Cybersecurity for the software-driven Sentinel nuclear missile has been a top focus of the program.
Those underground capsules are about to be demolished and the missile silos they control will be completely overhauled.
A new nuclear missile is coming, a gigantic ICBM called the Sentinel.
It's the largest cultural shift in the land leg of the Air Force's nuclear missile mission in 60 years.
There are questions as to whether some of the Cold War-era aspects of the Minuteman missiles that the Sentinel will replace should be changed.
Making the silo-launched missile more modern, with complex software and 21st-century connectivity across a vast network, may also mean it's more vulnerable.
The $96 billion Sentinel overhaul involves 450 silos across five states, their control centers, three nuclear missile bases and several other testing facilities.
Nuclear modernization was delayed for years because the United States deferred spending on new missiles, bombers and submarines in order to support the post 9/11 wars overseas.
The Sentinel work is one leg of a larger, nuclear weapons enterprise-wide $750 billion overhaul that is replacing almost every component of U.S. nuclear defenses, including new stealth bombers, submarines and ICBMs in the country's largest nuclear weapons program since the Manhattan Project.
For the Pentagon, there are expectations the modern Sentinel will meet threats from rapidly evolving Chinese and Russian missile systems.
The Sentinel is expected to stay in service through 2075, so designers are taking an approach that will make it easier to upgrade with new technologies in the coming years.
The overhaul touches almost everything, even including new equipment for military chefs who cook for the missile teams.
The changes could improve efficiency and quality of life on the bases but may also create vulnerabilities that the analog Minuteman missiles have never faced.
Those Hardened Intersite Cable Systems, or HICS, cables carry messages back and forth from the missile to the missileer, who receives those messages through a relatively new part of the capsule - a firing control console called REACT, for Rapid Execution and Combat Targeting, that was installed in the mid-1990s.
Any time the Air Force wants to test one of the missiles, it literally has to dig up the cables and splice them, to isolate that test missile's wiring from the rest.
Even when missile crews update targeting codes, it is a mechanical, manual process.
Nuclear missile fields are located in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming.
Those missiles need maintenance even in the winter, and crews spend hours outside in sub-zero field conditions,.
What it means is that even though technology could automate the whole operations process, one critical aspect of missile launch will remain the same.
If the day comes that another nuclear weapon must be fired, it will still be teams of missileers validating the orders and activating a launch.
This Cyber News was published on www.securityweek.com. Publication date: Tue, 12 Dec 2023 03:43:04 +0000