The US Air Force has awarded Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp separate contracts to continue work on the replacement of the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile system, the Pentagon said on Friday.
Though the award for the new Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) comes amid rising tensions with North Korea, the Air Force had asked the defence industry last summer for proposals to replace the ageing ICBM system and its nuclear cruise missiles as the military moved ahead with a costly modernisation of its aging atomic weapons systems.
“The Minuteman III is 45 years old. It is time to upgrade,” Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein said in a statement on Monday.
Northrop Grumman was awarded $328 million and Boeing $349 million over the three-year contract.
The relatively small award is a milestone that would allow Boeing and Northrop to continue parallel detailed development and prototyping for the Minuteman replacement. The Pentagon's office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) has said the total could cost the United States $85 billion. The Air Force has estimated $62 billion.
Boeing's Strategic Deterrence Systems Director, Frank McCall, said in a statement:
Since the first Minuteman launch in 1961, the US Air Force has relied on our technologies for a safe, secure and reliable ICBM force.
Boeing provided the Minuteman III missile for the current ground-based nuclear ICBM system.
(The article has been edited for length.)
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