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 U.S. warfighter. he 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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
The Northrop Grumman NGI solution will provide enhanced technical capabilities that would be used to defend the U.S. 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 Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 95,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world’s largest weapons manufacturers and military technology providers. The firm ranked No.?101 on the 2022 Fortune 500 list of America’s largest corporations. The Next Generation Interceptor evolves homeland defenses to defend against increasingly sophisticated ballistic missile threats. Northrop Grumman Corporation proactively invested in manufacturing facilities and capacity to produce solid rocket motors affordably and at scale. The company robust supply chain is key to enabling our nation’s need for cost-effective missile defense production. Northrop Grumman Corporation end-to-end kill chain heritage is defined by flight-proven ground systems, battle management, command and control systems, and interceptor boost vehicles and kill vehicles. Innovative technologies, agile processes and proven facilities underpin our ability to deliver a custom solution tailored for the mission need.
