Lockheed Martin [LMT] on Monday said it recently completed the preliminary design review (PDR) for its version of the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) and outlined next steps in its competition.
The company said this was specifically a PDR for the NGI digital All Up Round (AUR) that was finished on Sept. 29 with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
Lockheed Martin said completing the PDR milestone means the company’s team has “progressed solidly in its design work.”
It said the PDR involved MDA assessing their NGI program version’s readiness and maturity to continue into the detailed design phase.
The company said its next steps will be to begin procuring long-lead hardware that support manufacturing the NGI flight test vehicles. It also expects to proceed toward the Critical Design Review (CDR) milestone in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025. The company announcement said during this period it will keep evaluating opportunities to further accelerate the schedule.
The Missile Defense Agency is set to assess when flight testing can begin during the CDR.
Lockheed Martin said it forecasts delivery on its NGI, if ultimately selected, to possibly start in fiscal year 2027.
Sarah Reeves, vice president of NGI at Lockheed Martin, told Defense Daily the company is on its path to flight testing and they plan to test and qualify their NGI prototype in fiscal year 2026.
Reeves also said the long-lead hardware includes all the major elements of a missile including material needed for sensors, radio frequency communications, computers, boosters and propulsion.
MDA has worked with Lockheed Martin and competitor Northrop Grumman [NOC] for separate options to develop the NGI since 2021. The agency has long said it plans to award a single winner following CDR to maximize success (Defense Daily, March 21, 2021).
DoD currently fields 44 Ground based Interceptors to help defend against a limited number of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) from North Korea and has 20 more silos ready for NGI placement at the Fort Greely, Alaska site.
The NGI is expected to include improvements to better counter advancing and future North Korean capabilities like multiple warhead kill vehicles and decoys, including having multiple kill vehicles on each interceptor.
“I am proud of our team’s commitment to innovating with urgency to achieve expectations for this phase of the program. With this additional confidence in our NGI design through a week-long digital review with our MDA customer, we are on track to deliver the right solution to meet the needs of the nation,” Sarah Hiza, vice president and general manager of Strategic and Missile Defense at Lockheed Martin, said in a statement.
In August, Northrop Grumman officials told reporters they expect to reach CDR for the AUR about a year after finishing their PDR, which was expected by the end of this year (Defense Daily, Aug. 8).
At the time, Lockheed Martin officials told Defense Daily they expected to complete the PDR in September and proceed to finish CDR on schedule (Defense Daily, Aug. 10).
Both companies have said they think they can deliver the first NGI unit by 2027, a year earlier than MDA’s objective.
This week, the company underscored it used digital engineering and model-based engineering tools to conduct the PDR “with a modern and transparent approach. These tools ultimately drive affordability within the program, as the company progresses to deliver a capable, mature, and reliable interceptor to the MDA.”
Lockheed Martin also said these digital tools and overall approach allow for early and frequent hardware and software testing, “anchoring the PDR with lab demonstrations of flight-like engineering hardware.”
It said this includes validating the program’s approach to sensing threats.
The company also said developing the system via its digital tools has already led to the flight computer successfully communicating to major NGI subsystems.