A test of radars tracking a target missile launched from Kodiak, Alaska, showed the sensors aced the trial, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said Friday evening.
While MDA had hoped to use a Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) interceptor missile in the test, that had to be postponed until late this year to fix a computer card glitch.
So MDA launched the target missile with countermeasures, and challenged radars of missile defense systems to track it, which they did well.
The target was acquired and tracked by several space, ground and sea-based sensors that provided data to the missile defense system Command, Control, Battle Management, and Communications (C2BMC) system, and also to the GMD fire control system in Colorado Springs, Colo., to support a simulated interceptor missile engagement.
Participating sensors included a transportable AN/TPY-2 X-band radar temporarily located in Juneau, Alaska; a Navy Aegis destroyer with a SPY-1 radar; an upgraded early warning radar at Beale AFB, Calif., and the Sea-Based X-band radar mounted on a floating platform and positioned in the Pacific Ocean.
This was the most challenging flight test of the missile defense system’s command and control software to date, the MDA stated. It required the system to process complex data from multiple sources simultaneously and develop an engagement solution necessary to intercept a threat-representative long-range ballistic missile target.
During the test, target tracking data from the radars was transmitted to the command and control system and the GMD fire control system.
Although the target missile entry into the planned intercept area in space was shorter than expected, a plan to intercept and kill it was generated and operational crews simulated the launch of a GMD interceptor from Vandenberg AFB, Calif.
Data also went to the Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, where operators developed an engagement solution for a simulated intercept using a sea-based Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptor missile after receiving a target launch cue from the AN/TPY-2 radar in Alaska.
Armed services personnel performed much of the work in the test. The GMD program is led by Boeing [BA]. The sea-based system uses an Aegis radar, weapon control and guidance system by Lockheed Martin [LMT] and a Standard Missile-3 interceptor by Raytheon [RTN].
Program officials will spend the next several weeks sorting, cataloging and evaluating a huge amount of data obtained by the radars and command and control system based upon telemetry and other data obtained during the test.
Flight test results will help to improve and refine performance of the missile defense technology that provides a defense against the type of long-range ballistic missile that could be used to attack an American city with a weapon of mass destruction, the MDA stated.
“This successful test verified that four sensors separated by thousands of miles can detect, track and provide precise trajectory information to help defend against a long- range ballistic missile attack,” said Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems.
The net result is that MDA last week managed to gain experience with those sensors in a simulated take-down of the target missile, even though it wasn’t able to use an actual interceptor in a real flight to take out the target.
That shoot-down test with the interceptor that had been slated to go off Friday instead may occur in December, after a glitch is fixed, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, MDA director.
Originally, the plan was to launch the target missile from Kodiak, Alaska, and then launch the interceptor from Vandenberg, he explained.
The target would have been tracked by a mobile deployable radar, and also a radar at Beale, he said last week at a Pentagon briefing.
The radars would have fed their tracking data to the interceptor to guide it toward the kill.
Also, the Navy would have had a surface combatant ship with an Aegis radar and weapons control system track the target to see whether that drew an accurate bead on the target missile.
But the full shoot-down version of the test had to be postponed, because computer circuitry in the interceptor was flawed. Obering emphasized that this was a minor production problem, and didn’t involve any basic flaw in the design or capability of the interceptor.
“It was a bad technique for soldering that caused the problem on the [computer circuitry] card,” affecting all of the test interceptors, but not GMD interceptors that are operational, Obering explained.
The card problems meant there was a possibility of losing all test data, and given that tests are expensive, MDA opted to postpone the test until the problem could be fixed, Obering said.
So instead of executing the shoot-down test, MDA decided to launch the target and have it tracked by the forward deployable radar, the sea-based Aegis system, the SBX radar, and the radar at Beale, he said.
That was fed to a simulated interceptor.