The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said an independent Failure Review Board has found it was a guidance fault caused by the outer space environment that caused the failure of Flight Test Ground-based-06a (FTG-06a) in December.
“The EKV’s guidance system had a fault related to outer space-related dynamic environments which caused the EKV to fail in the final seconds of the test,” MDA said in a statement. “There is no indication of any quality control problem as the cause of the failure.”
Corrective design steps are being pursued. A corrected design will be tested on the ground and in the spring during a non-intercept Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) test to confirm the issue is resolved.
Following a successful non-intercept test, the previously failed intercept test will be repeated later next year.
The first generation EKVs now deployed in Alaska and California do not have this design issue.
MDA said extensive ground testing and modeling demonstrated with high confidence the source of the failure.
FTG-06a was conducted Dec. 15 to demonstrate hit-to-kill performance of the long-range Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) element of the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) equipped with an Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) against a threat-representative target (Defense Daily, Dec. 17).
The EKV used in this test is an advanced version of the operational EKV deployed in Alaska and California.
The test was a repeat of an unsuccessful flight on Jan. 31, 2010.
The December test progressed as expected through target launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, an intercept solution was developed by forward-based and midcourse radars, and a ground based interceptor was launched from an operationally-configured silo at Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The GBI flew a nominal trajectory through each of three booster rocket stages, and successfully deployed the EKV. The EKV successfully selected the correct target object, but a guidance error occurred in the final seconds before the planned intercept. As a result, the EKV did not intercept the target warhead.
Boeing [BA] is the GMD prime contractor, with subcontractors including Northrop Grumman [NOC], Raytheon [RTN] and Orbital Sciences Corp. [ORB].
A Lockheed Martin [LMT]-led team that includes Raytheon [RTN] is competing to unseat 10-year incumbent Boeing to continue development and sustainment of GMD.