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Our Products In Action
ITT Industries' Advanced Engineering & Sciences Division Plays
Critical Role in National Missile Defense Flight Testing
 In a recent test of the U.S. anti-missile system, ITT's Advanced
Engineering and Sciences Division provided crucial technical and support
services, including an advanced sensor system on-board the target missile.
It is a pretty hard trick to hit a bullet with a bullet. If you could
accomplish that task however, then think about how difficult it would be to
design and deploy a sensor system that could tell you what was happening in
the microseconds just prior to that high-speed encounter.
Hitting a "bullet with a bullet" is how the military describes their success
during a recent $100 million nighttime test of the anti-missile defense
system over the Pacific Ocean. In this fourth test of technologies to be
used in a proposed national missile defense system, a "kill vehicle" used
sensors and thrusters to try to home in on the target, a dummy warhead fired
from Vandenberg Air Force in California. The job of finding out what was
happening aboard the target just before impact was given to ITT's
Advanced Engineering and Sciences Division (AES).
Data Analysis Crucial to Evaluating Tests
The target - which emulated a ballistic missile attack - was destroyed 140
miles above the central Pacific, outside the earth's atmosphere, about nine
minutes and nine seconds after the interceptor blasted off from the Kwajalein
Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, 4,800 miles away.
As part of testing the effectiveness of new technologies being deployed in
these tests, it is crucial for the engineers and scientists to evaluate the
data recorded from the sensors contained on both the dummy warhead and the
kill vehicle.
Engineers and technicians from ITT's' AES Division provide the
military with key technical, data acquisition, and test and evaluation
support for the National Missile Defense (NMD) flight test program. In this
latest successful NMD flight test, the target - a Minuteman-based ICBM
vehicle - was instrumented with an AES Photonic Hit Indicator (PHI) System
designed to transmit the NMD Interceptor hit location before the total demise
of the target within a few tens of microseconds.
Target Vehicle Impact Sensor
The Photonic Hit Indicator (PHI) sensor system from AES is composed of a
fiber-optic grid that is designed to provide unique impact location
indications for different flight test target vehicles. Many different sizes
and shapes of concept target vehicles are used in National Missile Defense
interceptor tests, with each requiring a custom grid design (both shape and
pattern). The PHI sensor grid is adapted to each target vehicle to provide
the impact location data in the required level of precision. Dr. Gary
Paderewski, AES team leader of the PHI program notes that the grid provides
impact location within +/- 1 inch on most test targets.
The sensor system uses unique data transmission approaches to allow
successful and accurate recording of the impact location and time at ground
stations in 10 microseconds or less between the initial contact and
destruction of the target vehicle (including the destruction of the PHI
sensor).
In this latest test, the target intercontinental missile carrying a mock warhe
ad and a decoy balloon lifted off from Vandenberg AFB at 10:40 p.m. and arced
westward across the Pacific.
Twenty-one minutes later, an interceptor rocket shouldering the kill vehicle
blasted off from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The kill vehicle
contained no explosives and destroyed the warhead with the sheer force of a
collision at 16,200 miles per hour.
Data Acquisition
Meanwhile, at the Kwajalein Missile Range, AES provided and manned, on behalf
of the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC)-Huntsville, three
separate mobile telemetry ground stations positioned at Carlos, Roi and Wake
Islands. These three stations were assigned to collect the AES PHI System
data, and other target and NMD Interceptor on-board test data. Throughout
this critical test of the NMD System, the AES ground stations achieved
virtual error-free transmission of this very high rate data, and accomplished
100% of their mission objectives.
The recorded test data is crucial to the analysis and reconstruction of the
successful NMD intercept event. According to Lt. General Ronald T. Kadish,
director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, "We believe we had a
successful test, in all aspects, right now."
National Missile Defense
The National Missile Defense (NMD) system is being developed to protect the
United States against a limited attack by long range ballistic missiles. The
current National Missile Defense effort has the goal of establishing a
defense of all 50 states against a limited missile attack by a "state of
concern". The key NMD components include ground based interceptors (GBI), an
X-band radar (XBR), Upgraded Early Warning Radars, Battle Management/Command,
Control and Communications (BM/C3) and space sensor technology such as the
AES Photonic Hit Indicator.
In addition to the development of the Phontonic Hit Indicator System, AES has
been the principal evaluator of lethality effectiveness for Ballistic Missile
Defense (BMD) systems for over 25 years including the Patriot, THAAD, ARROW,
and the NMD's Ground Based Interceptor. Other BMD program experience includes
testing for the Space-Based Laser program, global communications connectivity
systems for NORAD / USSPACECOM / AFSPACECOM, and operation of DEW and BMEWS ea
rly warning sites.
AES Provides Technologies for an Uncertain World
ITT's Advanced Engineering & Sciences (AES) is a division of ITT's Defense group. With its large staff of engineers and scientists,
AES provides advanced science and technology services and customized,
high-tech products to government, industrial, and commercial customers. In
addition, AES designs, manufactures, and markets advanced digital
communications products and systems primarily for government customers to
establish or enhance communications via satellite, terrestrial wireless, and
cable.
Ralph Meoni, president of ITT's AES Division notes that, "As the
political and military landscape of our world becomes increasingly
fragmented, AES provides the technologies to help increase the efficiencies
of our defense and intelligence systems." Meoni goes on to say that, "from
the research involved in creating a national missile defense, to providing
the capabilities to dominate the information battles of the future, to
creating systems that allow detection of chemical and biological agents, to
architecting future telecommunications systems, AES provides unique solutions
at the highest level."
AES engineers will be busy in the coming months with more tests. Recently,
senior Pentagon officials outlined to Congress the most detailed vision yet
of the Bush administration's plans to accelerate testing on an array of
anti-missile technologies, including land-based missiles, sea-launched
interceptors and airborne lasers. Under that plan, the Pentagon says it
intends to conduct as many as 17 flight tests involving ground-and
sea-launched missiles over the coming 18 months.
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