My thoughts exactly. While NG hasn't settled on a design yet, they have pretty good experience across a range of SRMs, having acquired ATK (Hercules, Thiokol) etc.
The silo replacement is a herculean task though
I think that is where the big civil engineering experience along with a deep industrial base really separates what the US could do back in the post World War II through late 80's to what is possible today. A lot of people talk about refining elements of how contracts are set, reducing waste and corruption, but I think the slow nature of program development comes about because the industrial base is smaller. Not because people are any less greedy or subject to take advantage of government contracts then in periods past.
We can see that the US is fully capable of building a modern ICBM, but that big civil engineering task is difficult because some of that experience has atrophied or probably disappeared. The quoted tweet mentions that in the mid-60s the company hired to dig the silo hole managed a silo per day (with 60s technology). Don't forget, that they weren't just upgrading an existing system, but completely building out the first ever ICBM network. Yet the base was able to meet that task with speed.
I'd also like to take this time to call out the whole digital twin / design concept certain people within the US seem to think is some sort of revolution. The US and the Soviet Union designed dozens of fighter aircraft and bombers without the aid of computers because they had extremely talented engineers who had mastered the fundamentals of aircraft design. If you could give those groups access to today's technology, they would be capable to out designing any nation in the world today.
