Lockheed Martin continues progress on Next Generation Interceptor program

HUNTSVILLE — So-called “rogue nations” are a growing threat to the U.S. and other countries. These countries are sanctuary to terrorists and, in some cases, bankroll them.

Their attacks on commercial and civilian enterprises are escalating in some instances and, eventually, they could be a threat to the U.S. mainland.

To deter and defeat evolving rogue-nation long range ballistic missile threats, Lockheed Martin has been developing its Next Generation Interceptor program, which is managed in Huntsville. The company forecasts its first NGI to be delivered in late 2026 (Fiscal Year 2027).

Recently, Lockheed Martin completed a Missile Defense Agency acquisition milestone – the first Knowledge Point – for the nation’s modernized long range ballistic missile interceptor. The company said it was a major contractual step forward that allows its NGI program to continue development toward the Critical Design Review.

“I’m proud of the technical rigor our Lockheed Martin and industry team demonstrated. We proved at KP1 that we have reached a level of maturity unprecedented at this stage of a missile defense program,” said Sarah Reeves, vice president of NGI at Lockheed Martin. “With MDA’s approval, we have turned a corner into our detailed design phase and will keep testing our integrated NGI hardware and software in preparation for production and flight testing.”

Lockheed Martin’s work toward the design review – its next engineering milestone –  includes building ground test vehicles and virtually flying the interceptor during system integration trials, enabled by its digital engineering tool suite.