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2014-04-01

Proven power of ‘hit to kill’ technology

The ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) element of the ballistic missile defense system provides combatant commanders the capability to engage and destroy limited intermediate- and long-range ballistic missile threats in space to protect the United States.

GMD employs integrated communications networks, fire control systems, globally deployed sensors and ground-based Interceptors that are capable of detecting, tracking and destroying ballistic missile threats. The Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) is a sensor/propulsion package that uses the kinetic energy from a direct hit to destroy the incoming target vehicle. This hit-to-kill technology has been proven in a number of successful flight tests, including three using ground-based interceptors.

Ground-based midcourse defense is composed of ground-based interceptors and ground support and fire control systems components. The ground-based interceptor is a multi-stage, solid fuel booster with an EKV payload. When launched, the booster carries the EKV toward the target’s predicted location in space.

Once released from the booster, the EKV uses guidance data transmitted from ground support and fire control system components and on-board sensors to close with and destroy the target warhead. The impact is outside the Earth’s atmosphere using only the kinetic force of the direct collision to destroy the target warhead.

Ground support and fire control systems consist of redundant fire control nodes, interceptor launch facilities, and a communications network. GMD receives data from satellites and ground based radar sources, then uses that data to task and support the intercept of target warheads using ground-based interceptors. The GFC also provides the command and control, battle management and communications element with data for situational awareness.

As prime contractor since 1998, Boeing has partnered with the US Missile Defense Agency in the design, development, integration, test and sustainment of all GMD components. Boeing continues to lead the industry team for GMD development, integration, testing, operations and sustainment activities under the development and sustainment contract awarded in December 2011. The company will continue to build on its experience of supporting the Missile Defense Agency as prime contractor for the program.

‘Need to work when it really counts’

NGC is a strategic partner of the GMD program providing fire control and communications products as well as supporting systems engineering, systems testing and operations and sustainment.

For more than 50 years, Northrop Grumman has pioneered the performance-based management of complex, highly reliable and mission critical missile systems. Under its ICBM Prime Integration Contract, Northrop Grumman has refined a technique of optimized system management for the sustainment and modernization of silo-based missile systems that “need to work when it really counts.”

Integrated supply chain management provides the framework to ensure that mission assurance requirements and their measurement are institutionalized throughout the GMD enterprise.

Raytheon provides GBI EKVs. If a threat is detected using one of GMD’s multiple land, sea- and space-based sensors, a ground-based interceptor will be launched into space using a three-stage solid rocket booster. Once outside the Earth’s atmosphere, operating at the edge of space at hypersonic speeds, the EKV’s job begins.

Force of massive collision

The EKV seeks out the target using multi-color sensors, a cutting-edge onboard computer, and a rocket motor used only for steering in space. It hones in on its target, and with pinpoint precision, destroys it using nothing more than the force of a massive collision. No traditional warhead is needed.

Orbital Sciences Corporation was selected by The Boeing Company in 2001 to design, develop, and test a boost vehicle for MDA ground-based midcourse GMD program. The GMD system is the first and only operationally deployed missile defense program to defend the homeland against long-range ballistic missile attacks. The system provides early detection and tracking during the boost phase, midcourse target discrimination, precision intercept and destruction of inbound ICBMs through force of hit-to-kill technology.

GMD has been in advanced development since 1998 and is based on technologies pioneered by MDA in the 1980s and 1990s. It is currently a research and development program.

The GMD System is designed to intercept and destroy hostile ballistic missiles during their midcourse phase of flight, before their reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. The GMD EKV employs ‘hit-to-kill’ technology to detect, discriminate, and destroy an incoming missile’s warhead using only force of impact or kinetic energy. The orbital boost vehicle (OBV) is designed to deliver the EKV to the precise exoatmospheric endgame conditions necessary to intercept the threat.

The OBV is a two or three-stage solid motor rocket booster system developed for the GBI. Orbital’s boost vehicle has been successful in all 11 flight tests conducted between February 2003 to January 2013.

Impressive capabilities

Under rigorous testing, the GMD system has demonstrated impressive capabilities, including the ability to shoot down an incoming ballistic missile. The system has achieved a total of eight successful intercept tests, including three successful intercept tests with operationally-configured interceptors.

Flight testing is scheduled to continue. In addition, Boeing continues development of the two-stage interceptor in order to provide a hedge against the long range ballistic missile threat.

GMD incorporates decades of research, development, test and evaluation on proven ‘hit-to-kill’ and other advanced technologies. GMD system elements reach across 15 time zones and are linked by a terrestrial communication system consisting of over 20,000 miles of fiber optic cable as well as a redundant satellite communications network.

Orbital has completed development of a two-stage variant of the baseline three-stage OBV which provides GMD with a capability to engage a broader range of threats.

GMD Control Test Vehicle

On January 26, 2013, the Missile Defense Agency successfully completed a flight test of a three-stage Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI), launched from Vandenberg AFB, California. This event was designated Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Control Test Vehicle (GM CTV)-01. Data from this flight test was used to evaluate the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle system performance in a flight environment. If a target were present, the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle would collide directly with the threat warhead to perform a hit-to-kill intercept.

A target missile launch was not planned for this flight test. After performing fly out maneuvers, the three-stage booster deployed the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle executed a variety of pre-planned maneuvers to collect performance data in space. Flight test results show that all components performed as designed.

On February 13, 2013, a unitary medium-range ballistic missile target was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Hawaii. The target flew northwest towards a broad ocean area of the Pacific. The in-orbit Space Tracking and Surveillance System-Demonstrators (STSS-D) detected and tracked the target, and forwarded the track data back to the USS Lake Erie. The ship, equipped with the second-generation Aegis BMD weapons system, used Launch on Remote doctrine to engage the target.

The ship developed a fire control solution from the STSS-D track and launched the SM-3 Block 1A guided missile pproximately five minutes after the target launch. The SM-3 maneuvered to a point in space and released its kinetic warhead. The kinetic warhead acquired the target reentry vehicle, diverted into its path, and using only the force of a direct impact, engaged and destroyed the target.

This event was designated Flight Test Standard Missile-20 (FTM-20), the “Stellar Eyes” mission, and demonstrated the ability of space-based assets to provide mid-course fire control quality data on an Aegis BMD ship, extending the battlespace, providing the ability for longer range intercept and defense of larger areas.

On March 15, 2013, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel held a news conference at the Pentagon and announced the Obama Administration’s decision to reinstate 14 ground-based interceptors which it reduced in its first term, to Ft.

Greely, Alaska and Vandenberg AFB, California (for a grand total of 44) by the year 2017. An additional AN/TPY-2 forward-based radar would be placed in Japan, and the administration would continue to move forward with an environmental study of a third U.S. missile defense site, as well as the restructuring of the future SM-3 Block IIB missile program that was originally scheduled for European deployment in 2020. The restructuring of the SM-3 Block IIB program will result in greater support for a new and enhanced kill vehicle for the modernization of missile defense interceptors.

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