Farewell Minuteman, Hello Sentinel

The U.S. is upgrading it's ICBM fleet.

The 450 LGM-30 Minuteman missiles are getting long in the tooth, and their replacement will be the LGM-35A Sentinel. There will be 400 active, 234 in reserve, and 25 available for testing.

We have fewer missiles than we once did during the height of the Cold War. Seen below on the map, the red are active fields, the black are retired. I have long thought that only Wyoming had ICBMs, I’m not sure if there are still active silos in Colorado or Nebraska. Simon, the presenter, also said only Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming have active fields.

The U.S. maintains a nuclear triad - bombs, land based ICBMs, and submarine launched ICBMs. The U.S. has fourteen Ohio class SSBNs, while France and the U.K. keep just four SSBNs each, no bombs, no land based ICBMs.

There has been some talk of the U.S. retiring the triad in favor of the fleet of a dozen Columbia class submarines being built to replace the Ohio class. The Ohios have 24 missiles, while the Columbia has just 16 tubes. That would not absent, absent a crash the size of the Great Depression. The three states that host ICBMs have tiny populations … but two senators each.