A new simulator designed to increase the rate of data collection to reduce time needed ahead of flight tests for the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) has been delivered to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Lockheed Martin [LMT] said yesterday.
Lockheed Martin, which is one of three firms behind the international venture developing system, said the MEADS System Stimulator generates real-time synthetic targets and validates operational MEADS system performance ahead of live testing. Germany’s LFK and Italy’s MBDA are the other two firms that form MEADS International.
“MSS-M allows MEADS to perform real-time, end-to-end, hardware-in-the-loop simulation of various scenarios in the field without having to use live targets for each test,” said MEADS International President Dave Berganini.
“The combination of simulated and live targets greatly reduces the overall cost of the flight test program,” he added. “Our efforts to develop a high fidelity simulation and the MSS-M enable a much more cost-effective MEADS test program.”
The United States, Germany and Italy are the three countries funding MEADS, which is a mobile system to defend against ballistic missiles.
“With this versatile testing capability, we are able to evaluate and assess MEADS system elements hundreds of times between actual live flight tests,” MEADS International Technical Director Marco Riccetti said in a statement. “The MSS-M ‘learns’ from flight test data so future flights expand upon what was experienced in previous testing.”