Biden's ambitious nuclear expansion plan has not yet begun, and it has been slapped in the face by the Pentagon. Whether the United States can still wield the nuclear stick is now a huge question mark.
The reason why I say this is because Bloomberg recently broke the news: The land-based component of the US triad nuclear forces, the "Sentinel" intercontinental missile project, which was originally planned to be used for the "militia," has gone into serious problems. Its original project leader, Charles Clegg, was formally dismissed on the grounds that the Pentagon had "lost confidence" in the man. Next, no one knows whether the "Sentinel" system can still advance normally.
In fact, this is not the first time that the US military's "Sentinel" system has gone wrong. In March this year, the US media "Capitol Hill" pointed out that according to the US Air Force's 2025 budget request report, the "Sentinel" project, which was originally scheduled to conduct the first test launch in 2024, has been postponed, and the test launch will not be completed until 2026 at the earliest. Moreover, the project has faced intense congressional scrutiny due to severe overspending.
The Sentinel project is not going well, and it is definitely bad news for the United States. There are two reasons for this.
First, as China's conventional military power continues to match or even surpass that of the United States, the "nuclear stick" will become the most effective means of pressure on China in a short period of time.
In May this year, the Pentagon officially launched a subcritical nuclear test, and started a "sideball" around the reopening of nuclear tests. In early June, while attending an event of the Arms Control Association, Plane Wadi, a senior White House official, publicly clamored that in order to deal with the so-called "threat" posed by China and Russia, the Pentagon would accelerate the expansion of its nuclear arsenal. In late June, the US media "Defense News" broke the news that the US Congress is preparing a new document requiring the Air Force to restore the nuclear strike capability removed from some B-52 bombers in 2015.
It can be said that the pace of US nuclear expansion is getting faster and faster.
In recent years, as China has begun to invest its industrial capacity in the modernization of its navy, the United States has realized that it will definitely lose by using conventional forces to "wrestle hands" with China in the first island chain. Therefore, the "nuclear stick" of the United States with stock superiority has become a lifesaver for the Biden administration to maintain its relative military advantage over China.
Second, the Minuteman, a land-based intercontinental missile currently used by the United States, has been in service for more than 50 years and has entered the end of its life. In 2021, the "militia" had problems in the random inspection, and the scheduled test launch was temporarily suspended. At the end of 2023, the "Minuteman" malfunctioned again during the random inspection, and the missile's trajectory deviated from the original flight trajectory, forcing it to activate the self-destruction device in the air.
The original plan of the United States was to retire the 400 or so "Minutemen" that are currently in use between 2020 and 2030 and replace them with "Sentinels". But that hope is now looking increasingly slim.
The "Sentinel" project has been postponed for two years, and now, there is the bad news that the general director of the project has been dismissed, and by 2030, no one dares to pack a ticket whether the system can be actually deployed in the United States and complete the task of handover with the "militia". Not to mention Biden's nuclear expansion, whether he can maintain the scale of the existing land-based intercontinental missiles is probably a question mark. The United States' nuclear stick may soon face the risk of being "lame."