The Air Force has fired the top official overseeing the costly Sentinel nuclear missile program, which is currently under Pentagon review due to rising costs.
Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center commander Maj. Gen. John Newberry has fired Col. Charles Clegg, The Hill confirmed Wednesday.
Clegg took office in August 2022, serving less than two years in the role overseeing the Sentinel program, which began about a decade ago.
An Air Force spokesman said Clegg was removed from his position due to a loss of confidence and that this was unrelated to the Nunn-McCurdy breach in January, when Sentinel exceeded its budget costs by 37 percent, causing the Department of Defense to analyze whether the program is still necessary and vital to national security.
“He was removed because he did not follow organizational procedures. This removal action is not directly related to the Nunn-McCurdy review,” the Air Force spokesperson said in an email.
The spokesperson also said the removal does not affect the operation of the 400 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that the Sentinel was intended to replace.
Minuteman “remains our nation’s safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent, just as it has been without interruption for the past six decades,” the spokesperson added.
The Sentinel program aims to create entirely new missiles to replace aging Minuteman ICBMs, which are more than 50 years old. But the project’s cost has grown from about $60 billion in 2015 to about $130 billion today and has drawn more intense scrutiny from Congress in the wake of the Nunn-McCurdy breach.
Several Democrats sent a letter to the Pentagon this week asking for a fair and honest review of whether Sentinel is vital to national security at the program’s updated cost. A congressional working group on nuclear weapons will also hold a hearing on the program on July 24.
Sentinel is expected to finish around 2030, but is now expected to be delayed. The project’s prime contractor, Northrop Grumman, announced earlier this year that it would not conduct a critical flight test until 2026.
Project costs are rising, in part because it also involves the renovation or construction of new properties, including infrastructure that will house the new missiles. Minuteman ICBMs are spread across several states in the rural western part of the country.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
