the LGM-35A Sentinel missile developed by Northrop Grumman. Work backed by this contract extension will be completed by the end of January in 2025 and will involve design, maintenance, research and development, and testing to ensure that both systems are equipped with the best available technologies for the highest performance and reliability.
The LGM-30G Minuteman III has a speed of 15,000 mph and range of greater than 6,000 miles. To ensure the missile’s longest possible lifetime, in a separate contract, the Air Force awarded Boeing a contract worth as much as $1.6 billion for maintenance of ICBM guidance subsystems. This includes maintenance of Minuteman guidance systems through 2039.