21 août 2019 | International, Terrestre
By: Jen Judson
UPDATE: This story has been updated to include a statement from Raytheon.
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has moved from taking a “strategic pause” on the Redesigned Kill Vehicle program to outright killing it.
The Department of Defense decided to terminate the current Boeing contract to develop the RKV — effective Aug. 22 — “due to technical design problems,” according to an Aug. 21 statement by the department.
Raytheon is the actual developer of the RKV and serves as a sub-contractor to Boeing.
The RKV would have replaced the current Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) on the Ground-Based Interceptor, which makes up the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system designed to protect the homeland from ballistic missile threats. It would have also been fielded on all future ground-based interceptors — a total of 64 ultimately.
The EKV is designed to destroy targets in high-speed collisions after separating from the booster rocket.
The EKV required technical changes in the past several years due to issues in tests. The Missile Defense Agency decided to initiate a program to redesign the kill vehicle. In the meantime, MDA has had several successful tests of the GMD system with the EKV following engineering changes.
Now that the RKV is dead in the water, the Pentagon plans to move forward with a new, next-generation interceptor competition, the statement said.
According to a defense official, no more ground-based interceptors will be built, and all future interceptors that are fielded as part of the GMD system will be the new interceptors.
“Ending the program was the responsible thing to do,” Mike Griffin, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said in the statement. “Development programs sometimes encounter problems. After exercising due diligence, we decided the path we're going down wouldn't be fruitful, so we're not going down that path anymore. This decision supports our efforts to gain full value from every future taxpayer dollar spent on defense.”
With the blessing of the undersecretary of defense, Griffin made the decision on Aug. 14 to terminate the program, one week after he told reporters at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, to expect a decision on the way forward for RKV soon.
MDA and Boeing in December 2018 deferred a critical design review of the RKV “due to the failure of certain critical components to meet technical requirements as specified in the development contract,” the statement noted.
After MDA assessed the issues, it issued a stop work order on the contract in May to analyze alternative options.
“The department ultimately determined the technical design problems were so significant as to be either insurmountable or cost-prohibitive to correct,” the statement said.
The DoD plans to take data garnered from research and testing of the RKV prior to its cancellation to inform the next-generation interceptor program, “which will include a new kill vehicle,” according to the statement.
“The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is updating its requirements in the face of an increasingly complex threat environment," Raytheon said in a statement. The company “supports their decision to cease work on the Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) and initiate a competition for the next-generation interceptor to meet these advanced threats. Raytheon will continue to develop and offer a wide range of advanced missile defense technologies available to protect the United States now and in the future.”
There are 44 ground-based interceptorss in place at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, with plans to add 22 additional missile silos at Fort Greely to support 20 more ground-based interceptors.
The defense official said the Pentagon is still working through the details of a new, next-generation interceptor competition, including when it will be initiated and the pace at which the technology will be developed and fielded.
7 août 2023 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense
Programs like hypersonics "are tailor-made for mid-tier and technology-oriented” firms expert Alan Chvotkin said. “I see opportunity there for growth."
16 mars 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Israel and South Korea are to co-operate in the field of unmanned airborne intelligence, surveillance, targeting and reconnaissance (ISTAR), with a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed on 15 March. Showcased at ADEX 2017, KAI's stealth U...
10 septembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial
By: Sebastian Sprenger PARIS — Underway in Europe are two high-profile sixth-generation aircraft efforts: the Franco-German-Spanish Future Combat Air System, and Britain's Tempest fighter. But will they converge? Defense News asked the chief executive of the European Defence Agency, Jorge Domecq, for his take on the future of these programs. It's quite possible the FCAS program by Spain, Germany and France and the British Tempest program will lead to a situation of two fighters. What's your assessment? We'll have to see, but FCAS is not going to be just one platform. It's going to be a system of systems. It will be a very complex program; it will take many years. It will be very important for it to be sustainable, that it has the economies of scale that are necessary. And at the same time, as we have these three initial member states signing up, I do not exclude this would bring on other member states as we go long. What will happen with the Tempest project, I cannot say. But as the person that oversees FCAS, you would like to see some convergence, right? Europe would probably have to see convergence toward having a single system of systems, but as I underlined, it's not an issue of platform. As always, thinking of the competitiveness of the European defense industry, we have to think of program sustainability. Is the next generation of combat aircraft sustainable with several systems of systems in Europe? I have my doubts. Speaking of consolidation, there have been calls to consolidate the defense industry. What is the level of urgency for that? I think the urgency is there. In the next five to 10 years, the defense industry is going to know a real evolution of technology; disruptive technologies are going to change how we do business in defense. That is going to have an impact on the defense industry. The only way forward for defense in general is cooperation. Cooperation is the only way Europe will remain a credible partner in operational terms but also in technology-related industrial terms. That requires we pull together to do as many defense cooperation projects in the future. And the consolidation of the industry will happen around those cooperative endeavors. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/dsei/2019/09/08/3-questions-with-the-eu-defense-chief-on-europes-future-fighters/