Components of the U.S. ballistic missile defense system (BMDS) recently passed several tests, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said yesterday.
That Integrated Ground Test (GTI)-03 checked hardware, software, and communication interfaces against simulated ballistic missile threats.
This is the third such test in an ongoing series to assess functionality and interoperability under increasingly stressing conditions, simulating concurrent theater, regional, and strategic attacks.
The test was conducted June 2-20 from the MDA Combined Test Force Ground Test Center located at the Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.
The test used the Missile Defense System Exerciser to connect and control BMDS hardware-in-the-loop laboratories located across the United States.
Participants from the ballistic missile defense operational community included the National Military Command Center, BMDS Operational Test Agency, the Northern Command, 100th Missile Defense Brigade, 94th Army Air Missile Defense Command, 49th Missile Defense Battalion, and Cheyenne Mountain Directorate.
The test provided a significant opportunity for warfighters to practice and refine tactics, techniques, and procedures to defend the United States from ballistic missile attack.
Hardware-in-the-loop laboratories participating in the event included the Command, Control, Battle Management and Communications facility in Colorado Springs, Colo.; the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense facilities in Dahlgren, Va., Moorestown, N.J., and Point Loma, Calif.; the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Patriot centers at Huntsville, Ala.; the Space-Based Infrared System and Joint Tactical Ground Station at Azusa, Calif.; the AN/TPY-2 Radar at Woburn, Mass.; and the Tactical Emulation Communication Systems.
Ground tests play a vital role in developing new technologies for missile defense by providing program officials with detailed information about emerging hardware and software system functionality, while reducing the cost and schedule demands that would be required to provide the same information through an extensive flight test program. GTIs enable simulated real-world threat scenarios to be simultaneously injected into geographically distributed tactical sensors and weapon systems. Tactical systems respond in real-time via their respective tactical communications links, allowing each individual BMDS system to operate in a tactically realistic environment.
After these GTI tests are run, Distributed Ground Tests (GTDs) are conducted using fielded assets with operational communications to more fully determine their BMDS capability. GTD-03 will be conducted later this year using a subset of the GTI-03 test cases.