Northrop Grumman Passes Preliminary Design Review for Next Generation Interceptor Solution

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., January 31. The Northrop Grumman Corporation Next Generation Interceptor team completed its All-Up Round (AUR) Preliminary Design Review (PDR), in partnership with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) on January 26. Meeting the demands of the mission, the Northrop Grumman Next Generation Interceptor team continues to accelerate the progress on deploying a critical homeland defense capability to the US warfighter.

• The PDR established the technical approach for the full integration of Northrop Grumman’s interceptor design across all its subsystems to move into more advanced phases of development.
• A key requirement of this milestone is demonstrating that the design would maintain full capability while surviving challenging environments.
• The Northrop Grumman team provided on-site interactive demonstrators for review by MDA, including a full-scale solid rocket motor, avionics, and other test hardware. The Next Generation Interceptor team’s strategic partner Raytheon, an RTX business, provided kill vehicle hardware used during environmental testing, sensor hardware, kill vehicle hardware that supports manufacturing fixtures, and test equipment. Also available at the Northrop Grumman PDR was a full-scale digital model of the AUR design in a virtual reality environment.

Experts:

Lisa Brown, Vice President, Next Generation Interceptor Program, Northrop Grumman: “The Northrop Grumman NGI PDR demonstrated our technology, innovation, readiness, and performance. We put actual hardware in the hands of the MDA, backed by a digital representation. Next Generation Interceptor holds global strategic importance, which is why production and manufacturing readiness continues to play a central role in our Next Generation Interceptor solution.”

Wendy Williams, Vice President and General Manager, Launch and Missile Defense Systems, Northrop Grumman: “We are doing everything we can to accelerate our schedule while maintaining the deep technical rigor for which we are known. Northrop Grumman is committed to delivering this crucial capability into the hands of our warfighters as soon as possible, while meeting the key mission requirements.”

Jennifer Gauthier, Deputy President, Air & Space Defense Systems for Raytheon: “Our team is building on decades of experience designing and delivering proven exo-atmospheric interceptors. As a part of this review, our high-fidelity simulations demonstrated how Next Generation Interceptor’s multiple kill vehicles will perform in the extreme conditions of space, defeating an increasingly advanced set of missile threats.”

Details:

The Northrop Grumman NGI solution will provide enhanced technical capabilities that would be used to defend the US homeland from Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) threats as part of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. The team has built and tested key components of our Next Generation Interceptor solution, ahead of customer timelines.

The Northrop Grumman team, along with Raytheon, is implementing advanced digital engineering techniques to reduce the time needed to advance the design through phases of maturity and reach operational capability as quickly as possible.

Following the successful completion of PDR, Northrop Grumman will continue maturing its NGI design on the path to its Critical Design Review, which is expected to be completed ahead of schedule. The first operational Next Generation Interceptor is forecast to be deployed as early as 2027.

Northrop Grumman is a leading global aerospace and defense technology company. Our pioneering solutions equip our customers with the capabilities they need to connect and protect the world, and push the boundaries of human exploration across the universe. Driven by a shared purpose to solve our customers’ toughest problems, our employees define possible every day.

These are the views of Northrop Grumman and do not imply endorsement by the Missile Defense Agency.