Northrop Grumman announced on 27 August 2024 that it is redesigning the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) target vehicle for the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
The new design replaces the target’s heritage Trident C4 first-stage solid rocket motor with a Peacekeeper SR119 motor to provide extended range, lift capability and payload capacity for ICBM target missions.
Northrop Grumman says it leveraged virtual and augmented reality to fully animate and validate the target vehicle’s new integration and stacking operations, which will be demonstrated later this year. The company has modified the retired SR119 rocket motor to serve as a first-stage motor, meeting mission performance requirements with minimal changes to its original design. The new ICBM design creates target longevity to support future missile defence testing.
Northrop Grumman completed the critical design review of its redesigned ICBM target earlier in August, with the redesigned vehicle slated to take its first flight in late 2025. It will be compatible with advanced front ends to simulate sophisticated, long-range ballistic missile threats.
Robin Heard, director of targets for Northrop Grumman, was quoted by the company as saying, “Our approach to building target vehicles enables us to pair new and proven technologies together to create the best solution to meet customer needs. It’s about finding the right balance of affordability and innovation – combining capable, government-owned surplus motors and sophisticated front ends to simulate current and emerging threats.”
ICBM target vehicles are threat-representative ballistic missiles used by the MDA to test the efficacy of the United States’ missile defence systems, including the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system and the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for the intermediate-range ballistic missile and ICBM target vehicles, delivering 25 vehicles to date and supporting 10 successful launches since 2011.
The redesigned ICBM target is Northrop Grumman’s first target programme to leverage virtual and augmented reality to fully animate the vehicle’s factory integration and field operations, known as pathfinding. Pathfinding provides a lower-risk setting to fully vet new integration, stacking and test operations on inert hardware. Virtually simulating the vehicle’s pathfinding operations further buys down risk, enhances end-to-end test capability and optimises processes to deliver the critical capability with agility, Northrop Grumman noted.
In collaboration with the MDA and the US Air Force Rocket Systems Launch Program, the company successfully completed a static fire of the SR119 solid rocket motor in 2022 and initial SR119 integration pathfinding operations in June 2024. The tests validated the motor’s capability to serve as a first stage in this new target vehicle application.
