Lockheed Martin has reached a new milestone in its Next Generation Interceptor initiative with the conclusion of its digital All Up Round Preliminary Design Review.
The completion of this testing phase, which was conducted in collaboration with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, indicates that Lockheed is on track to deliver NGI to the military services on an accelerated timeline, the company announced from Huntsville, Alabama on Monday.
“I am proud of our team’s commitment to innovating with urgency to achieve expectations for this phase of the program,” said Sarah Hiza, vice president and general manager of strategic and missile defense at Lockheed Martin.
According to Hiza, the added confidence in the design gained from the joint review has kept the program on schedule.
A developing component of the MDA’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, NGI will offer a modern interceptor to deter long range ballistic missile threats from U.S. adversaries. During the Preliminary Design Review, or PDR, the MDA considered the NGI program’s readiness and maturity to determine that the technology still meets the requirements for this mission.
The review was carried out using digital engineering and model-based engineering tools that increased cost-effectiveness. These digital review methods allowed for early and repeated hardware and software testing, which secured the PDR with lab demonstrations of flight-like engineering hardware.
With the conclusion of this testing stage, Lockheed will start procuring long-lead hardware for use in the production of flight test vehicles. The next phase of the process, the Critical Design Review, is expected to occur in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, and Lockheed projects the delivery of NGI to begin as early as fiscal year 2027. NGI’s previous milestone, the PDR of core subsystems, was completed in August.