The Air Force delayed a scheduled May 16 test of Northrop Grumman’s [NOC] Minuteman III ICBM to replace a “test-unique” instrumentation component on the missile, according to an Air Force Global Strike Command spokeswoman.
The May 16 test launch has yet to be rescheduled pending the correction of the instrumentation issue, a service spokeswoman told Defense Daily in an email yesterday. She also couldn’t confirm if a previously scheduled Aug. 22 test flight will take place.
Northrop Grumman declined yesterday to comment on the delay.
A Northrop Grumman-led team recently supported the successful reliability testing of the Minuteman III on Feb. 25. The operational test launch proceeded as planned with the missile traveling roughly 4,800 miles in 30 minutes. The Minuteman III carried a single Mk21 re-entry vehicle specifically instrumented to measure operational performance parameters such as in-flight reliability and accuracy.
The Northrop Grumman-led ICBM prime team includes Boeing [BA], Lockheed Martin [LMT], ATK [ATK] and more than 20 subcontractors. The ICBM team is responsible for overall sustainment of the weapon system including development, production, deployment and system modifications (Defense Daily, April 25).