By Geoff Fein
In the most recent at-sea missile defense test, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), Navy and their industry partners were hoping to demonstrate a number of software and hardware upgrades to the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system.
On July 31, the USS Lake Erie (CG-70) equipped with the new Aegis BMD 4.01 software build with a new signal processor tracked and conducted a simulated engagement in the second of two tests that day (Defense Daily, Aug. 3).
An hour after the missile firings, the Navy and MDA ran a tracking exercise for the 4.01 baseline.
Although Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] Aegis BMD 4.01 is in the middle of development, company officials were confident the new software would perform. Additionally, they wanted to see what, if any, issues cropped up so that they could be dealt with before the next series of missile tests planned for the October-November time frame, Lisa Callahan, vice president maritime BMD defense programs, told reporters prior to last month’s test.
“So far the system is performing pretty well. We think we are going to get some good results…good data back, from the test,” she said. “We are in the middle of our development. It is a baseline that is under development. We think we can take it out to sea and it is going to perform for the sailors, but it is still in the middle of our development.”
Although Lockheed Martin had engineers onboard the Lake Erie, they were only there to support the sailors who ran the new software, Callahan said.
“We have been through some training with them so we have been able to validate the training we are going to provide,” she said. “We are going to get feedback from sailors on the design, user interfaces, and capabilities that we are putting out there.”
Lockheed Martin still has several builds planned for Aegis BMD 4.01, Callahan said.
“We are going to be making changes and adding additional capabilities to systems,” she said. “This allows us to get those inputs from the things we find from the tests back into the system so that when it gets delivered in 2010 and ultimately certified in early 2011, we’ve received the feed back from the operational sailors on its use.”
Part of the reason for the separation between last month’s test and the three tests planned for the fall is that it will enable Lockheed Martin to work out any issues that arise from the July tests. Because the July 31 test was the first time MDA, the Navy and Lockheed Martin deployed Aegis BMD 4.01, Callahan said the company was projecting there may be some issues that need to be corrected.
“So we have allowed time in our schedule to do another quick update before it goes out again in the fall,” she added.
The July 31 test and the three planned for the fall are called Flight Test Exercise 06 (FTX 06).
For the next generation capability, Lockheed Martin is looking at taking on more complex threats, Nick Bucci, director Aegis BMD development programs, told reporters before last month’s test.
“The hurdle after that is to essentially enlarge the number of ships the Navy can have with Aegis BMD on them. That’s when we come together with advanced capability build (ACB) 12 as part of the open architecture (OA) implementation Navy is going to,” Bucci said. “It will provide greater capability over a larger fleet of ships.”
Ultimately, when Lockheed Martin gets to third generation of capability, it’s adding additional missile capability, what the company is calling BMD 5.1, he added.
“That brings in SM-3 Block 2A, which will enable us to go after more complex threats than BMD 4.01, as well as some longer range threats,” Bucci said. “It’s a continual evolution or spiral of technology in and more complex threats being defeated.”
Raytheon [RTN] build the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA.
With the increase in each of these baselines, Lockheed Martin continues to refine interoperability with other Aegis ships and other elements of the BMD system, Callahan said. “So, as a whole, we can defend a large area and we can defend against multiple threats simultaneously.”
“As we go into the OA domain that will enable us to bring in best of breed algorithms and do faster updates as threats evolve,” Bucci added. “We can immediately bring the necessary algorithms and technologies to bear within the OA environment to defeat the threats.”