Northrop Grumman moves interceptor development into next phase

HUNTSVILLE – Northrop Grumman announced that it continues to accelerate the progress on deploying a critical homeland defense capability to the U.S. warfighter.

According to a news release, Northrop Grumman’s Next Generation Interceptor team recently completed its preliminary design Review, in partnership with the Missile Defense Agency. The Next Generation Interceptor program and the Missile Defense Agency are headquartered in Huntsville.

The first operational Next Generation Interceptor is forecast to be deployed as early as 2027.

“The Northrop Grumman NGI PDR demonstrated our technology, innovation, readiness, and performance,” said Northrop Vice President Lisa Brown, Next Generation Interceptor program. “We put actual hardware in the hands of the MDA, backed by a digital representation. Next Generation Interceptor holds global strategic importance, which is why production and manufacturing readiness continues to play a central role in our Next Generation Interceptor solution.”

The Next Generation Interceptor will provide enhanced technical capabilities that would be used to defend the U.S. from Intercontinental Ballistic Missile threats as part of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, the company said. The team has built and tested key components ahead of customer timelines.

A key requirement of the milestone is demonstrating that the design would maintain full capability while surviving challenging environments.

The Northrop Grumman team provided on-site interactive demonstrators for review by MDA, including a full-scale solid rocket motor, avionics, and other test hardware.

The Next Generation Interceptor team’s strategic partner Raytheon, an RTX business, provided kill vehicle hardware used during environmental testing, sensor hardware, kill vehicle hardware that supports manufacturing fixtures, and test equipment.

“We are doing everything we can to accelerate our schedule while maintaining the deep technical rigor for which we are known,” said Wendy Williams, Northrop Grumman’s vice president and general manager, launch and missile defense systems. “Northrop Grumman is committed to delivering this crucial capability into the hands of our warfighters as soon as possible, while meeting the key mission requirements.”

The Northrop Grumman team, along with Raytheon, is implementing advanced digital engineering techniques to reduce the time needed to advance the design through phases of maturity and reach operational capability as quickly as possible.

“Our team is building on decades of experience designing and delivering proven exo-atmospheric interceptors,” said Raytheon Deputy President Jennifer Gauthier, Air & Space Defense Systems. “As a part of this review, our high-fidelity simulations demonstrated how Next Generation Interceptor’s multiple kill vehicles will perform in the extreme conditions of space, defeating an increasingly advanced set of missile threats.”