The US Air Power (USAF) and Northrop Grumman have achieved a key milestone within the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) modernisation by finishing the full-scale qualification check of the stage-two strong rocket motor.
The check, carried out by the 717th Take a look at Squadron, occurred on the Arnold Engineering Improvement Complicated on 20 July 2025.
It’s a part of the USAF’s ongoing initiative to improve its land-based nuclear deterrent capabilities.
The motor was examined in a vacuum chamber designed to duplicate circumstances at excessive altitudes.
The analysis gathered essential information on the motor’s efficiency, together with its thrust profile and steerage capabilities by the thrust vector management system.
Brigadier Normal William Rogers, Air Power Nuclear Weapons Middle ICBM Methods Directorate director and Air Power ICBMs programme govt officer, stated: “This check displays our disciplined digital engineering method and the continued momentum behind the Sentinel programme. We’re not simply testing {hardware} — we’re proving that our fashions are correct, our growth timeline is achievable, and the system can be able to ship when referred to as upon.”
The stage-two motor represents one of many trios of booster segments that represent the Sentinel missile’s three-stage configuration.
This check is one amongst a number of geared toward qualifying the stage-two design and confirming predictive efficiency fashions created inside a digital engineering framework.
Insights from this check will inform design refinements and mitigate technical dangers as this system advances in the direction of manufacturing.
Following the profitable stage-one rocket motor test in March at Northrop Grumman’s Utah facility, this newest milestone additional validates the alignment between precise efficiency and digital mannequin predictions.
Rogers added: “This isn’t nearly one motor check. It’s about constructing confidence — in our engineering; in our program schedule; and, most significantly, in our capacity to discourage aggression and defend the nation.”
The Sentinel programme advantages from a model-based design technique enabling engineers to simulate system behaviour extra precisely, predict efficiency extra reliably, and scale back dependence on bodily prototypes.
Additional stage-two qualification assessments are scheduled all year long by the USAF and Northrop Grumman to evaluate further motor elements underneath numerous environmental circumstances.
In Could, the USAF conducted a successful test launch of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from Vandenberg Area Power Base in California.
The Minuteman III ICBM will ultimately get replaced by the LGM-35A Sentinel.
