KIMBALL -- The U.S. Air Force presented at a Town Hall meeting in Kimball Tuesday night to provide the public with an update on the Sentinel Project.

The project remains in phase one, which is to connect two launch facilities and three launch cables. Tetra Tech is conducting land surveys to determine what the working areas look like and what issues they may run into during the project. The acquisition committee will then design the system based on the results of the surveys.

This was the second town hall meeting the Air Force has hosted – the first being in August 2024. They plan to continue hosting Town Hall meetings to keep the community informed about the progress and address any concerns.

The LGM-30 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was installed in the 1960’s, and Gen. Colin Conner said it has not been touched since then besides minor modifications.

It will be replaced with the LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM and will include a complete update to the system.

“It is not just the missile, it is not just the silos, it is not just the launch control center, it’s all the above and it’s the connection between all three. We are going to lay fiber lines, build new silos and build new launch centers,” Conner said. “We have to do this to continue to deter our adversaries and keep this nation safe.”

Col. James Rodriguez said the biggest hurdle they have been working through for the past year has been the cost of the project.

The projected cost, primarily dealing with infrastructure, became too high which resulted in a statutorily mandated review of the Sentinel Project due to being in breach of the Nunn-McCurdy Act.

Rodriguez said the Secretary of Defense deemed the project necessary for national security, but the Air Force would need to restructure the program to make it more affordable.

“We are currently looking into what we can do to make it more cost effective,” Rodriguez said.

One thing they have determined is that the Army Corps of Engineers has the expertise to do the utility corridors more efficiently, so they are projected to award a contract to Army Corps of Engineers between October and December of 2026 to do the construction in 2027.

Another decision that has been made is to use new silos rather than converting the old silos.

“The [current] silos are already really old so if we use them for Sentinel, they are going to be over a century old,” Rodriguez said. “There were a number of other issues that were driving costs to be quite large, and it was becoming prolifically expensive to try to renovate them, so sometimes it is just cheaper to build something new.”

Another aspect of the project is the construction at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base, which is still ongoing, says Steve Kravitsky, SATAF Director at F.E. Warren Air Force Base.

They are building a Wing Command Center, which will allow for communication to run through one centralized location. It is projected to be complete in September 2026.

They are also building a new missile handling facility that will have more capabilities to handle the Sentinel missile, as it is bigger than the Minuteman. It is projected to be complete in April 2026.

Conner reassured the crowd that they are taking the concerns of the public into consideration when making certain decisions.

“As we have gone back to the drawing board, we have listened to what the community is concerned about and thought of how we can adjust the program so we are not impacting the community so much,” Conner said.

As the project moves forward and the design gets completed, they hope to provide more details and answer everyone’s questions with more clarity.

The community can expect a Town Hall every 6 months.