The Sentinel program currently lacks a firm schedule as the Air Force restructures it following significant cost and timeline problems that led to a Nunn-McCurdy breach review. The Pentagon allowed the program to continue in July 2024 but withdrew approval to enter engineering and manufacturing development and directed a restructure.
Officials said the program would have been 81 percent over budget and three years behind schedule if it had stayed on its previous path. Northrop Grumman and Air Force leaders have said they are working to reduce those overruns.
“We are in the middle of supporting the U.S. Air Force as they restructure the Sentinel Program, and coming out of that, they will firm a schedule that both locks in new time ranges for milestone B, initial operating capability, final operating capability,” Warden said. “And so I don’t want to get ahead of the Air Force in talking about that, but certainly, as I have shared and the Air Force has as well, we are working to accelerate the timelines that were published coming out of the Nunn-McCurdy breach two years ago.”
